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ALAN DERSHOWITZ is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, one of the nation's foremost appellate lawyers, and a respected voice on Israel. His many books include the New York Times bestsellers The Case for Israel (Wiley) and Chutzpah. He is also a syndicated columnist who has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and many other newspapers and periodicals.

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"Dershowitz offers a pragmatic proposal rooted in the lessons of the past and the opportunities of the present. Hopeful and wise, the blueprint for stability presented in this book is among the best in recent years."
-President Bill Clinton
 
In this important book, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz sets out a practical, realistic road map for Arab-Israeli peace, rigorously analyzing all the tough issues surrounding the conflict and pointing the way toward a secure and equitable two-state solution. From the division of Jerusalem and Israeli counterterrorism measures to the security fence and the Iranian nuclear threat, he identifies twelve geopolitical barriers to peace, explaining how to move around them and push the process forward. In a companion Web site, Dershowitz reflects on the new dynamics in the Middle East in the wake of Ariel Sharon's illness and the Hamas victory, making this provocative but clearheaded blueprint for peace more vital than ever.
 
For new insight by Alan Dershowitz on the Arab-Israeli conflict visit www.wiley.com/go/dershowitz
 
"Alan Dershowitz has been on the forefront of making the case for Israel and against terrorism. Now he turns his attention to making the case for peace. He understands, as I do, how difficult it is to achieve peace with security. He confronts these difficulties with insight and with the benefit of years of experience."
-Ariel Sharon
 
"Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Peace is a sober, pragmatic, and yet enthusiastic voice for peace between Israel and Palestine, to be based not on sentimentalist wishful thinking and not on dogmatic theorizing but on realism and empathy. I read it with thrill."
-Amos Oz

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The Case for Peace

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Two States with Secure and Recognized Borders

We all know what the final agreement will look like, but meanwhile young people are dying. That's what makes this so painful. It just breaks my heart. -Former president Bill Clinton

Like it or not, [Israelis and Palestinians] must recognize that their fate is intertwined. Their choice is either to live in perpetual struggle, with endless victims, pain, sorrow, and destruction, or to live in peaceful coexistence. From all the efforts I made over the years, I am certain that the mainstreams of both sides understand that reality. However, translating that understanding from an abstraction into a practical reality has proven far more difficult than I had hoped. -Dennis Ross, Middle East adviser and chief negotiator under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton

[T]he question today is not what the final agreement will look like, but rather how much more time do we have before any agreement becomes impossible to implement. -Marwan Jilani, executive director of the Geneva Initiative

Sometimes it is better to start at the end. There seems to be more agreement among Palestinian and Israeli negotiators about what a final resolution will look like than about the steps that must be taken to get to that point. An absence of trust-the result of years of missteps, missed opportunities, and domestic posturing-has created a "chicken-egg" problem: each side wants the other side to show good faith before it is prepared to give up any important bargaining chips. Neither side can afford to give up too many chips without getting at least an equal number from the other side, lest it lose credibility among skeptical members of its own constituencies. Yet both sides understand that they will, eventually, have to exchange these chips if peace is to be accomplished. For example, all reasonable people acknowledge that the final borders will incorporate Israel's large permanent settlements (really towns-such as Maale Adumim) into Israel, and that these suburbs of Jerusalem will become contiguous with Jewish Jerusalem. That is the reality on the ground, as former president Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas recognize. But by announcing that Maale Adumim will be expanded in the direction of Jerusalem before a final agreement is reached, the Israeli government has usurped a bargaining chip from the Palestinians and engendered distrust among some Palestinian moderates. At the same time, by announcing now these future plans for expansion of Israeli areas, the Israeli government has given an important chip to Israeli moderates on the right who are somewhat skeptical about the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Thus, even when it comes to gathering support among moderates, many steps have a zero-sum quality.

Also, opponents to peace on both sides understand how easy it is to exploit mutual distrust by provocative actions calculated to draw a response from the other side and create a cycle of recrimination. A disturbing instance of this exploitation was reported by the Associated Press on April 8, 2005:

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters paraded through downtown Gaza City on Friday, threatening to end a monthlong truce if Jewish extremists follow through on a pledge to hold a rally at a disputed holy site in Jerusalem next week....

Jewish extremists say that in July, when the Gaza evacuation is to begin, they will bring tens of thousands of people to the Temple Mount, forcing police to divert their attention from the pullout to Jerusalem....

Abbas said Friday that the Palestinians have been in contact with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz of Israel about the rally.

"We have a pledge from the Israelis that they will prevent any aggression on Al Aqsa Mosque, and we hope so," Abbas said.

So before we get to the difficult steps, and the order in which they should be taken, let us first address the end result.

The Arab-Israeli conflict should end with a two-state solution under which all the Arab and Muslim states-indeed the entire world-acknowledge Israel's right to continue to exist as an independent, democratic, Jewish state with secure and defensible boundaries and free of terrorism. In exchange, Israel should recognize the right of Palestinians to establish an independent, democratic, Palestinian state with politically and economically viable boundaries. For these mutually compatible goals to be achieved, extremists on both sides must give up what they each claim are their God-given or nationalistic rights. Israeli extremists must give up their claimed right to all of biblical Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) and their claimed right to maintain Jewish settlements on, or to continue the military occupation of, disputed areas that would be allocated to the Palestinian state. Palestinian extremists must give up their claimed right to all of "Palestine," including what is now Israel, as well as the alleged right of millions of descendants of those who left or were forced out of what is now Israel during the war of 1947-1949 to "return" to their "ancestral homes" in Israel. Unless these claimed rights are mutually surrendered in the interest of achieving a pragmatic, compromise resolution to the conflict, there can be no enduring peace. But if these claimed rights are surrendered, peace can be achieved. The remaining disputes-and there are many-will be much easier to resolve if agreement is reached on these fundamental issues.

It would follow from Israel's renouncing all claims to remain on Palestinian land that the military occupation would end and the Palestinian government would exercise political control over its land and the movement of its people. And it would follow from the Palestinian renunciation of claims to all of Israel and to any right of return that there could be no justification for terrorism, "resistance," or any other violence against Israelis, and that the Palestinian government would be responsible for preventing and punishing any such violence. I do not mean to suggest that the occupation "justified" terrorism, only that even those who erroneously claimed justification could no longer credibly do so.

The precise borders would, of course, have to be negotiated, but there is already in existence an agreed-upon international formula for resolving this divisive issue. Resolution 242, enacted by the UN Security Council in 1967, provides as follows:

[The Security Council] (1) Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both of the following principles: (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent [1967] conflict: (ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

The "legislative history" of that important resolution provides...