Opening: The solution discourse and the suggested mapping model

It was late in the morning, on Monday, December 27, 2011, and the central auditorium of the Ariel University in Samaria was filled to capacity. The audience comprised a strange mixture with non-religious students who resembled their peers in any Western college, national religious Jews with their knitted yarmulkes, bearded orthodox Jews and Arabs wearing their symbolic Palestinian keffiyehs.

The title of the conference was “The Best Peace Plans,” and similar conferences had already taken place in the Arab town of Beit Jala, north of Bethlehem, in East Jerusalem and also in Tel Aviv. The project was initiated by Doron Tzur, a dreamer in his forties and a specialist in the field of conflict resolution who, over the last decade, had been promoting the idea of a popular bottom-up process that would prescribe the kind of peace that people wanted to their leaders. Together with Kamal Nawash, an Arab American, and Josef Avisar, an Israeli peace activist, Tzur has been bringing Palestinians and Israelis together for productive meetings. It was not the meetings in themselves that were what was new in Tzur’s project but the unique logic and reason for the discussions. The rationale of the project was to choose something from the large number of existing formulations that could be relevant to all parties and consensual. Until now, Tzur has managed to collect 25 peace plans, but one should honestly admit that his remarkable work was, and is, just one example from a whole industry of conflict solution-seeking in the Middle East. Anyone who uses academic search engines in order to locate articles about the issue is bound to dig up hundreds of papers and a search using the more popular Google search engine will yield tens of millions of entries. We are virtually flooded with suggestions offering to solve the conflict and, in fact, are facing a phenomenon of solution discourse. In the framework of this solution discourse politicians, scholars, former army officers and bureaucratic officials all participate in an ongoing game of socialization where each of them claims to have the special knowledge needed to find the exact scheme that will solve the conflict. With so many learned suggestions for reaching peace in the Middle East one cannot see the forest for the trees, so to speak [1]. In an attempt to create some order for the numerous peace plans, this study offers a model that maps out a general typology of solutions along the continuum between Arab dominance over the country on one pole and Israeli dominance on the other. In one part of this map, more typical of the political Left in Israel than the right, within the boundaries of an approach that assumes Arab dominance over most of the land; we find three characteristic groups of solutions: (a) no Jewsmeaning evacuation of the Jewish population; (b) one state-meaning a bi-national approach; (c) partition-meaning territorial concessions. In the other part of the map, more representative of the political Right in Israel, with an approach that aims for Jewish dominance, we find three other characteristic groups of solutions: (d) partition-meaning partial annexation; (e) one state-meaning a Jewish state; (f) no Arabs -meaning the transfer of the Arab population. The groups of solutions are presented in Figure 1 which is the model for mapping suggestions for conflict resolution. Any additional solutions not mentioned here are most likely to fall within one of the groups of suggestions for conflict resolution. Once the potential peace solutions can be sorted out into these different groups, we will no longer be flooded with numerous ideas and will be able to cope with just six prototypes. The proposed model constructs the framework for making an assessment of which geopolitical arrangement might form the most desirable settlement from the Israeli point of view and, consequently, which of the prototypes would have the best chance to eventually promote peace. In addition the practicability of each peace-solution prototype is evaluated and the idea of the non-solution solution is introduced.

Figure 1: The model for mapping suggestions for conflict resolution.

