Yossi Beilin, a former senior Israeli official and peace negotiator who co-founded the Geneva Initiative, poses for a photo at his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Feb. 6. Public figures Israel and Palestine, including Beilin and Hiba Husseini, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, have presented a new proposal for a two-state alliance.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
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Tsafrir Abayov / AP
Yossi Beilin, a former senior Israeli official and peace negotiator who co-founded the Geneva Initiative, poses for a photo at his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Feb. 6. Public figures Israel and Palestine, including Beilin and Hiba Husseini, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, have presented a new proposal for a two-state alliance.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
JERUSALEM – Israeli and Palestinian public figures have launched a new proposal for a two-state alliance that they hope will offer a path forward after a decade of stalemate in Mideast peace efforts.
The plan includes a number of controversial proposals, and it’s unclear if it has any support among leaders on both sides. But it could help shape the debate about conflict and will be presented to a senior US official and the UN secretary general this week.
The plan calls for an independent Palestinian state in most of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel and Palestine would have separate but coordinated governments. very high levels of security, infrastructure and other issues affecting both populations.
The plan would allow nearly 500,000 Jews who settled in the occupied West Bank to stay there, with large settlements near the border being incorporated into Israel in a one-on-one land swap.
Settlers living deep within the West Bank will have the option to resettle or become permanent residents in the state of Palestine. The same number of Palestinians – likely refugees from the 1948 war surrounding the founding of Israel – will be allowed to move to Israel as citizens of Palestine with permanent residency in Israel.
Settlements are a big obstacle
The initiative is largely based on the Geneva Accords, a detailed, comprehensive peace plan created in 2003 by prominent Israelis and Palestinians, including former officials. The nearly 100-page coalition plan includes new proposals, detailing how to address core issues.
Yossi Beilin, a former senior Israeli official and peace negotiator who co-founded the Geneva Initiative, says that by bringing the mass evacuation of settlers off the table, the plan can be tailored. more with them.
An aerial view shows the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Efrayim in the Jordan Valley, in June 2020.
Oded Balilty / AP
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Oded Balilty / AP
An aerial view shows the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Efrayim in the Jordan Valley, in June 2020.
Oded Balilty / AP
Israel’s political system is dominated by settlers and their supporters, who see the West Bank as the historical and biblical center of the Jewish people and an integral part of Israel.
Palestinians see the settlements as a major obstacle to peace, and much of the international community considers them illegal. Settlers living deep within the West Bank – who are likely to stay within the borders of a future Palestinian state – are among the most radical and tend to oppose any territorial division. which land.
“We believe that without the threat of confrontation with the settlers, it is much easier for those who want a two-state solution,” Beilin said. The idea has been discussed before, but he said an alliance would make it “more viable.”
Many other key points remain, including security, freedom of movement and perhaps most importantly, after years of violence and failed negotiations, a lack of trust.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Palestinian Authority declined to comment.
The plan’s architects say conundrums are easier to solve by two states in a union
The main Palestinian figure behind this initiative is Hiba Husseini, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team since 1994, who comes from a prominent Jerusalem family.
She acknowledged that the proposal regarding the settlers was “very controversial” but said the master plan would respond to Palestinians’ core aspirations for a state of their own.
“It won’t be easy,” she added. “In order to achieve statehood and achieve the desired self-determination that we have been doing – actually since 1948 – we have to make some compromises.”
Conundrums such as the conflict over Jerusalem’s claims, the final border and the fate of Palestinian refugees could be more easily resolved by the two countries in the context of an alliance, rather than an approach The tradition is to try to figure out all the details before reaching a final agreement. .
“We are reversing the process and starting with recognition,” Husseini said.
No serious Mideast talk in a decade
It’s been almost three decades since Israeli and Palestinian leaders gathered on the White House lawn to sign the Oslo accords, kicking off the peace process.
Several rounds of negotiations over the years, rife with violence, have failed to reach a final agreement, and there have been no serious or substantive negotiations in more than a decade.
The current Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, is a former settler leader who opposes the Palestinian statehood. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who is set to take over as prime minister in 2023 under a rotation agreement, favors a two-state solution.
But both are unlikely to launch any major initiatives because they head a narrow coalition that spans the political spectrum from hardline nationalist factions to a small Arab party.
On the Palestinian side, President Mahmoud Abbas’s power is limited to parts of the occupied West Bank, with the Islamist militant group Hamas – which does not accept Israel’s existence – ruling Gaza. Abbas’ presidency expired in 2009 and his popularity has plummeted in recent years, meaning he is unlikely to make any historic compromises.
The idea of the two-state solution is to give the Palestinians an independent state, while allowing Israel to exist as a democracy with a strong Jewish majority. However, Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, the absence of any peace process, and repeated waves of violence have complicated hopes of dividing the land.
Support for two-state solution is changing
The international community still considers the two-state solution to be the only realistic way to resolve conflicts.
But the ground is changing, especially among young Palestinians, who increasingly see the conflict as a fight for equal rights under what they – and three prominent human rights groups – see as the regime. racial segregation.
Israel vehemently denies those accusations, seeing them as an attack against its right to exist. Lapid has suggested that reviving a political process with the Palestinians would help Israel fend off any attempt to brand it as a racist nation in world bodies.
Next week, Beilin and Husseini will present their plans to US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Beilin said that it shared the drafts with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Beilin said he sent it to people he knew wouldn’t reject it. “No one turns it down. It doesn’t mean they embrace it.”
“I didn’t send it to Hamas,” he joked. “I don’t know their address.”
