Seeking a solution

With regard to “Did Trump nix the 2-state solution?” (Analysis, February 17), the assertion that then-president Bill Clinton “wed the Israelis and Palestinians to the notion that the only resolution to the conflict is a two-state solution” flies in the face of historical factuality.

The 1993 Oslo Accords did not require a sovereign Palestinian-Arab entity. Indeed, several piquant appurtenances of that quaint model of failed-statebuilding were belied by none other than then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in his final address to the Knesset, in which he rejected the Green Line as indefensible and envisaged a permanent IDF presence in the Jordan Valley. And that was when peace was just beginning to “break out.”

DAVID B. GREENBERG Jerusalem

Yaakov Katz (“Return of the Palestinian state,” Editor’s Notes, February 17) clearly thinks that he, like US ex-president Barack Obama, knows what the Saudis and Gulf states will find acceptable as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, he knows so much as to suggest that no wider deal between the Arab world and Israel is possible in the context of dealing with the Iranian threat to Sunni nations without a resolution of the conflict.

Clearly, Katz has learned nothing from eight wasted years. Obama made it perfectly clear that a two-state solution could be the only solution, yet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has continued to refuse to enter into any serious negotiations, being more interested in trying to obtain statehood by every other means, real or pretended, when negotiations are the only possible way.

President Donald Trump is now making it perfectly clear to Abbas that he has to negotiate or he’ll be left by the wayside.

If the Saudis and Gulf states have a real interest in seeing a Palestinian state, they will deliver the same message to Abbas. Otherwise, one must assume that they will act whichever way they think will be to their own benefit and not allow themselves to be held hostage to, and be defeated by, Palestinian intransigence.

PETER SCHWEITZER Tel Aviv

US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are looking for an innovative and pragmatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here is a modest proposal.

Under the rubric of a multinational agreement between Israel and the Sunni-Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates), the territories of the West Bank could be governed by a joint Israeli-Arab peace force, the Arab component being represented mainly, if not entirely, by a Jordanian force. The whole arrangement would be negotiated with the US as guarantor.

Israel would be responsible for the Jewish settlements, and the Arab force would be responsible for the Palestinian towns and villages currently overseen by the Palestinian Authority. There would be joint jurisdiction in such areas as Hebron.

The area would be demilitarized apart from the joint Israel-Arab peace force. The arrangement could also involve land swaps to allow for both Israeli and Palestinian contiguity.

As for the Gaza Strip, it could be occupied and demilitarized by the Arab peace force without any Israeli presence, although this would require that Hamas gives up control to ensure a peaceful transition.

Ultimately, the arrangement might devolve into a confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Each would retain its own sovereign government. There would be open borders for goods and people, but no rights to settle.

The main impediment would be the absence of will on the part of the Arab states to deal realistically with Israel, or a refusal by the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

It would be up to the Sunni Arab states to persuade the Palestinians to accept the agreement; in return, there would be a guarantee by the US and Israel that they would act to prevent either Iran or Islamic State from attacking or occupying their territory, as Israel did for Jordan in 1970, with US support, when the Jordanians were threatened with invasion by Syria. YAAKOV BEN-MEIR

Netanya