Israel considered two-state solution just after Six-Day War

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Last update - 11:22 05/06/2009

Israel considered two-state solution just after Six-Day War

By Tom Segev

On December 5, 1967, then-chief of staff Lt. Gen. Yitzhak Rabin suggested to prime minister Levi Eshkol that a Palestinian state be established in the West Bank. The minutes of that conversation are kept today in the state archives. Rabin had in mind a state "that would be connected to Israel."

Six months after the Six-Day War, this was not a subversive or particularly "leftist" idea. Rabin, who had commanded the troops during the war and was about to head to Washington as Israel's ambassador, did not want to return the West Bank to Jordan. He looked for a way to overcome the demographic problem: "We are not going to relocate half a million Arabs," he said. Eshkol was dubious. "Will the new state have an army?" he asked. Rabin said it would have a police force, not an army. "Who determines that?" asked Eshkol. Rabin answered: "We do." Eshkol was not convinced and Rabin acknowledged: "It is a matter of a lesser of evils."

The idea somehow faded, emerged several years later and again disappeared. Forty-three years have passed, during which not a single serious new idea was raised that wasn't raised since the first months after the 1967 war; 43 years of going in circles. Public discourse occasionally did yield some suggestions, such as for a "binational" state arrangement, a "transfer" or expulsion of Palestinians, and even for turning Jordan into a Palestinian state, with or without the West Bank. The ensuing years have not brought peace any closer. In fact, they made peace more remote. In this context, one of the numerous conversations held in the interim between Israelis and Palestinians (usually abroad), is of particular interest.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090648.html