A LAND FOR ALL

Yes, there would obviously be a border. Even Europe still has borders. True, there are no border crossings, but at a certain point, France ends and Germany begins. The international community is yet to find any better way to define countries than borders. Since we are talking about a border between two sovereign countries, each party will have the right, in principle, to prevent entry by civilians from the other country, if they pose a security or criminal threat. However, unlike the present situation, the default would be to let people on both sides pass through.

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which represents mainstream Israeli defense thinking, was requested to provide an opinion on the matter and proposed electronic inspection at border crossings, without any people positioned there. Obviously, it would take a long time to completely remove supervision over borders, as in Europe, but it is possible. Details will be settled through negotiations.

We believe in the June 4, 1967 borders, not because there is anything holy about them, but because of international agreement. In a ruling of The Hague court on the separation fence, the 1967 lines were deemed a border. When Palestine is accepted into international institutions, it is on the basis of the 1967 borders. When the USSR dissolved, it was not split by “natural” or demographic borders, but by the rather arbitrary borders of the soviet republics.

There are two answers to this question. The first is, that the leaderships of both people have adopted this solution more than twenty years ago, yet we are still moving further and further away from it, instead of making progress towards it. This implies that maybe it is not that simple. Maybe it has flaws that must by looked into.

The second answer is that we are not inventing anything new. Jews and Arabs are already mixed – within the 1967 borders, in Jerusalem and in the West Bank. Our ideas approach this reality in a more disillusioned manner. More importantly, the public lost trust in the current course of negotiations. On both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides, people say they will never see the end of the conflict in their lives, whether they are eighty or eighteen. This was evident in the last two elections. Advocates of an agreement and reconciliation must find a new concept that can renew hopes, an idea that conveys openness rather than insulation.

How can two such different economies coexist one next to the other? How do you prevent millions of Palestinians from flooding Israel and setting up shanty towns on the margins of Israeli cities, in search of work? How do you prevent Jews from buying Palestinian city centers and thus raising real estate values, until Palestinians themselves can no longer live there? Is this not in fact a blueprint for creating an apartheid country?

This is definitely a great challenge. It would certainly require great investments in development to get the Palestinian economy on its feet. We believe that the international community, as well as Arab countries, will take it upon themselves to help. The very opening of borders and the ability to work in Israel will also dramatically improve the economy of Palestine. The joint institutions of the two states will coordinate economic development, investments, natural resources etc.

On all matters relating to undesired mutual flooding of populations: Until 1989, Palestinians required no permits to enter Israel, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worked in Israel – but only few relocated to it. With a stable, developing Palestinian economy the chances of this scenario are even slimmer. In any case, clearly, movement of people cannot be left to free-market economy alone, and the potential problems of the preservation and worsening of the current economic inequality must be placed on the table from the beginning. For example, it may be necessary to establish a social security network to guarantee the basic rights of workers and low-income populations wherever they may be, in both Israel and Palestine.

Not at all. We believe that the one-state solution, at least in the foreseeable future, is not a good idea. Both people want a piece of land in which to realize their national right of self-determination, and this is impossible in one state. The one state will turn into a demographic race in which Jews will do their utmost to remain a majority and turn the entire region between the Jordan and the sea into a de facto Jewish state, while Palestinians will do their utmost to become a majority and break apart, in reality, the State of Israel as an expression of Jewish national identity. To put it briefly, this idea is both impractical and highly problematic.

We want to adopt the positive aspects of the two-state solution, such as the national expression of each nation and each nation’s ability to manage its own affairs, while adopting the positive aspects of the one-state solution – equality, freedom of movement etc. Our idea is neither absolute separation nor absolute integration. We are for being both separate and together.

There will always be those who want to carry out terror attacks. Even Europe experiences terror. But we are taking about two states that cooperate on both the defense and the intelligence levels. Even at present, despite the hostility and hatred, defense cooperation with the Palestinian Authority is working relatively well, as military officers can attest. After the agreement, there is a good chance that this defense cooperation will only improve, because Palestinians will have more to lose. In many ways, such a union between Israel and Palestine will offer more security to all. In Gaza, Israel withdrew its forces completely, has no defense engagement there and the security threat has only grown worse. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank and an independent state is established there, which has no connections to Israel, the Gaza model may be repeated.

In our model, of a union of two independent states, security throughout the region will be shared. A joint Israeli-Palestinian force will monitor the union’s external border crossings – from the Allenby Bridge to the Taba Crossing. Even the experts at the Institute for National Security Studies believe this to be the preferable way to ensure security.

Undoubtedly, mistrust is one of the most difficult challenges. It would take a lot of work to educate and change mindsets. One of the way of changing current mindsets is to show that we Jews and Arabs coexist even at present – in the Galilee, in Haifa and even in Jerusalem. The problem is that we are not aware of this. We should emphasize the common spaces shared by Jews and Arabs, and demonstrate how these are much less violent and conflicted than one could expect.

For example: All hospitals in Israel have significant numbers of Arab doctors, not to mention the general medical stuff. Still, despite the hatred and suspicions, Jewish patients do not fear putting their lives in the hands of Arab doctors. If this happens at this sensitive environment, it can happen anywhere.

The best way to build trust is equality. How else would you explain the fact that, in the 67 years of Israel’s existence, the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel involved in terror attacks is in the single digits, despite confiscation of land, discrimination and repeated wars with their Palestinian compatriots in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza? And if you mention the security services – don’t forget that in the West Bank, the Israeli security services are many times stronger, while terrorism seems to have no end.

