The implacable Zionist right and the 1967 borders

Bibi Netanyahu must believe the year is 1985. There’s no other reason he could be surprised that an American president would endorse a Palestinian state whose borders would be based on the 1967 boundaries.

Here’s the key sentence: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” This is actually a fine way of threading the needle between the Israeli and Palestinian positions. The Israeli maximalist position is that the borders should be negotiated progressively outward from the areas currently under Palestinian self-rule (about 40% of the West Bank). The Palestinian position, at least in public, is that they must have sovereignty over a sum of land equivalent in size and quality to the West Bank borders pre-1967. Obama’s speech gave the Palestinians the basis of working from the 1967 borders, but he didn’t say that the land swaps had to be 1:1.

Israelis rightly say they have “red lines” in negotiations, such as the absorption of the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees into Israel, or Palestinian sovereignty of the Western Wall. What the Israeli right refuses to acknowledge is that even the most moderate Palestinians have red lines, too. One is borders that reflect the Green Line. They argue that Egypt got all of their land returned in exchange for peace; why should they be different? (As David Makovsky points out, 1:1 land swaps are not all that difficult to pull off.)

Thus begins another test of Netanyahu. If he is serious about making peace, he will acknowledge Palestinian needs, yet understand that Obama has not completely given into Palestinian demands.