Forward

During the past months, IPCRI’s Strategic Affairs Unit has been working with the assistance of STAT – the Strategic Thinking and Analysis team – a joint Israeli- Palestinian team – on the development of ideas and initiatives to advance the political process. The strategic focus that we have developed is based on a number of guiding principles:

1. The immediate challenge facing us is the renewal of the political process where the establishment of a Palestinian State in about 90% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem is part of the process (as specified in Phase II of the Road Map) and not necessarily its final result which will be completed in Phase III of the Road Map with permanent status negotiations and an end of conflict agreement.
2. Coordinated disengagement can be the base for renewing the political process and an important incentive for rebuilding trust and confidence between the sides.
3. The two sides cannot advance the political process by themselves without the assistance and active involvement of the international community serving as a third party.
4. The US is the most significant and necessary third party for the renewal and advancement of the political process and building trust between the sides and, therefore; should lead the other international players in the process.
5. Relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a wider regional context could “expand the pie” in enlarging and creating new scopes of interests and expanding existing ones which can assist in shaping and stabilizing a new regional regime, in which Israel and Palestine become are included. The regional regime or system can assist in operating a mechanism of restraint and remuneration, which will make it more difficult for the sides to defect from the agreed framework. Accordingly, it is appropriate to think about converting the commonly used concepts regarding the solution of the conflict into concepts such as stabilizing the conflict or minimizing the dimensions of the conflict.
6. The political process must be conducted in a reality which offers more possibilities for greater symmetry than the asymmetry that has existed since the beginning of Oslo. Since it is not possible to reach full symmetry, we should work to reduce the level of asymmetry by introducing the “statehood logic” to the process. Then the political process would be conducted on the basis of a state-to-state rationale in which both States are working according to the accepted international codex of behavior between States.
7. The political process must have a defined and agreed upon time frame with appropriate and real international guarantees to ensure that the time frame will be honored by both sides. One of the most important aspects of the agreed time frame is that permanent status negotiation should commence no later than one year after the formal establishment of the Palestinian State and should last no longer than two years.
8. The permanent status negotiations will be based on the Clinton principles and international legitimacy.

Last year IPCRI developed the idea of converting the Israeli unilateral disengagement into a coordinated plan aimed at leveraging the side back into political process. Several months ago we developed these ideas, which were translated into action models and presented in detailed policy papers. In this framework the rationale of the model for the renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian security coordination as well as the model for border regime management were developed and presented. In the past months the SAU has been working on developing the concept of “the State with provisional borders” which appears in the Road Map.

To View The Full Study as PDF File (128 KB)