First type of solution: No jews: The territorialists were perhaps the first to conclude that the Arab-Israeli conflict could be resolved only if the Jews went elsewhere and gave up their aspirations for a state in Palestine [2,3]. In the history of the Zionist movement, territorialism has always literally been the call to establish an autonomous entity or state for the Jews in a land that is not necessarily the Land of Israel. This idea arose frequently within Jewish society in different periods both before and after the establishment of the Zionist Congress and, in fact, was inherent in classic modern Zionism. Leon Pinsker, who is recognized as one of the forefathers of modern Zionism, was the first thinker to give the territorial idea significance and depth. In his 1882 groundbreaking pamphlet Auto-emancipation he asserted that the spiritual content of the Jewish people was more important than territory and therefore the Jewish homeland could be established anywhere. Pinsker expected the effort to acquire territory to be a very complicated one and therefore he found it unnecessary to attach the Jews to their specific historic origins in the Middle East. His status as founder and leader of the very first modern Zionist groups (Hovevey Zion) had never been questioned yet he dismissed the idea of only clinging to Palestine and, prior to his death, bequeathed 98 percent of his wealth to Jewish organizations that were charity-oriented rather than to the developers of Jewish settlement in Palestine. Theodor Herzl succeeded Pinsker and became the ultimate forefather of Zionism - yet he initially wavered between the Land of Israel and Argentina; he was also in favor of the 1902 El-Arish plan and was the champion of the 1903 controversial Uganda proposal that led to a split in the Zionist camp. Hence the territorialists, just like other Zionists, perceived Herzl as their father figure and themselves as those who were continuing on his path. Many Zionists did not see any contradiction between their membership in the Zionist movement and their aspiration to establish a state for the Jews outside the Land of Israel. A lot of them were even prepared to sacrifice Palestine in favor of a more immediate solution for the Jewish people. Hence the territorialistic foundations that originally emerged out of modern Zionism refused to fade away.

Four basic intertwined suppositions construct the territorial approach:

(1) The essence of territorialism was the abnegation of a specificground- linked ideology and having no priority for any particular territory.

(2) Denying the value of any de facto success in the Land of Israel with any Zionist achievement on the ground seen as being reversible. Herzl and many of his followers insisted that international diplomacy should always precede settlement, and no preemptive unplanned facts on the ground would change that.

(3) The belief in the inevitable triumph of an Arab majority in the Middle East. Such Arab majority was bound to crush any Jewish minority trying to cling helplessly to the ground.

(4) The existence of moral problems involved in living amongst the Arabs that would prevail over the course of time since it would be impossible for the Jews to both be a minority ruling over the majority of local residents of a country and, at the same time, be true to the moral principles of Western culture.

It is precisely the logic of these four territorialist assumptions that, a century after the Uganda debate, led to Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. For better or for worse the Jewish settlements in Gaza were merely a microcosmic reflection of the whole State of Israel. In order to follow the territorialist logic of the disengagement plan, a preliminary brief historical account of the erection and development of Gush Katif, the bloc of Jewish villages in Gaza, is required.

The Jewish presence in Gaza goes back as far as the biblical era without ceasing throughout hundreds of years. The historic Jewish community existed in Gaza until 1929, when the city’s Arabs led lethal riots and, as in other places all over Palestine at the time, the Jews had to run for their lives and abandon their homes. During the 1930s, however, more land along the Gaza Strip was purchased by Jews and amounted to an area of 250 dunams (about 60 acres). In 1970 the Gush Katif plan was developed in the context of an Israeli strategy to halt Arab expansion in Gaza. Just like other settlements within the century-long Zionist enterprise in Israel, Gush Katif became, over the course of almost four decades, a success story. With more and more inhabitants arriving throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and numbering about 8,000 at the beginning of the new millennium, the place turned into a center of exceptionally advanced technological agriculture. The Palestinian upheaval in 2000 turned Gush Katif into a target for thousands of violent Arab attacks. More than 6,000 mortar bombs and Qassam rockets were launched into the Jewish villages; attempts were made to infiltrate the villages by land and by sea and Palestinian snipers killed women and children who were on their way home. In spite of the heavy casualties, most of the residents of Gush Katif never doubted the importance of clinging to their homes. Consequently, in 2003 Prime Minister Sharon outlined his disengagement plan, and its basic idea was based on the four assumptions of the territorialist approach

(i) Denying a specific ground-linked ideology: In one of his early statements about the disengagement plan Sharon expressed his attitude towards the link between the people and the ground they were sitting on and cultivating [4]: “I have given an instruction to carry out the evacuation, pardon me – the relocation, of seventeen localities from the Gaza Strip to Israel” The change of terminology was no coincidence since, whereas evacuation implies the traumatic tearing of a people from their beloved country, the alternative word, relocation, is less emotional and closer to what people do when they go abroad for a while. Long before Sharon’s presentation of the disengagement plan, however, large sections of Israeli society had started to view the Gaza Strip as a heavy burden that was not worth the effort. In terms of feasibility, the Israeli settlement in the Gaza strip proved to be costly one and involved risky diplomacy and international relations, and the high military costs of defending the settlers [5-7].

