Solutions

Trading the 'Triangle': land and people swapped for settlement blocs

Israel keeps the West Bank settlement blocs; in exchange, Arab-majority towns inside Israel near the Green Line (the 'Triangle' around Wadi Ara and Umm al-Fahm) become part of a Palestinian state, with their residents.

What happens to Israeli Jews

Israel keeps the settlement blocs and increases its Jewish majority, without anyone having to move.

What happens to Palestinians

The Palestinian state gains land and population. Arab citizens of Israel in the Triangle lose Israeli citizenship, its rights and benefits, without being asked.

What it requires

  • A two-state agreement with land swaps
  • Moving the border so that Arab towns inside Israel, with some hundreds of thousands of citizens, fall on the Palestinian side
  • Those citizens losing Israeli citizenship and becoming Palestinian, without moving house
  • Their consent, or overriding it, which in a democracy would mean stripping citizens of their citizenship

Who supports it

Umm al-Fahm residents in favour of transfer to Palestinian rule (2000 poll)11%

Put forward by Avigdor Lieberman (the 'Lieberman Plan', 2004), and included as an option in the 2020 Trump plan. Arab citizens have rejected it consistently: in a 2000 poll by the weekly Kul al-Arab, 83% of Umm al-Fahm residents opposed their town's transfer and 11% supported it ⚠. In 2020 the Prime Minister's office said Israel wouldn't pursue the idea.

What history says

  • Population and territory exchanges such as Greece–Turkey (1923), carried out over the heads of the people moved
  • Border changes that turned citizens of one state into citizens of another without a vote, often remembered as a wrong

The hard questions

  • Can a democracy strip hundreds of thousands of citizens of their citizenship because of their ethnicity, even if they don't move?
  • Why do the people of the Triangle, who identify as Palestinian, overwhelmingly want to stay Israeli citizens, and what does that say about both states?
  • If Jews' safety depends on a majority, does this plan show where that logic leads (see 'Jews can only be safe as a majority in their own state')?

Arguments that point here

pro-Israel“Arab citizens of Israel have full equality — they vote, sit in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court.”hot potatoactual argument?◆ Motte and bailey◆ Which territory?pro-Israel“Jews can only be safe as a majority in their own state.”hot potatocommon◆ Proxy presented as outcome◆ The strict enemy frame“Israel does X. / Palestine is occupied.”actual argument?