Pushing Peace on the Palestinians
JERUSALEM — Omer Barlev has a plan. Two plans, actually.
The first is familiar to anyone who has been paying even a little attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for, oh, a couple of decades. Two states for two peoples, roughly divided along the line of Israel’s border before the 1967 war, with Israel keeping its main settlement blocs but turning over Arab East Jerusalem to Palestine; freedom of access to holy sites for all; and an unspecified solution for Palestinian refugees other than a mass return to pre-1948 homes.
The second plan, which Mr. Barlev sees as a tactic rather than a goal, is more provocative. Titled “It’s in Our Hands,” it calls for Israel to unilaterally define its own borders to ensure its security. Mr. Barlev, a new Parliament member from Israel’s opposition Labor Party, would keep control of all of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and bequeath about 60 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, evacuating 35,000 Jewish settlers — less than 10 percent of the total.
“The basic idea is taking our future in our hands,” explained Mr. Barlev, the 60-year-old son of a former chief of the Israeli military whose own career has been split among the army, high-tech businesses and social service work. “There are things we can do today. There are things we can lead today and not be led. I’m saying, in order to keep Zionism and to keep the Jewish state, we don’t need a partner.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/world/middleeast/pushing-peace-on-the-palestinians.html
