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Palestinian violence.
6. All Israeli troops must completely evacuate the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east
Jerusalem. Access must in principle be allowed to all these areas for non-Jews as
well as for civilian Jews. During a period of transition, security measures and
peace can be monitored and enforced by the Palestinian National Authority in
cooperation with international peacekeepers.
7. Truly democratic elections must be introduced. A referendum for all Israeli
citizens and all Palestinians (including all refugees and their descendants, who
must be given the option of citizenship) should ideally decide whether a) or b)
below will be chosen.
a) Arrangements will be made for Palestinians to vote alongside Jewish settlers (if
they should wish to stay) for a democratic and secular Palestinian-Israeli state,
consisting of Palestine prior to the 1967 invasion by Israel, alongside a new,
democratic and secular Israeli-Palestinian state. The borders may of course be
adjusted according to a 1:1 land exchange deal as provided for in the so-called
‘Geneva Accords’, agreed upon in 2003 by Israeli and Palestinian civil societybased
groups with strong ties to moderate representatives of Israeli and Palestinian
authorities. 747 However, any occurring differential quality of the land being
swapped in that way cannot be a result of an imposed desire by the militarily
mightier negotiating partner.
or b) Arrangements will be made for all Palestinians (again, including refugees) to
vote alongside all Israeli Jews in a unitary, democratic and secular state comprising
all Israeli and Palestinian territories.
Once these primary measures are implemented and option 7 a) or b) has been chosen,
three supplementary requirements must be allowed for and be initiated.
8. Negotiations and implementation must begin on the right of return of, and/or
monetary compensation for Palestinians who lost their property and family
members due to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948 or due to expropriation
by Israelis on the basis of ethnicity or religion perpetrated since 1948, in particular
due to the illegal seizure of land for Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories since 1967. This (and my requirement number 6, above) is in fact
nothing but the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and
194, and of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The work is obviously
going to be a piecemeal affair, dependent on painstaking research and much
patience on the side of the victims, similar to the work of the South African
National Land Committee, but it cannot be based on the ‘willing seller-willing
buyer principle’, still employed in South Africa and, initially, also in Zimbabwe,
which hopelessly stalled the process of land repropriation in both of those
countries. Instead, state funds, for instance those now (more or less blindly)
financed by the USA to be used for Israeli military purposes, could easily be
redirected and used to forcibly buy land from occupiers and give it back to its
rightful owners. Indeed, if the USA were serious about wanting peace and
democracy in the Middle East, it should have demanded, or at least suggested this
already.
9. Work must begin on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with the power to
deny or award amnesty for gross human rights violations, similar to the South
African TRC, but with a wider definition of those crimes, including all nine kinds
747 See N.N.: The Geneva Accords, October 24, 2003; Bennis: Talking Points on the Geneva Accord, 2003.