Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

There was visible and audible euphoria at the UN General Assembly in September when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced Palestine’s application for UN membership, at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters in October when Palestine was admitted as a member state, and at UNESCO in December when the Palestinian flag was formally raised in Abbas’ presence.

Since then, nothing.

It is understood that Abbas agreed with the Quartet to freeze Palestine’s diplomatic initiatives until January 26 to permit a final effort to initiate meaningful negotiations with Israel. Predictably, that effort failed. However, January 26 has long passed, and still nothing. The Palestinian leadership was clearly surprised that with nine of the states on last year’s UN Security Council having already extended diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine they could not line up even the nine affirmative votes for Palestine’s admission as a member state necessary to force the United States to choose between a veto (infuriating the Muslim world and much of mankind) and an abstention (infuriating Israel and its American supporters).

However, even though the turnover of five non-permanent members on January 1 does not appear to have changed the eight affirmative votes only, this does not mean that there is nothing that Palestine can constructively do to recover the initiative and positive momentum of last fall.

The leadership could proceed promptly to the UN General Assembly to obtain an overwhelming vote to upgrade Palestine’s status from “observer entity” to “observer state”. The membership in the UN and UNESCO is substantially identical, and only 14 states voted against Palestine’s admission as a UNESCO member state. Logically, even fewer states should oppose “observer state” status for Palestine at the UN.

Immediately after having Palestine’s “state status” confirmed at the UN, the leadership could make a formal — and historic — statement comprising at least the following three elements:

1. The announcement of the merger or absorption of the Palestinian Authority into the state of Palestine.

2. An undertaking by the state of Palestine, during a one-year period, in which it would seek in good faith to achieve a definitive agreement with Israel on all modalities for ending the occupation on a two-state basis, to assume and perform all the functions, rights and obligations previously assumed and performed by the Palestinian Authority under existing agreements between the PLO and the state of Israel, including security cooperation if Israel is willing to cooperate with the state of Palestine.

3. A commitment by the state of Palestine, in the event that a definitive agreement with the state of Israel on all modalities for ending the occupation on a two-state basis is not reached within this one-year period, to consult the Palestinian people by referendum as to whether they prefer continuing to seek an end to the occupation through partition, with a sovereign Palestinian state on only 22 per cent of the territory of historical Palestine, or henceforth seek the full rights of citizenship in a single democratic state in all of historical Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race, religion or origin, and with equal rights for all.

If there remains any hope of actually achieving a decent two-state solution on the ground, presenting the issue and the choice, both before Israel and before its Western supporters, in this manner should stimulate the most intensive effort imaginable to actually achieve it.

If, even with the issue and choice presented in this manner, a decent two-state solution were to prove impossible to achieve, the Palestinian leadership and people, having acted reasonably and responsibly, would be standing firmly on the moral high ground, ready to shift their goal to the only other decent alternative, with the maximum conceivable support of the rest of mankind.

During this decisive year, the leadership could also seek admission of the state of Palestine, successively, to several more carefully chosen UN agencies, such as the World International Property Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and, potentially, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even the Commonwealth, choosing those targets which both appear most constructive in practical and strategic terms and in which success is highly likely.

The Security Council could be left waiting, always open for a vote at a moment of Palestinian choosing, perhaps after a change of government in a member state. In this context, it is worth, noting that François Hollande, tipped by the polls to become the next French president in May, has included in his campaign booklet “My 60 Pledges for France” the following pledge: “I will support international recognition of the Palestinian state.”

Necessarily, Palestine would stop issuing “Palestinian Authority” passports and start issuing “state of Palestine” passports. By proceeding in this way, the existence and reality of the state would be affirmed in multiple ways, through a steady succession of manifestations of statehood, while building a tangible record of “successes”, avoiding any visible “failure” and keeping Palestine and the imperative need to end the occupation on the “front burner” of the world’s attention.

In addition, an overwhelming General Assembly vote in support of “statehood status” for Palestine, coupled with a steady succession of “facts on the ground” manifestations of statehood, would make it more difficult for Security Council members to resist or block full UN membership for Palestine at such time as the leadership may deem it opportune to seek it.

The Palestinian leadership must show courage and wisdom by again seizing the initiative and setting the agenda so as to achieve, finally, some measure of justice and a decent future for the Palestinian people.

The number of UN member states extending diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine has now risen to 131, leaving only 62 UN member states on the wrong side of history and humanity.

If one ignores small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific, almost all of the non-recognisers are Western states, including all five of the settler-colonial states founded on the ethnic cleansing or genocide of indigenous populations and all eight of the former European colonial powers.

It appears that the current American strategy to defeat the state of Palestine’s UN membership application is to try to deprive Palestine of the required nine affirmative votes in the Security Council by convincing all five European members (including Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has recognised the state of Palestine) and Colombia (the only South American state which has not recognised the state of Palestine) to abstain, leaving only eight affirmative votes and thus making America’s lone negative vote not technically a “veto”.