(ii) Denying the value of any de facto success in the Land of Israel: The disengagement plan was intended to demonstrate that future Israeli governments, Right or Left, would have adequate room for maneuvering in terms of advancing an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. By establishing the precedent of carrying out a massive evacuation of settlement residents any notion that settlements were an irreversible reality in any territory under Israeli control henceforth would have no foundation [8].

(iii) The belief in the inevitable triumph of Arab majority: The demographic trend facing Israel allegedly called into question Israel’s ability to continue to be a state that was both Jewish and democratic. According to disengagement advocates, without a withdrawal from densely populated Palestinian areas, Israel was in danger of being turned into a bi-national state where an inevitable Palestinian majority would demand and eventually have the right to vote.

(iv) Moral problems: The IDF’s use of targeted killing in the Gaza Strip led some pilots and members of elite army units to refuse to serve in the disputed territories [9] and Prime Minister Sharon was greatly concerned about these reactions, particularly because they indicated moral contempt for his policies, not only among some intellectual circles, but also within the ranks of Israel’s highest leading social echelons. In all, then, by mid-September 2005, a successful attempt to try the No-Jews solution was made by the Israeli government. As a result of the complete implementation of the disengagement plan the whole of Gush Katif was turned into no more than huge piles of debris. Thousands of Jews were expelled from the Gaza Strip and their homes demolished. All that had ever been built in Gush Katif was razed to the ground and the last IDF forces withdrew from Gaza for good, leaving behind them just rubble.

Second type of solution: one state: In the history of Zionist thought the bi-national state idea has been a genuine, though up till now, unsuccessful attempt to reconcile Palestinian and Jewish aspirations in a common political framework. It was primarily advocated by Brit Shalom, an organization whose Hebrew name translates into “covenant of peace” [10,11]. Upon establishing the movement in 1925 Robert Weltsch claimed that there could be a people without a country but there was no country without a people [12]. Hence, this ideological movement rejected the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state and, as an alternative, supported the creation of Jewish cultural life in Palestine without political particularism and deeply believed in peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews that would eventually mature into a bi-national state where the two peoples would share equal rights, irrespective of which of them formed the majority. Brit Shalom never exceeded more than a few hundred members but its founders and supporters were extremely influential and included some of the most prominent figures in both the Zionist movement and the Jewish world of the early twentieth century. The bi-national state idea was dismissed by politicians and the wider Israeli and Palestinian public as the crazy imaginings of naive idealists [13-15] indeed; most Israelis and Zionists have characterized this idea as a codeword for the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state and accuse its supporters of anti-Semitism. Following the breakout of the 2000 Intifada, however, a new discussion of the bi-national option emerged within the different future vision documents of Israeli Arabs. The importance of these documents lies in the fact that the authors of these documents were Israeli Arabs who not only claimed to be loyal Israeli citizens [16] but also that they had received widespread Jewish support, particularly within the intellectual elite circles in Israeli universities [17]. Shawki Khatib is head of both the Supreme Follow-up Committee of the Arabs in Israel, their highest and most authoritative representative body, and of the National Committee of the Heads of Arab Local Councils. In 2006 he headed a group of Arab leaders from all political tendencies among the Palestinians in Israel who published The Future vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, [18] a document that attracted national and international interest and elicited a wide variety of responses across the political spectrum. The document is based on the liberal democratic principles of human rights, civil equality and group self-determination and, in order to make the realization of these basic three foundations possible, the document’s writers demanded the implementation in Israel of a consociation system, where any tyranny of the automatic Jewish majority would be neutralized.

