Ever since the 2000 Camp David Summit, the diplomatic agenda has centered on the two-state solution. At that summit, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak abandoned the Labor party's path, ignored the Israeli national consensus and bypassed the red lines laid out by late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Leapfrogging even the dovish Meretz party and left-wing group Peace Now, Barak presented a framework based upon the June 4, 1967 borders, with some small territorial exchanges. He offered an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, along with the Jordan Valley.
Although the Palestinians rejected his offer, choosing instead to embark on a murderous terrorist rampage, Barak's proposal continues to serve as the basis for peace talks in any future scenario. It was his proposal that served as the basis for the Clinton Parameters, the guidelines for a permanent status agreement proposed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's 2008 peace offer to the Palestinian Authority, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's attempts to make peace between the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority.
In all the years that followed the Oslo Accords, including during the Second Intifada and Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Barak's proposal has remained the only plan on the table. But the Israeli public is divided on this plan. Opponents of the plan feel no need to find an alternative; it was enough for them to witness how reality has shattered the idea of a two-state solution. Proponents of the plan feel no need to re-examine it; they are comfortable in the role of the "righteous" minority that accuses Israel of recalcitrance.
If one were to rely on the word of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and there is reason to doubt its credibility, the current U.S. administration is now re-examining the idea of a confederation, as a framework for finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The very fact this discussion is even taking place breathes new life into diplomatic efforts that have centered for far too long on a failed solution.
Yet the term "Palestinian-Jordanian confederation" is vague and given to conflicting interpretations. If the goal is to establish a Palestinian state on the 1949 borders that will later become part of a confederation with Jordan, then this framework offers no real solution to the risks posed by a two-state solution.
The idea floated by Abbas of a confederation that also includes Israel is also crazy, as it is aimed at creating a political entity in which the Jews are the minority. The transitional conditions of such a confederation would allow for the realization of the "right" of return and drown Israel in millions of Palestinians.
But if the discussion manages to break through the conceptual trap of two states between the river and the sea, a confederation may turn out to be a welcome solution. If the framework entails a reasonable territorial compromise, in which areas populated by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, and not all of the territory in its entirety, belong to a demilitarized Palestinian state that is not in a confederation with Jordan, it will be possible to restart negotiations. If Palestinian refugees are able to resettle in and become citizens of Jordan, which has already granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees inside its territory, and if Israel gets to keep the Jordan Valley, the Judean Desert, an undivided Jerusalem and the settlement blocs, it may finally be possible to imagine a fitting, "out-of-the-box" ideological alternative to the two-state solution.
