Introduction

Israel’s disengagement process from the Gaza Strip will necessarily shape a new geopolitical reality, one of whose salient components will be a system of borders between the emerging Palestinian entity in the Gaza Strip and Israel, Egypt and the rest of the world (the air and sea ports). The management of the various borders and the regime enacted in them will have a substantial impact on the nature of the bilateral relations between Israel and the PA, as well as on the nature of the relations between the PA and Egypt and the rest of the world, and the nature of the relations between Israel and Egypt.

The disengagement process can be viewed as an opportunity for the parties involved to shape a new political reality that can open a window to the renewal of the political process that will lead to the improvement of the relations between the parties and to political prospect that can lay the groundwork for more advanced measures.

Supposing that the disengagement process can be converted from a unilateral Israeli process to a coordinated bilateral (Israeli-Palestinian) process, with the assistance of international elements, the parties are facing an opportunity to jointly shape the nature of their common border regime.

As part of an encompassing strategic process that included the operation of 12 Israeli- Palestinian thinking teams which examined a series of issues and areas of interest with the purpose of developing a conceptual framework whose purpose was to break the political deadlock by leveraging the disengagement process for the renewal of the peace process, one team dealt with the question of the border regime.

In this document we would like to present the main recommendations formulated during the team’s work process, in an attempt to offer a possible conceptual framework for a border regime on the day after the disengagement. The policy document that was written in the Strategic Affairs Unit of IPCRI present guiding principles and a conceptual framework for the border regime for the day after the disengagement, based on the assumption that the disengagement is an opportunity that could be leveraged into a political process. The document is based on recommendations developed by the Israeli- Palestinian team in addition to elements added since the team completed its original work.

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