Third type of solution: partition [in the framework of arab dominance]: This is made up of a group of solutions where the Land of Israel is divided so that the part of it which is under Israeli control today will continue to be Israeli and the rest will be allocated to the Palestinians. The various solutions differ in regard to the exact proportions of the part that will remain Israeli and the part that will become Palestinian, but the point of departure for all of them is that Israel has no choice other than to concede territories to the Palestinians. Of the countless versions of this type of solution perhaps the leading one, which has become most popular ever since the 1993 Oslo process is the two-state solution. As an anti-thesis to the Judgment of Solomon, [19] the major logic of this approach is informed by the necessity to circumvent a demographic drift that might otherwise turn the Jews into a minority within their own country. The two state solution proponents argue that there will be more Arabs than Jews in the country in a quarter of a century, and that most of the Arab population will be concentrated in the occupied territories. Embracing the demographic data published by the Palestinians [20] and taking it for granted, some Israeli demographers, [21-24] as well most of the Israeli political commentators, mainly basing themselves on fertility rates among Arabs that far exceed those of Jews, tend to agree with the prediction that, in the absence of a miracle, it will take only a few decades for the Palestinians to become a numerical majority in the country. In addition to this the prophets of a growing discrepancy between Jewish and Arab population growths, to the disadvantage of the Jews, also expect Jewish immigration not only to fall off but, in the absence of peace with the Palestinians, to even reverse. The two state solution advocates thus argue that, if their plan is not implemented long before the Palestinians become a majority, then Israel’s available options will be reduced to either becoming a nation besieged in continued occupation, or becoming a bi-national state[25,26]. Starting with Bill Clinton, American presidents have systematically and actively supported the two-state solution and so have large segments of the Arab world. In March 2002 The Arab Peace Initiative was presented at an Arab League summit in Beirut and later on revived at an Arab League summit in Riyadh in March 2007. The Arab League adopted a plan that offered Israel peace and normalization in return for a twostate solution based on the 1967 borders, the capital of Palestine in East Jerusalem and a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem [27]. It is not only the Americans, the Europeans and the Arab world, for that matter, who have embraced the two-state solution. On December 1, 2003, the Geneva Accord was launched in a public ceremony after two years of secret negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders and, even though almost none of them had official positions at the time they convened, a breakthrough occurred and the two sides produced a draft for an agreement to end the conflict. The Geneva Accord could not oblige either the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority, but it did produce a detailed draft of the two-state solution [28]. Finally, on June 14, 2009, exactly ten days after Obama’s Cairo Address, Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu crossed the Rubicon in his Bar Ilan speech, when he addressed his Israeli audience and publically endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River [29]. The two-state solution is ideal in the sense that it fits the visions of American presidents, European leaders, the Arab League, the PLO, many Israelis and even the conservative Israeli Prime Minister. At the same time different commentators, international relations scholars and researchers in all fields have developed their good advice about the political, economic, and security dimensions that ought to be taken into consideration once the two state solutions are put into operation [30].

Fourth type of solution: partition [in the framework of jewish dominance]: The great difference between the fourth type of solution, where a partial annexation of territories is to be implemented, and the third type of partition, discussed above, lies in the approach taken. Those who preach partition in the form of a two-state solution are basically willing to trade Israeli geopolitical dominance for what they conceive to be a better chance for peace. For them, the possibility of submitting most of the territory to a Palestinian political entity is certainly acceptable while, for those who are proponents of partial annexation, the point of departure for any scenario is the continuation of Israel’s dominance with full military control over everything west of the Jordan River, and, if needed, some in-depth regional influence far beyond Israel’s closed borders. The legal foundation for annexation is the interpretation of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 as resolutions that make it possible for Israel to deny any necessary return to its pre-1967 borders. The resolutions call for the peaceful termination of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Israeli withdrawal from territories and mutual recognition by the rival parties in the Middle East. These resolutions have, however, led to a significant controversy over the amount of land that Israel would have to cede once a land-forpeace treaty is achieved [31,32].

