Personally I think one of the best strategies to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian territorial disputes is a territory swap. Excluding East Jerusalem, there are some quarter-million Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
From what I've read, the North District of Israel is about 52% Arab-populated.
Map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...north_dist.png
I'm sure there are areas of the North District that are more exclusively Arab-populated, and that some of these areas are contiguous with the northern West Bank.
A recent MSNBC article states that Ahmed Qureia, the chief Palestinian negotiator, is interested in a territory swap of some form. It is unlikely that the Israelis are going to withdraw from all of their settlements.
Why not withdraw from those settlements in the interior of the West Bank to those contiguous with the eastern Israeli border, keep those settlements, and swap it for Arab-populated territory in the West Bank?
The situation as-is is politically untenable both politically and demographically. Such a move would also see more ethnic homogenization in both Israel and the West Bank. About 45% of Israel's Arabs live in the North District, and other majority Arab populated towns immediately contiguous to the West Bank could be swapped as well.
MSNBC article:
Quote:
Palestinian official hints at land swap for peace
Negotiator: Palestinians ready to yield West Bank land for Israeli territory
ABU DIS, West Bank - The Palestinians are ready to yield parts of the West Bank to Israel if compensated with an equal amount of Israeli territory, the lead Palestinian negotiator told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.
Ahmed Qureia, a former prime minister who has dealt with five Israeli prime ministers during 14 years of failed peacemaking, is trying again with No. 6, Ehud Olmert.
And he’s full of optimism, saying the U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md., tentatively set for Nov. 26, is a “very, very, very important opportunity.” If it fails, he predicts Israelis and Palestinians will perhaps suffer more than in the blood-soaked years following the unsuccessful Camp David summit in 2000.
Israelis and Palestinians are slowly rebuilding trust, making compromise possible, the 71-year-old Qureia said in his modest office in Abu Dis, a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem that has been sliced in half by Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank.
Qureia has logged hundreds of hours with Israeli negotiators since 1993, when secret meetings near Oslo, Norway, led to the breakthrough accord of mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO.
Core issues of conflict
Today he heads a four-member team that first met earlier this week with Olmert’s top aides. Ahead of the November conference, the two sides are trying to write a joint declaration of principles on the core issues of the conflict — borders, Jerusalem, settlements and Palestinian refugees.
The disputes have defied solution, but Qureia believes there could be enough common ground to come up with a general sentence or two on how to approach each issue.
For example, the Palestinians want the old Israeli-Palestinian frontier — before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast War — to be the basis of border talks.
|
Source:
Palestinian official hints at land swap - Israel-Palestinians - MSNBC.com