by Clifford F. Thies

In a simplification riddled with errors, President Barack Obama has called for a withdrawal of Israel to the so-called 1967 borders, sometimes called the Green Line, along with something he described as "swaps." While the exact borders are not important, what would be important is an agreement between two parties, if such a thing is possible. But, such a thing might not be possible, in which case a unilaterally-imposed solution (a la Gaza) or a third party-imposed solution, might be the best that is possible. But, we should not be naive about this.

First, the President's reference to the 1967 borders is a useful but essentially arbitrary reference. The 1967 borders were the result of attempts by Arabs to drive Israel into the sea that backfired in the sense that Israel each time pushed its borders outward. In 1947, the Jewish state was little more than a sliver of land purchased by various Zionists from various Arabs over the preceding century, most of these transactions being with absentee landlords and via third-parties. In the 1949 armistice ending that war, Israel's borders were pushed out to the Green Line. In 1967, in the "Six Day War," Israel again emerged victorious in another existential war with the Arabs. Its borders were pushed out in several directions. The same thing happened in the 1973 "Yom Kippur War."

For two very important reasons, Israel did not absorb the territories conquered in the latter two wars. First, Israel elected to use the land as so many bargaining chips in negotiating peace treaties the aim of which was to put an end to the series of wars between it and the Arabs. Subsequently, peace treaties were negotiated with Egypt and Jordan, but notably not with Syria.

Second, Israel did not want to absorb so many Palestinian Arabs as citizens, making Jewish Israelis into a minority; nor would Israel countenance the establishment of an apartheid regime in which some citizens were second class citizens. As to what this implied for the people living in Gaza and the West Bank was not clear. Among the possibilities were for Egypt to absorb Gaza, and Jordan the West Bank. But, no, both Egypt and Jordan renounced any claim over those territories. So, implicitly, the region was set on the path of a two-state solution, one predominantly Jewish and secular and the other Arab and - as things have turned out with the almost complete disappearance of the formerly vibrant Palestinian Christian community - Muslim.

Late in the 1970s, President Carter of the U.S., in the famous Camp David Accords, gained a commitment of Israel and the late Yassir Arafat to a two-state solution. The negotiators, at the time, imagined such things as negotiation of highway and other links crossing Israel connecting the two parts of Palestine, shared water rights, what consideration might be offered for dismantling Israeli settlements within the occupied territories, conditions under which Arabs who fled Israel might return and/or compensation for the loss of their property, and "the final status" of Jerusalem. But, Israel, which was able to forge peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, was not able forge a peace treaty with Palestine.

In 2005, Israel adopted a new tactic: unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Instead of negotiating a peace treaty, Israel simply withdrew from the place, bull-dozed its settlements there, forbid the employment of citizens of Gaza by Israelis, and basically said to hell with you. The economy of the place quickly fell apart, becoming little more than a refugee camp writ large subsisting on foreign aid and charity. And then came the rocket attacks, which were answered by swift although measured retaliation. Gaza today joins Somalia, Yemen and several other "failed states" in the Muslim world.

Turning to Jerusalem, the Green Line would put return the Old City to Arab control. We suspect that, if this were done, the Palestinians would proceed to desecrate the non-Muslim holy places there, as the Jordanians did when they controlled the Old City from 1949 to 1967. In contrast, after Israel gain control of East Jerusalem in 1967, it restored the Christian and Jewish places in the Old City and preserved the Muslim Quarter and the Dome of the Rock under Muslim control. The U.N. has declared Israel's unilateral action in declaring Jerusalem to be re-unified and the capital of Israel, for which we have some sympathy given the agreement by all the parties to the Camp David Accords that the final status of Jerusalem was still to be decided by negotiation.

After more than forty years since Camp David, humanity cries out for some kind of resolution, even if imposed by third-parties. I don't think any of the parties to the Camp David Agreements envisioned that it would take as long as it has taken and that we are still no closerto a peace treaty than we were back then except that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Obviously, the concepts of two intertwined states is not going to happen any time soon. The borders that would be imposed will be marked by a security fence. The feckless or even complicit government of Palestine will not stop the rocket attacks by radical Muslims operating with their territory and will have to elicit the appropriate response. Any Christian Arabs and holy places of Christianity and Judaism within the confines of Palestine will have a tenuous existence. There will not be any "swaps," as that presupposes negotiation concerning which we have forty years of experience with the Palestinians, unless the "swaps" are included in the imposed settlement. So, what about swapping part of East Jerusalem for the Jewish settlements within the West Bank, enough to push the Green Line to the Old City, along with a denationalized Old City, like Vatican City in Rome, to be ruled by representatives of the three great religions which so love that city?