The most reasonable explanation is that they have the right to vote, and that Israel has courts and rule of law. In short, Palestinians in Israel have civil courses of action. The best way to start building trust would be giving equal rights to all people in the region. It would take years, but this is the basis for everything.

Even the greatest advocates of separation understand the full separation is impossible in Jerusalem. This is both because there is no clear geographic separation between neighborhoods: Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Zeev, for example, are to the east of Shuafat, while Har Homa is to the east of Tzur Bahar, and that in the Old City too, you cannot build a real physical border. The Geneva Accord proposed a model where the Old City is jointly administered under international supervision. But if we can jointly manage the heart of the conflict, the square kilometer of the Old City, where fifty thousand live and where Jews and Palestinians share the same alleys on their way to the Haram al-Sharif or the Western Wall, the entire land can be managed in the shared model. Instead of being a problem, Jerusalem may well be the solution. Joint sovereignty is no simple matter, but it exists elsewhere in the world. Brussels is shared by French-speaking Walloons and the Flemish. There is also a complex mechanism that allows, on the one hand, to administer the city as one city municipally, while preserving the representation of each of its demographic groups. Other .examples in the world exist

Regardless of issues of justice, the right of return is one of the central narrative around which the national Palestinian movement has formed, if not the key one. The conflict did not suddenly start in 1967, but is the results of the 1948 events. A long-term solution, a solution of reconciliation, requires us to get to the root of the conflict, and the root of this conflict is the refugee problem.

On the matter of refugees, the left and people such as Arafat and Abbas lied to the public, or at least did not tell the whole truth. They told people that the “right of return” is just lip service, and that Palestinians would waive it in exchange for an independent country in the 1967 borders.

Like our Palestinians partners say, you can maybe force Palestinians to sign an agreement without the right of return, but such an agreement would be short-lived, and would serve as merely a hudna or truce between two wars, until the balance of powers changes. The non-realization of the right of return will serve as a perpetual weapon at the hands of the enemies of reconciliation – Hamas and others. Only a just and serious solution with the right of return would bring about a stable solution. Ignoring is not an option. However, one of our basis principles is that two wrongs don’t make a right. Jews will not be driven out of their homes so that their original Palestinians owners may be housed in them.

The wrong will be corrected in two ways. The first: Refugees will receive appropriate monetary compensation. If possible, efforts will be made to rebuild towns or villages in areas that are at present unpopulated. The second: Palestinian refugees, after becoming Palestinian citizens, will have freedom of movement throughout the homeland they have been exiled from. They will be allowed to make long-term visits and work there. A certain percentage of them will receive residential rights even in the first phase, and our vision is that in the future they will all enjoy this right. But the next stages will be implemented gradually and in agreement.

We must understand that for Palestinians, this is not a full return or a full realization of their right of return – but we cannot satisfy one hundred percent of everyone’s desires. Freedom of movement and residence will be universal and will apply to all refugees, without any quotas or favors, so that they can restore their relations with their homeland and relatives who stayed here. This is much more than what solutions such as the Oslo Accords or Geneva Initiative offer at present.

There is no doubt that the support of the Arab world is crucial, both politically-diplomatically and economically. But it is an illusion to believe that we can first reach an agreement with Egypt or Saudi Arabi and afterwards reach an agreement with the Palestinians. It is the other way around. Without full Palestinian agreement, the Arab and Muslim world will not reconcile with Israel. That is the moral power of the Palestinians. Palestinians will have the moral right to ask Arab countries – as our Statement of Principles states – that they recognize the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

In our vision for the future, we certainly see the Israeli-Palestinian union as the basis for wider unification of the Middle East. Jordan is a natural partner, as perhaps are other neighboring countries. But our interest is first and foremost the Palestinians – it is with them that we must make peace.

The Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be absolute, and Israelis – including settlers – who reside there would be living under Palestinian sovereignty. They would be Israeli citizens and Palestinian residents. This means that they could get a traffic ticket from a Palestinian traffic police officer, would have to apply for a building permit from the Palestinian district committee etc., but they would not be left to suffer arbitrary treatment. Since Israel and Palestine would be a part of a union, they would be committed to protect the rights of citizens of the other state living within them. We offer to establish a human rights court, in a similar format to the one implemented in the European Union, which would be superior to the courts of both countries and which would ensure that no citizen, whether Palestinian or Israeli, is discriminated against because of his or her citizenship. A settler who claims that he was not granted a building permit only on the basis of his Israeli citizenship would be able to appeal to this court, and the court would be empowered to force Palestine to grant him the building permit. The same would be true to Palestinians in Israel.

With respect to lands confiscated for the settlements – the vast majority of settlements were built on land that was defined national land. If we put aside the problematic nature of this declaration, once the sovereign government in the West Bank is Palestine, such land would become Palestinian national land, and settlers would have to manage their affairs with Palestine, in the form of a protected lease or any other way that protects their right to reside in their houses, on the one hand, while retaining Palestinian sovereignty and the rights of the original owners on the other hand. This should not apply to illegal outposts or other places where land was forcefully taken from its Palestinian owners. It is also very likely that Palestine would change the borders of jurisdiction, which at present give small settlements control over vast areas, so that Palestinian towns and villages can develop freely, unhindered by restrictions.