Even though everyone knows that the Security Council would approve Palestinian membership unanimously if the United States announced its support, the explanation and expectation behind this strategy is, apparently, that in the absence of a “veto”, no one would notice America’s fingerprintsall over this result, no one (notably in the Arab and Muslim worlds) would be outraged by America’s blocking of Palestine’s membership application and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues would crawl back into the hamster cage from which they have so recently and dramatically escaped, duly chastened and docile, and resume running mindlessly on the Israeli-American exercise wheel.

This is not simply a breathtakingly naïve strategy but an extraordinarily dangerous one - and not only because the Ramallah leadership, having experienced enlightenment and a spine transplant, has also recovered its self respect and human dignity and will not be crawling back intoits cage.

An American veto would be neither a big deal nor a bad thing. It would unequivocally confirm the sad and humiliating reality, now almost universally recognised, that the United States of America is enslaved to Israel, paying tribute and taking orders. An American veto would definitively disqualify the United States from playing any significant role in any genuine Middle East “peace process” which would replace the fraudulent one which the United States has been controlling and manipulating on Israel’s behalf for the past 20 years and, thereby, would finally give peace a chance.

Indeed, since state observer status would confer on the state of Palestine virtually all the benefits member states have (most importantly, rightof access to the International Criminal Court, where Palestine could sue Israelis for war crimes, including settlement building, and crimes against humanity), an American veto in the Security Council followed by an upgrade to state observer status by the General Assembly might actually be the most constructive possible result for Palestine - even better than full UN membership with American acquiescence but with it maintaining its monopoly stranglehold on any “peace process”.

One might then realistically hope that the new, emerging international force, the “BRICS” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - all current members of the Security Council which have recognised the state of Palestine andare on record as planning to vote for Palestinian membership), and the European Union could jointly mobilise the true international community behind a genuine and urgent effort to actually achieve peace with some measure of justice.

On the other hand, America’s unanimous European abstention strategy, if successful, would have catastrophic consequences.

While the Arab and Muslim worlds have learned to expect the worst from the United States, they have, at least until now, maintained some hope that Europe is not their enemy. If Palestine’s membership applicationwere to be defeated by a united Western front, the world would be confronted by a fundamental clash of the “West against the rest”, resurrecting memories of the most arrogant and contemptuous periods of Western imperialism and colonialism and confirming the belief, already widespread in the Arab and Muslim worlds, that the Judeo-Christian world is at war with the Muslim world.

Of course, it is within the power of one man to prevent this ugly scenario from playing out. Are the prospects of a few more votes for himself and less campaign money for his eventual Republican opponent really more important to America’s multi-racialpresident than preventing a long-running clash of civilisations, cultures, races and religions, and permitting - indeed, promoting - progress towards a more peaceful, just and harmonious world?

The world will find out in the coming weeks.

The writer is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

While many questions relating to the state of Palestine’s imminent application for UN membership are being raised and vigorously debated, one relevant issue was not raised: How American interests would be harmed if Palestine were to be admitted as the 194th member of the United Nations, as it clearly would be in the absence of an American veto.

Perhaps the question is not being raised and debated because no potential adverse consequences - at least for the United States and its people - can be envisioned and cited to justify a veto.

While legal considerations have never weighed heavily on the American approach to Israel and Palestine, it is worth noting that since November 1988, when the state of Palestine was formally proclaimed,the Palestinian claim to sovereignty (the state-level equivalent of title or ownership) over the remaining 22 per cent of mandatory Palestine, which Israel conquered and occupied in 1967 (aside from expanded East Jerusalem, to which Israel’s sovereignty claim is universally rejected), has been both literally and legally uncontested.

Jordan renounced its claim to sovereignty over the West Bank in July 1988. While Egypt administered the Gaza Strip for 19 years, it never asserted sovereignty over it. While Israel has formally annexed East Jerusalem and an arc of surrounding territory (an annexation recognised by no state), it has for 44 years refrained from asserting sovereignty over any other portion of the West Bank or Gaza Strip, an act that would raise awkward questions about the rights (or lack of them) of those who live there.

The four criteria codified in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States for a state to exist under international law - a permanent population, a defined territory, government and a capacity to enter into relations with other states - are clearly met by the state of Palestine. The Montevideo Convention, as a ratified treaty that has not been renounced, has the status of domestic law in the United States and both domestic and international laws require the US government to respect and observe its provisions.

More than 120 UN member states (including 15 of the 20 most populous countries, encompassing the vast majority of mankind) have already extended diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, and more are expected to do so as the Security Council vote on its membership draws nearer.

Since there can be no credible legal argument that the state of Palestine does not yet meet the conventional and customary international law criteria for sovereign statehood, any decision to oppose its UN membership application would necessarily be based on purely political considerations.

Since few people alive can remember the last time the United States disobeyed Israel, it is widely assumed that it will inevitably veto the state of Palestine’s membership application. Indeed, many commentators assert that it has publicly pledged to do so. While the US government is desperately trying to prevent a Security Council vote on Palestinian membership, it is far from certain that it has pledged to impose its veto - or, even if it had, that it would actually do so.

