Israel Has Essentially Ignored the 2002 Arab Peace Plan…Until Now?

In 2002, Saudi Arabia put forth its Arab Peace Initiative. The plan consisted of the following:  Israel would withdraw to the Green Line and cede all lands conquered during the Six Day War in 1967. They would also allow any refugees displaced by the creation of the State to return should they so choose. In exchange for these massive concessions, Israel would not just make peace with the Palestinians, but with the entirety of the Arab (and the greater Muslim) world.

In 2008, the PA bought full page ads in four major Israeli newspapers which published the entirety of the peace plan. In it, they claimed that “Fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel in return for a full peace agreement and an end to the occupation.”

While there have been different reactions amongst Israelis, there has never been a full response. Could that now be changing?

Before we move forward, let us look back a bit into history. Today, the Israeli left is disjointed and relatively weak. Israel’s current government consists of two factions, right, and ultra-right. The Knesset has been debating and legislating laws to silence the left (including recently the American Jewish left). To put it mildly, the Israeli left is a fraction of what it was during its Peace Now heyday, when they were able to claim nearly full responsibility for pushing Menachem Begin into ceding the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt.

Peace Now was no ragtag motley crew, it was an orchestrated and unified movement that knew how to set goals and how to achieve them. They worked with a seemingly militaristic sense of strategy and passion. And they did so for a reason, Peace Now was created and organized by members of the upper echelon of the Israeli military. The Peace Now movement was in essence created when 348 members of Israel’s military (both active and reserve), including many officers, signed a letter to Menachem Begin imploring him to accept the carrot’s being offered by Anwar Sadat and to make the necessary (though obviously painful) steps to work toward peace with Egypt.

These soldiers saw that the status quo was no more and that it was time to make a stand. They pushed Begin to negotiate and in return, Israel has had a long, if still cold, peace with their southern neighbor.

The Middle East has never been a place very friendly to the status quo and today the world watches as yet another era is dawning on the region. From Morocco to Iran (and almost every point in between), people are rising up to decry the world as we know it. And with it, emerges a new letter within Israel.

Well, it is not quite a letter, but it is close.

This week, a group of 40 prominent Israelis, including a former army chief, a former head of Mossad, an ex-general and two former Shin Bet directors, came together to call for what is being called the Israeli Peace Initiative. It is the first legitimate Israeli response to the Saudi plan put forward from inside of Israel. (When I say legitimate, I do not mean that it is the answer or that it should be accepted unequivocally. Rather, I mean that is a true starting point for an Israeli counter-negotiation.)

It does away with the idea that all refugees will be allowed to return, should they so choose. Rather, it will allow a nominal amount of Palestinian refuges to return and proposes paying financial compensation to the rest. It envisions a shared Jerusalem, with Palestinian neighborhoods being controlled by the Palestinians and Jewish neighborhoods remaining under Israeli control. Likewise, Israel would pull out of Gaza and the majority of the West Bank, with land swaps not to exceed seven percent. It also envisions a withdrawal from the Golan Heights and a ceding of this strategic high ground back to Syria.

According to Danny Yatom, a signer of the document and the former head of the Mossad, “We looked around at what was happening in neighboring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public raised its voice as well.’”

How this new development in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process will develop is not yet known. What is known is that Israel has always been reluctant to listen to the outside world on matters of national security. And with good reason. Israel looks back at history and sees plenty of reasons not to trust anyone, even its friends. But it is always hard to ignore prominent and trusted voices within a society and the question that remains now is how this new set of voices will affect Netanyahu. Will he follow in the footsteps of Begin or will he seek to continue the fight right into new elections?