With the collapse of the U.S.-brokered peace negotiations, the Palestinian leadership has embarked on a plan of unilateral action to gain recognition of a Palestinian state and to isolate Israel internationally. Couple those developments with the Fatah movement’s unity pact with the terrorist group Hamas, and Israel is facing a complex reality. Without peace talks, what options does Israel have? Will Israel be forced to take its own unilateral steps?
“If [an] agreement is unachievable, then moving independently to shape the borders of Israel is the better course,” suggested Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli air force general and former head of the Israel Defence Forces Military Intelligence Directorate. “While it is not the [ideal] alternative, it is better than the status quo or a bad agreement.”
Yadlin, who now serves as director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), is among a growing number of respected Israeli leaders putting forth proposals for unilateral steps. In a proposal posted earlier this month on the INSS website, Yadlin argued that Israel has more than the two options usually discussed: a peace agreement and the status quo. According to Yadlin, Israel’s four strategic options are a peace agreement along the parameters established by former U.S. president Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000, an “unacceptable” peace agreement on Palestinian terms, a status quo in which the Palestinians dictate their own terms or a status quo in which Israel dictates its own terms.
Yadlin argued that while the Clinton parameters – which include the Palestinians agreeing to end the conflict and give up both the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees and dividing Jerusalem – are Israel’s “best option,” it is “highly unlikely” that such an agreement will ever be realized. Instead, Yadlin believes that Israel should promote an “Israeli option” that preserves Israel’s objectives to remain a “Jewish, democratic, secure and just state.” He said this would allow Israel to “independently shape its own borders,” with a strategy towards “advancing a two-state solution.”