For annexationists, the legal foundations are just a means to ensure Israel’s security need for defensible borders. The essential nature of these concerns is reflected in the strategic thought of the late Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach and a prominent IDF general. Allon defined Israel’s war aims as being confined to repelling any offensives action of the Arab armies whether by reactive counter-offensives, such as those of 1948 and 1973, or by preemptive counter-offensives such as those of 1956 and 1967. According to this thinking, a military defeat for the Arab states could mean the loss of lives, destruction, and political setbacks but for Israel any military defeat would be a threat to its very existence as a sovereign state and to the lives of its Jewish population. If Israel was defeated the result would be physical extinction and the political elimination of the Jewish state. Consequently, whereas the Arab states could permit themselves a series of military defeats Israel could not afford to lose a single war since, for Israel, to lose a single war was to lose everything [33]. This fundamental perception led to a strategic concept that posited an everlasting need for defensible borders. The pre-1967 armistice lines had failed to provide Israel with essential strategic depth and lacked minimal topographical security value. Within these lines a single successful first strike by the Arab armies would be sufficient to dissect Israel at more than one point, to sever its essential life-sustaining arteries, and to confront it with fatal existential dangers. The purpose of defensible borders is to provide Israel with the requisite minimal strategic depth as well as lines which have strategic topographical significance. Israeli policy immediately following the 1967 War, and up to the 1993 Oslo accords, centered on finding a formula that would enable Israel to avoid ruling over the Palestinians without returning to the insecure and indefensible pre-1967 lines. This policy was established during Prime Minister Golda Meir’s years in office and was strongly supported by those who surrounded her. These Israeli statesmen were all in favor of keeping the strategically important parts of the land yet were willing, at the same time, to hold peace negotiations over the rest. Consequently, Israel did not annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza while, at the same time, not discussing the establishment of a Palestinian state within those territories. This policy was expressed in the Allon Plan which was drafted by the then Deputy Premier Yigal Allon shortly after the 1967 War. The Allon Plan called for Israel to retain sovereignty in some of the territories of Judea and Samaria but to not settle in areas with large Arab populations. The plan delineated a security border extending from the Jordan Valley up the steep eastern slopes of the Judea-Samaria mountain ridge and the retention of sovereignty over a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Recently a renewed version of the Allon Plan has been put forward by General Uzi Dayan (retired), former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff and former Head of the Israeli National Security Council. Dayan warns against the dangers of the younger generation not adequately understanding how vulnerable Israel was before 1967 and how weak it would become once again if it were compelled to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines. To provide Israel with the minimal strategic depth it needs for its long-term survival, he stipulates, the Jordan Valley must become Israel’s eastern security border, thereby establishing truly defensible borders [34,35]. Perhaps, thus far, the most wide-ranging plan for partial annexation is that put forward by Israel’s Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, based on the existing division of the territories into various areas. Following the Oslo Accords, the West Bank, excluding the already annexed East Jerusalem and no-man’s land along the 1948-1967 Israeli-Jordanian border, was divided into Areas A, B, and C. These areas are not contiguous and the distinct status of each of them depends on its population ethnicity, on its contribution to Israeli security needs, and, consequently, on the degree of Palestinian self-government that exists there. Accordingly, area A is where full Palestinian civil and security control is practiced; area B is where Palestinian control is only civil; and area C is where Israeli full civil and security control is maintained. This is where all the Jewish settlements are found, with a majority of 360 thousand Jews as opposed to 70 thousand Arabs. Area C is also where most of the natural resources and open spaces of Judea and Samaria are to be found [36]. Basing himself on the premises that the era of the Oslo Process is over, and that area C is characterized by a Jewish majority, Bennett has suggested it be absorbed into the State of Israel by gradual annexation [37].

Fifth type of solution: One State: As opposed to any partition plan and particularly to the two-state solution the idea of a one-state solution calls for a direct and powerful Israeli sovereignty over all the land that it had acquired and, consequently, the establishment of Israeli hegemony in the region. Immediately after the 1967 war political disagreements over which policy Israel should adopt concerning the issue of the newly acquired territories were relatively marginal. At that time the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population of Israel did not question the legitimacy of the occupation [38,39] as a result of which, when the Movement for Greater Israel started its activity in July 1967, its founders naturally came from many parts of the Israeli political spectrum. This movement was established in order to assure that the government maintained Israeli control of Judea, Samaria, the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza and the Golan Heights in order to settle them with Jews. In terms of accumulating political power this movement was far from successful and, in the 1973 elections, they failed to cross the necessary electoral threshold of one percent and eventually merged into various right-wing parties. Their moral and public influence, however, went far beyond the number of seats in the Knesset because this movement counted prominent and highly respected figures in Israeli society. Different streams in the Zionist movement developed the one-state solution together and it was mainly expressed in the concept of a Greater Israel, ideally situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would be a Jewish state that would occupy the whole land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The ultimate example of a Greater Israel ideologist, who was identified with the establishment of the pragmatic MAPAI Labor Party, was the inspiring poet, playwright and journalist Natan Alterman, who, although he never held any official post, had always been highly influential in the politics of Socialist Zionism [40]. There were, however, others as well.

