A major Israeli think tank has rejected nearly all the options for settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict currently being considered in Israel — from the left wing’s call for a Palestinian state to the far right’s proposal for complete annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In their place, the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University has proposed an extended “confidence-building process” — to last as long as 10 to 15 years — during which Israel would not reject the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, nor the Palestinians demand the state as inevitable.
The center’s conclusions on six options for peace, but not its own proposal, are contained in a 235-page study sponsored and released by the American Jewish Congress. The findings were issued in Hebrew and English in Israel on Wednesday and were to be released in New York on Thursday.
AJCongress is calling the nearly year-long study, “The West Bank and Gaza: Israel’s Options for Peace,” the most comprehensive and up-to-date of its kind since the Six-Day War.
The Jaffee Center, founded in 1977 and directed by reserve Maj. Gen. Aharon Yariv, has gained a reputation for providing non-partisan research grounded in strategic and demographic reality. Its staff includes military strategists, political scientists and economists.
The center does not have the influence with the current Israeli government that, say, conservative ideologues at the Heritage Foundation once had with the Reagan administration.
In addition, AJCongress lost much of its leverage with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir after it issued a policy statement in September 1987 urging Israel to end its rule over the 1.5 million. Palestinians in the administered territories. The organization remained critical of Israeli policy during the early stages of the Palestinian uprising.
Nonetheless, AJCongress hopes the study, which lists the more mainstream Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith as a co-sponsor, will have to be taken into account in all future discussion of the Middle East.
Yariv, a former Cabinet minister and chief of military intelligence, told a news conference in Tel Aviv Wednesday that the analysis was being brought to the attention of Israeli leaders.
NOT INTENDED TO BE ‘PRESCRIPTIVE’
“The study is intended to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive,” said Philip Baum, associate executive director of AJCongress, explaining why his organization did not lend its name to the center’s ultimate recommendations.
The study finds that of six main options currently on the Israeli public agenda, all contain elements making them unacceptable to the Israelis, the Palestinians or both.
Maintaining the status quo, for instance — a course currently being pursued by the Israeli government as “the least of all evils,” according to the study — is clearly untenable.
But the remaining five options — divided between two “unilateral” and three “compromise” measures — seem equally unpromising. Each founders either on Israel’s concern for its military security or the Palestinians’ unflagging desire for complete independence.
A unilateral annexation of the territories, the official policy of the Tehiya and Moledet parties, “would begin a spiral toward war,” according to the study. In order for Israel to retain its Jewish character, annexation would mean either completely denying Palestinians political rights or “transferring” them to neighboring Arab states.
Either move would create a violent Palestinian reaction and possible lead to war with other Arab nations. In addition, “the U.S. would disassociate from Israel,” and American Jewry “would be increasingly alienated.”
The second unilateral option examined is an Israeli withdrawal from most of the Gaza Strip, in essence, the creation of a Palestinian “mini-state” behind a fenced and mined border. By relinquishing responsibility for a vast and growing Arab population, the study argues, the option would be acceptable to the Israeli majority, including Arab citizens.
LIKUD AND LABOR PLANS REJECTED
However, the Gaza mini-state, hostile and destitute, would owe Israel nothing in return for its independence, and “could turn into a Lebanese-style base for terrorism and chaos.”
Among the compromise solutions are the two held by Israel’s rival political blocs, Likud and Labor.
Shamir’s Likud bloc has called for a narrow autonomy set-up for Palestinians. Grounded in the Camp David accords, this option would turn all local matters over to an autonomous Arab administration. Whether that autonomy would extend to control over the land itself spells the difference between “narrow” and “deep” autonomy options.
But Palestinians would reject cither option unless it was seen as an interim arrangement leading to an independent Palestinian state, the study says. Unless autonomy talks included that commitment from the Israelis, they “most likely would neither encourage better Arab-Israel relations nor reduce friction and violence.”
The Palestinians would most likely also reject the Labor Party’s long-cherished “Jordanian option” — that is, a Jordanian-Palestinian federation in which responsibility for the territories’ defense, internal security and foreign affairs rests in Amman.
Jordan, too, has grown cool toward a plan that threatens the sovereignty of its king: Hussein is a Hashemite Arab, not a Palestinian, and he is loath to bring into his kingdom a population of 1.5 million Palestinians.
Israel, too, should think twice, suggests the study, before setting the stage for a huge, Palestinian successor state to the east.
Finally, the study dismisses a Palestinian state, “virtually the only choice of Palestinians,” because of the opposition of most Israelis and the real threat of Palestinian aspirations for a “Greater Palestine.”
“Certainly without extensive transition stages to test Palestinian intentions,” the study concludes, “Palestinian statehood is potentially extremely risky, from a security standpoint, and is as dangerous for the fabric of Israeli society as is annexation.”
A test of Palestinian intentions, and Israel’s willingness to offer conditions that the Palestinians can meet, are the substance of the center’s independent recommendations “toward a solution.” The recommendations are contained in a booklet separate from the AJCongress-sponsored volume.
RECOGNITION OF PLO URGED
According to the recommendations, Israelis and Palestinians must embark on a process of “prolonged mutual confidence-building.”
The Palestinians would have to agree to cease terrorism and violence in the territories, and give up hope of returning Palestinian refugees to residences inside Israel.
Israel, in turn, “would have to agree to offer genuine, comprehensive autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza, forego its control of most state lands in the territories” and cease building any new Jewish settlements in the territories.
If those conditions were maintained for as long as 10 to 15 years, negotiations could begin between Israel and Palestinians toward a final peace settlement.
For the immediate future, the study group insists that “Israel had best invest considerable effort in searching for limited measures — probably of a unilateral variety — that hold out the prospect of even slightly alleviating the pressures and dangers inherent in the status quo.”
In addition, Israel must begin to find ways to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as an “authoritative representative” of the Palestinians.
“As long as the PLO maintains the moderate course it developed in late 1988,” the study says, “an Israeli policy that rejects unconditionally any dialogue with it does not appear to be sustainable over time.”
A non-partisan American Board of Advisers oversaw the study in order to ensure objectivity. Its members were Jeane Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations; Samuel Lewis, former ambassador to Israel; Sol Linowitz, a former special Middle East envoy; Harold Brown, former secretary of defense; Cyrus Vance, former secretary of state; and Walter Mondale, former vice president.
A similar Israeli board of advisers consisted of the presidents of five of Israel’s seven major universities.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
