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Sunday, December 29, 2013

How Israelis and Palestinian Arabs think about a peace deal

The University of Maryland Anwar Sadat Center polled Israelis and Palestinian Arabs last month about their attitude towards a peace framework:

1. A sovereign Palestinian state would be established. The boundaries would generally be based on 1967 borders, but Israel would annex 3-4% of the West Bank that includes major settlement blocks with comparable land swaps to be negotiated.
2. Gaza and the West Bank would have a secure, unobstructed link, either in the form of a tunnel, highway or bridge.
3. For Jerusalem, Israel would have sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods, while the new Palestinian state would have sovereignty over Arab
neighborhoods. The Walled City would be under a special regime that would include both international control, and Israeli and Palestinian participation.
4. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians would have military forces in the Palestinian state, but Palestinian Security Forces would handle internal security in the Palestinian State. International military forces, such as NATO forces possibly under American command, would be stationed along the Jordan River.
5. Palestinian refugees would be compensated for loss of property, would be allowed to return to the Palestinian state, with a limited number being allowed to return to Israel.
6. Palestinians would recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people and of all its citizens.
7. Israel and Arab and Muslim states would establish full diplomatic relations and open trade.
8. Israel and the Palestinians state would explicitly agree to end the conflict and Palestinians would relinquish all claims pertaining to the conflict. 


Here are the arguments that Israelis (including Arabs) found convincing in support of the plan:

And those against:

The arguments that PalArabs found convincing in support of the plan:

And against:


According to the survey, when both sides were asked if they would accept this plan assuming that the other side accepted it, both sides found it acceptable (63% for Israelis, 59% for Palestinian Arabs.) 

There are some contradictory findings, though,. For example, most Palestinian Arabs said that they found it completely unacceptable if there is no full "right of return" and a majority of Israelis found such a "right" completely unacceptable.