For the right-wing Revisionists this fundamental concept was inherent to their belief in Jewish control over the whole land of Biblical Israel; being followers of Zeev Jabotinsky, the idea of Greater Israel was a sacred article of faith [41,42]. National religious Zionism vigorously emerged after the 1967 War led by the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem, a highly influential religious-Zionist Talmudic college. The rabbinical leaders who had established and led this institute were Rav Kook [Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook], the founder, his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and Rabbi Zvi Tau, who was the most influential rabbinical figure among their followers. All three shared a theological-political approach that brought together religious, moral, educational, and political issues and transformed them into an organic whole with the Land of Israel at its core [43,44]. Merkaz HaRav exerted tremendous influence over many of the religious and political personalities that were involved in the foundation of Gush Emunim movement [The Block of the Faithful] and in the establishment of many Jewish settlements all over the West Bank [45]. Hence within Labor ideologists from the Left, Revisionists from the Right, and the national religious parties’ one could find proponents of the vision of an undivided Jewish state. A set of argumentations promoting this doctrinal attitude has recently been compiled by Caroline Glick, the managing editor of the Jerusalem Post. Advocating the Greater Israel approach on a practical level, she revitalizes some expectations that might just work. Her return to the old scheme of Greater Israel relies on five building bricks [46]:

(1) Legal legitimacy: The case for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is completely warranted because of the recognition of this expressed in the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine [47].

(2) The nature of the Arab protagonist: In contrast to today’s common political correctness, one cannot ignore issues such as the historic origins of Arab terrorism, the past sympathies and affiliation of Palestinian leaders with the Nazis, and the way that the Muslim world has, for decades now, been fundamentally denying any future possibility for true peace - not only with Israel but also with the United States.

(3) Arab wellbeing: Israeli military rule in the West Bank is the total opposite of the PLO’s corrupt and questionably democratic system since it has been Israeli military control that has been eliminating terror and which has facilitated the relatively terror-free environment.

(4) Demography: If one bases oneself mainly on non-Palestinian demographers,[48] it becomes evident that the potential demographic threat is no more than an example of successful Palestinian psychological warfare. In fact, there is no Palestinian majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean and, within the boundaries of Greater Israel, Arab citizens form a minority.

Sixth type of solution: no Arabs: Population transfer takes place when a large group of people is forced to move from one region to another most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion [49]. In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict early expressions of support among Zionists for the idea of transfer were made from the very first days of modern Zionism [50,51] As early as June 1895, Herzl wrote in his diary about his program for the removal of the indigenous non- Jewish population from the Jewish State and the expropriation of private property by the Jewish State. He envisioned a humane process where no harm would befall any of those transferred [52]. Though usually remaining loyal to his liberal principles, Herzl also thought that one way to transfer non-Jews out of the Jewish State was to deny them sources of livelihood within the State and find them employment elsewhere [53]. Other Zionist forefathers were more lucid about their support for the removal of the Arab inhabitants of the country. Just to mention a few of them: Nachman Syrkin, in 1898, already wrote about a friendly population transfer; Leo Motzkin, in an address in 1912, forwarded a plan for the transfer of Arabs to Syria; Arthur Ruppin, in 1914, expressed his support for the same idea and Israel Zangwill was an enthusiastic advocate of transfer - even by the sword - just like in biblical days. The 1937 Peel Commission Report boosted the idea of transfer and, in an attempt to maneuver between the rising Palestinian national aspirations and the increasingly strong Jewish presence, the British Peel Commission proposed not only partition of the country but also raised the idea of population transfer for Arabs [54]. With such backing it is no wonder that MAPAI adopted the policy of population transfer for the Arab population at its August 1937 convention in Zurich, something that was supported by some of its most prominent leaders [55]. During the 1930s and 1940s the idea of Arab population transfer was favored, not only by leading Israeli politicians such as Chaim Weizman and American Jewish leaders like Abba Hillel Silver, but also by various world leaders such as American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, former President Hebert Clark Hoover and British philosopher Bertrand Russell. The establishment of the State of Israel did not halt the preparations being made for implementing a transfer plan and, during the early 1950s; Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion authorized Labor officials to promote the Argentina Plan, a project that would encourage the emigration of Christian Arabs from the Upper Galilee to South America. In the mid-1950s Israeli officials sought to solve the Palestinian refugee problem by settling refugees in Libya which, at the time, had a monarchic regime with strong, but secret, relations with Israel. American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promised financial support for the plan and an unnamed Israeli agent was ordered to Libya to hold secret talks there. Population transfer for the Arabs was at the center of public attention during the 1980s through two ideological focal points that originated in two different ideological sources: Rabbi Meir Kahane, [56] an American Jewish ultranationalist rabbi who brought a religious dimension to transfer as a political idea and Rechavam Ze’evi, a former much admired IDF general, who followed him chronologically but only revived traditional Zionist attitudes towards the issue [57-59].

