The plan includes several controversial proposals, and it’s not
clear if it has any support among leaders on either side. But it could help
shape the debate over the conflict and will be presented to a senior US
official and the UN Secretary General.
The plan calls for an independent state of Palestine in most
of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel seized in the
1967 Mideast war. Israel and Palestine would have separate governments but
coordinate at a very high level on security, infrastructure and other issues
that affect both populations.
The plan would allow the nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers in
the occupied West Bank to remain there, with large settlements near the border
annexed to Israel in a one-to-one land swap.
Settlers living deep inside the West Bank would be given the
option of relocating or becoming permanent residents in the state of Palestine.
The same number of Palestinians, likely refugees from the 1948 war surrounding
Israel’s creation, would be allowed to relocate to Israel as citizens of
Palestine with permanent residency in Israel.
The initiative is largely based on the Geneva Accord, a
detailed, comprehensive peace plan drawn up in 2003 by prominent Israelis and
Palestinians, including former officials. The nearly 100-page confederation
plan includes new, detailed recommendations for how to address core issues.
Yossi Beilin, a former senior Israeli official and peace
negotiator who co-founded the Geneva Initiative, said that by taking the mass
evacuation of settlers off the table, the plan could be more amenable to them.
Israel’s political system is dominated by the settlers and
their supporters, who view the West Bank as the biblical and historical
heartland of the Jewish people and an integral part of Israel.
The Palestinians view the settlements as the main obstacle
to peace, and most of the international community considers them illegal. The
settlers living deep inside the West Bank — who would likely end up within the
borders of a future Palestinian state — are among the most radical and
tend to oppose any territorial partition.
“We believe that if there is no threat of confrontations
with the settlers it would be much easier for those who want to have a
two-state solution,” Beilin said. The idea has been discussed before, but he
said a confederation would make it more “feasible.”
Numerous other sticking points remain, including security,
freedom of movement and perhaps most critically after years of violence and
failed negotiations, lack of trust.
The main Palestinian figure behind the initiative is Hiba
Husseini, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team going back
to 1994 who hails from a prominent Jerusalem family. Other contributors include
Israeli and Palestinian professors and two retired Israeli generals.
Husseini acknowledged that the proposal regarding the
settlers is “very controversial” but said the overall plan would fulfill the
Palestinians’ core aspiration for a state of their own.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she added. “To achieve
statehood and to achieve the desired right of self-determination that we have
been working on — since 1948, really — we have to make some compromises.”
Thorny issues like the conflicting claims to Jerusalem,
final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees could be easier to address
by two states in the context of a confederation, rather than the traditional
approach of trying to work out all the details ahead of a final agreement.
“We’re reversing the process and starting with recognition,”
Husseini said.
It’s been nearly three decades since Israeli and Palestinian
leaders gathered on the White House lawn to sign the Oslo accords, launching
the peace process.
Several rounds of talks over the years, punctuated by
outbursts of violence, failed to yield a final agreement, and there have been
no serious or substantive negotiations in more than a decade.
Israel’s current Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is a
former settler leader opposed to Palestinian statehood. Foreign Minister Yair
Lapid, who is set to take over as prime minister in 2023 under a rotation
agreement, supports an eventual two-state solution.
But neither is likely to be able to launch any major
initiatives because they head a narrow coalition spanning the political
spectrum from hardline nationalist factions to a small Arab party.
On the Palestinian side, President Mahmoud Abbas’ authority
is confined to parts of the occupied West Bank, with the Islamic militant group
Hamas — which doesn’t accept Israel’s existence — ruling Gaza. Abbas’
presidential term expired in 2009 and his popularity has plummeted in
recent years, meaning he is unlikely to be able to make any historic
compromises.
The idea of the two-state solution was to give the
Palestinians an independent state, while allowing Israel to exist as a
democracy with a strong Jewish majority. Israel’s continued expansion of
settlements, the absence of any peace process and repeated rounds of violence,
however, have greatly complicated hopes of partitioning the land.
The international community still views a two-state solution
as the only realistic way to resolve the conflict.
But the ground is shifting, particularly among young
Palestinians, who increasingly view the conflict as a struggle for equal rights
under what they — and three prominent human rights groups — say is an
apartheid regime.
Israel vehemently rejects those allegations,
viewing them as an anti-Semitic attack on its right to exist. Lapid has
suggested that reviving a political process with the Palestinians would help
Israel resist any efforts to brand it an apartheid state in world bodies.
Next week, Beilin and Husseini will present their plan to the
US Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman and UN Secretary General Antonio
Guterres. Beilin says they have already shared drafts with Israeli and
Palestinian officials.
Beilin said he sent it to people who he knew would not
reject it out of hand. “Nobody rejected it. It doesn’t mean that they embrace
it.”
“I didn’t send it to Hamas,” he added, joking. “I don’t know
their address.”
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