First, the Israeli government should resolve to give back the territory specified in the Oslo agreement concerning the West Bank. If there isn't a specified percentage of land mentioned, give back a number that would satisfy the Palestinian Authority while balancing Israel's defense needs. Although this would be extremely difficult to achieve, especially considering the strong sentiment by both Israelis and the Palestinians against the continuance of the peace process, negotiations could result in a territorial exchange. This exchange may be in the range of 20-30 percent of the West Bank. In addition, territory immediately surrounding existing Jewish settlements would continue to remain under Israeli control except where it is adjacent to a Palestinian settlement in which case, the land would be split 50/50.
The most contentious issue remains the final status of Jerusalem. The Israeli government claims that the city would forever remain unified, (preferably under Israeli control) and cites that Jerusalem has never been an Arab capital during its thousands of years of existence and that Jerusalem has always been the social and spiritual focus of the Jewish people. Palestinians counter that they have inhabited Jerusalem and its surroundings for thousands of years and that these rights have and should not be supplanted by Jews arriving only within the last 150 years.
However, there are several other issues that need resolving before we can reach that stage. The Palestinian Authority MUST remove all reference to the destruction of the State of Israel from the Palestinian Charter. This has not been done thus far and Palestinian Authority Chairman has paid only lip-service to his pledge to remove this from the Charter. He also continues to portray his final goal of a united Palestine through use of maps that show Palestine without borders and pictures of the Dome of the Rock adorn the walls of his offices and those of the Palestinian Authority. His followers continue to believe that the final result of his efforts will be the uniting of the land under Palestinian rule and this is something that must also be addressed.
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