WANT ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE? TRY CONFEDERATION
Politicians and experts should not doubt a two-state solution. But they should finally consider a plausible version of it.
By Bernard Avishai and Sam Bahour
published in New York Times, February 12, 2021
A Biden administration - not visionary, but simply cleareyed - could make the difference. It could, immediately, insist that the Israeli government remove barriers to letting Palestinian entrepreneurs from, say, Kuwait or Dearborn, Mich., settle and build new businesses in the cities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The administration should encourage a common market with Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and press for completion of the Quartet-sponsored gas pipeline that could bring electricity and desalinised water to Gaza.
The key is to save Israelis and Palestinians from anachronism. And each other.
Sam Bahour is an American-Palestinian who lives in Ramallah in the West Bank and is a management consultant.
Bernard Avishai, an American-Israeli professor and writer for magazines, lives in Jerusalem.
They have proposed a confederation to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years.