Speaking with Yasser Ararafat last week, Ehud Barak said, according to a French report, that if he had been a young Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization. He has said the same last year in an Israeli interview that later played a major role in the Likud election campaign.

As somebody who, at the age of 15, did indeed join a terrorist organization (sorry, I mean a liberation organization) , I can appreciate this courageous statement. The question is: does Barak draw the logical conclusion from this insight, namely that one must make a peace that the other side can live with, and not a "settlement" that will push young Palestinians tomorrow into the arms of a Palestinian national military organization.*

• "National Military Organization", Irgun for short, was the name of the armed underground which I joined as a youngster.

Barak is well versed in military history. Once I had a long conversation with him about this subject, which happens to be a hobby of mine too, and was surprised by the extent of his knowledge. Therefore, when warn him against a "permanent settlement" that is based on "settlement blocs", three words will suffice: "treaty of Verseilles". (I used the same words to warn Yithaq Rabin six weeks before his assassination, but Rabin was no expert on European history.)

The treaty that bears the name of Versailles was signed in 1919, at the end of World War I, by the vanquished Germans and the victorious Allies. It put the sole blame for the war on Germany, tore from it extensive territories, compelled it to pay enormous indemnities and allowed it to maintain only a tiny army. It was a cruel, humiliating and manifestly unjust diktat,

The demand to eradicate the "Diktat of Versailles" became the central propaganda theme of Adolf Hitler, when he set out to destroy the democracy created by the "November criminals", which had "stabbed the valiant German army in the back" and signed the "treaty of shame". All the German signatories were assassinated.

Historians are unanimous in their judgement that the treaty was an act of incredible folly, he fruit of a blind crave for vengeance, and that it played a major role in the events which led to World War II. Only after 50 million more human beings, including 6 million Jews, had lost their lives, did Europe create a wise framework for peace, without victors and vanquished.

A personal memory: Some years ago I was asked by the German producers of a biographical film to revisit the German school that I had attended before coming to Palestine. I asked the principal if the school was still keeping its old maps. Within a few minutes ("Ordnung muss sein") he produced the map I remembered from the days when I was a nine years old pupil, before the Nazis came to power, in a province then still under Social-Democratic government.

This map was at that time hanging on the wall of every German classroom. It showed two borders: the border of Germany as it was then and - in red color - the border of the "lost lands", Germany as it was before Versailles. A whole generation of Germans grew up on this map, the generation that later marched behind Hitler like the mice behind the pied piper of Hamlin.

Barak says that he wants to achieve a "permanent settlement" that gives back to the Palestinians all the occupied territories except some "settlement blocs". This week he explained that these blocs will consist of 40% to 50% of "Judea and Samaria". This may be an opening position, and perhaps he is ready for a compromise that will annex to Israel 20% to 30% of the West Bank.

Assuming for a moment that he will be able to exert enough pressure to compel the Palestinians to accept such a settlement. Will this indeed be a "permanent" settlement? Will it bring peace? Will the Palestinians, after accepting with gnashing teeth a diktat that leaves them 15% of their original homeland, look upon it as the end of the historic conflict?

I see in my mind the map which will be hang in every Palestinian classroom, showing three borders: a red line marking the borders of Palestine under the British mandate until 1948, from the Mediterranean sea to the Jordan river, a green line marking the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until 1967 (only 22% of the territory of the mandate) and a black line marking the border of the "permanent settlement". This one will look like daggers stabbing the body of the Palestinian state at Kadumim, Ariel, Maaleh Adumim, Tekoa, the Jordan valley, the Dead Sea, Gush Katif and elsewhere.

The settlement blocs sit on the most fertile lands, the land reserves of the developing Palestinian society, even more precious when hundreds of thousands of refugees will have to be repatriated and rehabilitated. In the eyes of a new Palestinian generation, the settlements will be living memorials of defeat. It will not be the end of the conflict, as Barak imagines, but a new stage of the conflict that has already passed several.

If Barak will chose this road, he will find himself marching side by side with Lloyd-George and Clemenceau, the victors of Versailles, at the head of history's march of folly.