My own proposal for land swaps

May 25, 2011 - 3:39 PM by Brian Blum

Obama at AIPAC

OK, so we all know by now that U.S. President Obama made it official American policy what most Israelis have known for years: that any peace agreement with the Palestinians will have to be based on the 1967 lines with “land swaps.” And we also know that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that, while the 1967 lines are indefensible, he’s nevertheless ready to make “painful compromises” (with lots of preconditions, of course) for peace.

Obama has been vague about what exactly these land swaps would consist of, but his “clarification” speech a few days later at the AIPAC conference came closer to the does-it-exist-or-not Bush letter to Ariel Sharon in 2004 where the then-president stated that any agreement would have to take into account “new realities on the ground.”

While these demographic changes are widely assumed to refer to the major settlement blocks (including the large neighborhoods built in Jerusalem post-1967), I have another idea. Let’s set the borders based on convenient transportation routes.

Here’s my proposal: in addition to incorporating Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, Israel needs to keep Highway 90 north that allows Jerusalemites to get to Tiberius quickly via the Jordan Valley. Ditto for Highway 90 going south to the Dead Sea. Who wants to add two hours of driving to get to Ein Gedi by way of Arad? Forget the security issues – think of the economic damage to the hotels near Masada!

And we need to hold on to Highway 443 that runs from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv – otherwise Highway 1 is just going to be one endless parking lot at rush hour. Israel has spent a lot of money upgrading 443, and the checkpoints are really quite lovely these days, don’t you think. “New realities on the ground” must certainly refer to making it easy to get to the growing city of Modi’in, right?

So, come on, Bibi, go ahead and say it. “The 1967 lines are indefensible. That is, my fellow Israelis will kill me if their commute time doubles. You can have your right of return, as long as we keep our right of way.”

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