Having established a coherent model of the various possibilities for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can now return to the basic question: which is the preferred policy for Israel to resolve the conflict? It is within the framework of the six-prototype model that the practicability of each solution can now be weighed. The feasibility of the No Jews prototype has proven to be dubious. In order for the Gaza disengagement plan to have been successful, it required two outcomes: a secure environment for Israelis and immediate and tangible economic benefits for the Palestinians. The unilateral nature of the Israeli evacuation failed to achieve any of these outcomes [60]. As the result of thousands of missile attacks being launched from the Gaza Strip security for Israelis living in the south of Israel deteriorated significantly until the IDF had to launch military responses, particularly in 2008, 2012 and 2014. The drawbacks of the One Bi-National State prototype are reflected in the spirit of The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel that calls for the de-legitimization of Israel, an implicit denial of the Jewish national right to self-determination and a demand for Palestinian civil veto rights [61]. Above all, the main problem with this attitude is its basic premise of a zero-sum-game in which civic equality cannot be realized as long as the Jewish nature of the state is not abolished. The two-state solution as a prototype is probably the most popular one within the Arab dominated partition area but two major factors sabotage its chances to become viable one:

(1) It takes two to tango: and the fundamental Palestinian policy has always been to reject partition. This was the case in 1937 when the Jews accepted the Peel Commission’s recommendations but the Arabs did not. This was also the case when a decade later the Jews rejoiced when the UN adopted its historic 1947 decision to allow a Jewish state to be established alongside a Palestinian one. The Arab position has never changed from total rejecting the idea that the Jews are entitled to a state because of the fact that the Arabs have never ceased to view this as being at their expense [62]. In the framework of the Oslo Accords, beginning in June 1994, Israel withdrew all IDF forces from the concentrations of Arab population in the West Bank and transferred full military and civilian control over all the major Palestinian cities to the PLO. Consequently, 98 percent of the Palestinians were now governed by the Palestinian Authority. Whereas the basic assumption of the two-state solution is that, once a Palestinian state is established, the conflict will terminate, terror attacks against Israel increased greatly as soon as the Palestinian Authority gained control and actually peaked at that point in time when the vision of a Palestinian state had become more vividly realistic than ever before. The Palestinians, it seems, have consistently proven that having a state of their own will only be the starting point of the next violent campaign against Israel.