When addressing a special Security Council session on the Middle East on July 26, the American representative stated with respect to Palestine’s UN membership initiative: “The United States will not support unilateral campaigns at the United Nations in September or any other time.”

Setting aside the Israeli-initiated absurdity of characterising an appeal for support to the entire international community as a “unilateral” action, what is important in this formulation is what it did not say. It did not say that the United States will oppose the Palestinian membership application and cast its veto to defeat it. If the United States had reached a firm decision to veto, this would have been the logical occasion to say so.

Furthermore, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, when asked in an interview published on September 7 in the Los Angeles Times whether the Americans had told the Palestinians that they will veto, replied: “The US told us that the UN is not an option they will support. I hope they will not veto. How will they explain a veto?”

Indeed, while any potential harm to American national interests as a result of Palestinian membership in the United Nationswould be difficult to imagine, the adverse consequences for the United States of blocking Palestine’s membership are dazzlingly obvious. An American veto would constitute a shotgun blast in both of its feet, further isolating the United States from the rest of mankind and outraging the already agitated and unstable Arab and Muslim worlds (notably including Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey).

In considering whether to veto or abstain, US President Barack Obama might wish to reread an article by Prince Turki Al Faisal, the long-serving Saudi Arabian intelligence chief and former ambassador to the United States, which was published on June 10 in The Washington Post and in which he warned: “There will be disastrous consequences for US-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state. It would mark a nadir in the decades-long relationship as well as irrevocably damage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and America’s reputation among Arab nations. The ideological distance between the Muslim world and the West in general would widen - and opportunities for friendship and cooperation between the two could vanish.”

Unless the president’s sole concern is his reelection prospects, it should not be ruled out that the US government just might, exceptionally, put American national interests ahead of the desires of the Israeli government and abstain when the time comes.

If the US government does decide to defy most of mankind by casting its veto, this would hurt the United States and Israel far more than it would hurt Palestine, definitively disqualifying the United States from maintaining its monopoly stranglehold on any “peace process”, which, since US objectives are indistinguishable from Israel’s, could only be to Palestine’s advantage. The September UN initiative is a win-win proposition for Palestine.

The question at the UN this month is not, as is still frequently misreported, whether Palestine will declare independence. It did so 23 years ago. The question is whether the United States of America will declare independence.

The writer is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team at negotiations with Israel. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

As the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” struggles to inch forward again in an atmosphere of profound pessimism bordering on hopelessness, what is most sadly missing is any compelling vision of how a Holy Land at peace could be structured so as to enhance not only the physical security of Israelis and the human dignity of Palestinians but also the future quality of day-to-day life for both peoples.

The Declaration of Principles so optimistically signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 proclaimed as its goal a “historic reconciliation” between the two peoples. Today, even optimistists seem to hope only for a definitive separation of the two peoples behind high walls and fences.

Can Israelis and Palestinians really do no better than this? Might it not still be possible to blend the practical and psychological preferences of both peoples for a twostate solution with some of the best aspects of a humane one-state solution to produce a vision of a possible future so bright and appealing that both Israelis and Palestinians would be inspired to act on their hopes and dreams, rather than their memories and fears, and to seize this future together and make it a reality?

Sharing the Holy Land is not a zero-sum game in which any development advantageous to one side must be disadvantageous to the other. One can envisage a society in which, by separating political and voting rights from economic, social and residential rights in a negotiated settlement, both the legitimate national aspirations of Palestinians and the legitimate security interests of Israelis could be simultaneously satisfied.

The Holy Land could be a two-state “confederation,” a single economic and social unit encompassing two sovereign states and one Holy City. Jerusalem could be an Israeli-Palestinian “condominium,” an open city forming an undivided part of both states, being the capital of both states and being administered by local district councils and an umbrella municipal council.

All current residents of the Holy Land could be given the choice of Israeli or Palestinian citizenship, thus determining which state’s passport they would carry and in which state’s national elections they would vote. All citizens of either state could vote in municipal elections where they actually live—a matter of particular relevance to current Palestinian citizens of Israel opting for Palestinian citizenship and to Israeli settlers choosing to continue to live in Palestine while maintaining their Israeli citizenship.

Each state could have its own “law of return” conferring citizenship and residential rights within that state on persons not currently resident in the Holy Land.

Borders would have to be drawn on maps but would not have to exist on the ground. The free, non-discriminatory movement of people and goods within the Holy Land could be a fundamental principle subject only to one major exception: to ensure that each state would always maintain its national character, the right to residence in each Holy Land state could be limited to that state’s citizens, to citizens of the other state residing there on an agreed date, and to their descendants. (In this way, deeply felt principles could be maintained.

Israelis could have the right to live in all of Eretz Israel—but not all Israelis in all of Eretz Israel. Similarly, Palestinians could have the right to live in all of historical Palestine—but not all Palestinians in all of historical Palestine.) A common currency (perhaps printed in Hebrew on one side and Arabic on the other) could be issued by a common central bank.

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