(2) It apparently takes three to tango: The two-state solution is based on the premises that once the country has been divided, Jews will live in their Jewish state and Palestinians in their Palestinian state. However, this arrangement totally ignores the existence of a third party to the conflict: the Arab population of pre-1967 Israel. These Palestinians are full Israeli citizens and number about 1.3 million people thus making up approximately 20 percent of the Israeli population. The Arab Israelis identify themselves as Palestinians who actually feel that the more the conflict resolution discourse is developed the more they are being excluded [63,64]. In a two-state solution the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will thus probably not be resolved because Israeli Palestinians are bound to be left out. Hence the two-state solution is liable to become the new starting point for a replicated conflict over pre-1967 Israel between a Jewish majority and a demographically significantly and growing Arab minority whose claims for ownership over the land has never been concealed. There is no guarantee that the next stage of such a conflict will not be a call for a two-state solution in what has been left of Israel after the implementation of the previous two-state solution. The flaws of the partial annexation plans for the solution of the conflict render these plans impractical. At a certain point in time Israel gave up its insistence that the UN Resolutions 242 and 338 rejected the pre-1967 borders and even offered the Palestinians so-called compensation for annexing the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the settlement blocs near the Green Line [65]. On May 19, 2011 President Barack Obama expressed a significant shift in American policy and explicitly announced that Israel had to accept the Palestinian demand for a full Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 borders, with mutually agreed landswaps [66]. Consequently, almost the whole world community adopted the Palestinian demand that not a square inch of the territories would be left under Israeli control in the framework of any future settlement. With the whole world encouraging the Palestinians and demanding that Israel retreat completely from all its 1967 conquests, and with the historic precedent of Israeli statesmen expressing their willingness to do so there is no chance whatsoever of implementing any annexation of even small portions of territory let alone the whole Jordan Valley and the hills of Judea and Samaria. If partial annexation is internationally unacceptable then a total annexation, as in the Greater Israel concept, stands no chance. Let us also assume, just for the sake of argument, that as far as demography goes Caroline Glick’s numbers are precise. In such a case, the Palestinians will form just a third of the Israeli population if Israel completely annexes all the territories. It is true that a third of the population is far less than the demographic bomb that Israel has been warned about by both its enemies and friends but it is a large and meaningful minority. If being just a small minority of 20 percent failed to prevent Israel’s Arab citizens from acting violently in the 2000 Second Intifada riots, nothing seems to guarantee that being a 35 percent, inherently hostile minority of Palestinian citizens will deter them from continuing to carry on their campaign of international psychological warfare and “lawfare” against Israel. Moreover, even if they refrain from violence, an Arab minority of this size can always form a sizable voting bloc that will threaten Israel’s future as a Jewish state. The No-Arab prototype is rooted deeply in Zionist ideology and even supported by some of its MAPAI leaders, but it seems that the transfer proposition is impractical after all. One of David Ben-Gurion’s first reactions when he read the Peel Commission report was, in reference to a population transfer: “It is difficult for me to believe in a compulsory transfer, and it is difficult for me to believe in a transfer by agreement.” If even Ben-Gurion, considered one of the transfer’s advocates, had trouble finding its feasibility, it seems that the tides are turning against this attitude. Much water has flowed under the bridge since the days of Zionism’s foremost leaders and, both in Israel and abroad, there are growing demands to widen the scope of personal freedom and to maximize the liberties of all individuals and social groups in line with the liberal spirit that is prevailing throughout the West [67]. Consequently, world organizations are now regulating issues that, in the past, could have been considered to be domestic affairs – and the treatment of minorities is a major issue for them. Basing themselves on numerous laws and international committees, the UN explicitly ruled out the legitimacy of transfer in 1997, creating a list of guidelines for states to ensure citizens protection from forced evictions [68]. The striking conclusion then is that none of the solutions is without faults. All of them have been planned, to one extent or another, as the result of Zionist political thought and some of them have even been tried – all too often crashing like waves onto a breakwater and dissipating. A different paradigm is urgently needed and, since the peace-seeking oriented solutions have reached a dead end, perhaps it is time for Israeli decision-makers to think differently and, instead of seeking an unattainable peace resolution, aims for the least bad option: a state of regional stability in the Middle East. Indeed, this is the policy that other governments in other situations have been advised to do by some of their professional strategists [69,70]. The solution that this paper would like to propose is the no-solution solution as the only logical conclusion to be drawn once the six prototypes have been reviewed and found wanting. The Zionist leader who came closest to implementing the no-solution solution, that is to do as little as possible to promote any peace plan, was the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In office throughout most of the 1980s, his vision was one of securing regional stability and constantly postponing reckless geopolitical initiatives [71]. Since, in the first place, he basically accepted as viable any of the three types of solutions where Israeli dominance prevailed and, given the fact that the territories were still under Israeli control, his attitude was, in practice, to freeze the situation and sustain a reality that seemed to be in favor of Israel [42]. When Shamir died in the summer of 2012 the daily Hebrew newspapers referred to him as an uninspiring leader. In his eulogy at the cabinet meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted that Shamir did not radiate charisma but, instead, radiated inner strength. One cannot deny that, although Shamir never agreed to territorial concessions, during his tenure the United States significantly upgraded its strategic ties with Israel and the country achieved great prosperity [72]. It might therefore be worthwhile for Israeli leaders, when deciding upon the future of the region, to take into account that of all the possibilities considered, using the six prototype model, only a seventh would be the least risky and the most stable: the no-solution solution.