Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Friedlander Peace Plan Is The Everyone Wins Peace Plan

By the grace of God, if others wish to call my peace plan, the Friedlander Peace Plan, I will let them. First, the name consistently differentiates between itself and the (Rabbi) Elon Peace Plan, which is also a One State Solution but of a different character. Second, the original Germanic meaning of Friedland is "peaceful land", which is the goal of any peace plan. Indeed, both are valid reasons to continue to call it by my surname, yet... in an attempt in having at least the appearance of a basic level of humility, except where appropriate I will endeavor to refer to my peace plan as the "Everyone Wins Peace Plan", and I will tell you why later in this post, but first I want to mention what I didn't name it. I did not name it according to the first idea that came to me, the freedom peace plan or the liberty peace plan for several reasons:
  1. Freedom plan sounds more like a phone service commercial advertisement than a realistic path to peace. And I did not want to make this very serious path to peace sound like a joke.
  2. As one person's freedom is an other's anarchy, and as terrorists deal mainly in anarchy, the meaning of liberty has a different connotation than when the Declaration of Independence speaks of liberty, for example. Freedom, to the radical Islam that Hamas deals in, is a danger in the hands of others (non-Islamic people), and is used exclusively as a self reference when referring the term to itself (true freedom is when they can do what they want, they are essentially arguing).
  3. By calling the plan by the name Friedlander, I placed an address label on it. As this plan has no other source text than an Internet based blog, it is not as easy to research as the other peace plans, so therefore I placed a moniker that could aid in better directing inquiries from interested parties toward the source of the plan. Nevertheless, in the interest of keeping my head from swelling and necessitating the usage of a larger hat size, I figured that for myself at least, I would still have to come up with another descriptor for this peace plan.
The reason why the Friedlander Peace Plan can be called the Everyone Wins Peace Plan is that you can argue it from either the right or the left and it still remains flexible enough to be the best plan available.

An argument from the right would include that
the Everyone Wins Peace Plan secures an end to terrorist armies within a stone's throw of Israeli cities, it allows settlers to keep their homes, it also maintains the State's control over all the land and resources West of the Jordan River, and it guarantees freedom of religion to non-Muslims.

From a left point of view,
the Everyone Wins Peace Plan maintains Palestinian control of their cities and allows the retention of their homes, it frees them short term from terrorist police and long term from refugee camps, and it allows them to join their cousins within the Green Line by having a right to vote in the State of Israel.

From a centrist perspective that everyone can agree with,
the Everyone Wins Peace Plan ends the unhealthy segregationist environment both sides are currently caught up in. The Everyone Wins Peace Plan also removes the main pan-Arabic excuse to discriminate financially against the State of Israel. This will only snowball the effectiveness of the plan at ending the conflict that much sooner, as improved finances and security means increased Jewish immigration rates which allows the expansion of the Arabic naturalization process that is at the core of this solution.

When you compare the Everyone Wins Peace Plan it to all the others, no other peace plan comes close to being so politically acceptable to as broad a base as this plan does. That, in my opinion, is the most important factor when choosing a path by which to avoid perpetual war. The wider the support a peace plan has, the less the likelihood of rebellion against the process once everyone is deeply invested in more ways than merely financial.

The Everyone Wins Peace Plan: An Evenhanded Policy for Peace

2 comments:

Unknown said...

While I applaud your efforts to think outside of the box, there are a few serious ramifications to your plan that have not been addressed in your plan.

1) Tying a Palestinian "return" to Israel to the immigration rates of Jewish foreigners may prevent a Palestinian voting majority in the short run, but with the disparity in birth rates, it virtually guarantees an Arab voting majority in Israel in 2 generations.

2) One of the key tenets of the Palestinian refugee narrative is the assertion that they were expelled from homes which belong to them under the law. Palestinians are not merely looking for a Teudat Zehut and the right to vote. They want the Israeli intruders forced out of the homes that they believe belong to them, and short of that solution, which you correctly reject, there will be no agreement from the Palestinian side.

3) The income disparity between Palestinians and Israelis is so significant that this move would break Israel already overtaxed social programs. The NII bases its premium collections on actuarial projections of services rendered, and adding an influx of largely unemployed people to the insurance roles, who will pay premiums at the lowest marginal rate and collect services well above the mean for an average citizen will break the system.

4) Finally, it ignores certain security realities. While any peace plans seeks to successfully diffuse tensions, it must be prepared for failure in that regard. So long as Palestinians are not Israeli, having no voting rights, and are not citizens, the IDF has more leeway in enforcing security measures. Once the mass of Palestinian population becomes Israeli citizens under your plan, terrorists will be retroactively granted the civil liberties protection of an Israeli citizen, thereby reducing marginalizing the IDFs anti-terror capability, and ultimately costing Israeli lives.

Unfortunately, the only way to maintain a secure and JEWISH Israel, is a two state solution, albeit one that maintains an undivided Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. The only way for this to happen is US recognition of that fact, which is impossible due to the imbalances at the State Department.

Pragmatically speaking, this "Conflict" has no end in sight, meaning that that Israel must act unilaterally to protect it's sovereignty and security.

Rabbi Prof. Alan Friedlander said...

Noah, you said:
>>1) Tying a Palestinian "return" to Israel to the immigration rates of Jewish foreigners may prevent a Palestinian voting majority in the short run, but with the disparity in birth rates, it virtually guarantees an Arab voting majority in Israel in 2 generations.<<


I have suggested a variable rate according to the immigration and birthrates, that the rate should change according to the needs of the time, only with care to not take it to unjust extremes. It would be just as wrong to overwhelm the naturalization infrastructure as it would be to not allow naturalization at all.


>>2) One of the key tenets of the Palestinian refugee narrative is the assertion that they were expelled from homes which belong to them under the law. Palestinians are not merely looking for a Teudat Zehut and the right to vote. They want the Israeli intruders forced out of the homes that they believe belong to them, and short of that solution, which you correctly reject, there will be no agreement from the Palestinian side.<<



Every peace plan calls for someone to pay a price, Everyone Wins only asks terrorists and those who support them to pay the price. Clearly any rejectionists who are a serious security risk would not be allowed to naturalize. Even if I wanted that, which I don't, the Israeli government isn't that stupid.


>>3) The income disparity between Palestinians and Israelis is so significant that this move would break Israel already overtaxed social programs. The NII bases its premium collections on actuarial projections of services rendered, and adding an influx of largely unemployed people to the insurance roles, who will pay premiums at the lowest marginal rate and collect services well above the mean for an average citizen will break the system.<<


Again, with the ratio based system, we are talking about adding a workable number that would not overwhelm the system. If the current percentage of Palestinian Arabs is 15% of the Israeli population, that means for every 100 immigrants, 15 Arabs naturalize.

Also don't forget that immigrants, on average have a higher birthrate than native born Israelis. So from that perspective, no worries, mate!

Your point does address an important underlining reason why the Saudi plan is evil in intent.


>>4) Finally, it ignores certain security realities. While any peace plans seeks to successfully diffuse tensions, it must be prepared for failure in that regard. So long as Palestinians are not Israeli, having no voting rights, and are not citizens, the IDF has more leeway in enforcing security measures. Once the mass of Palestinian population becomes Israeli citizens under your plan, terrorists will be retroactively granted the civil liberties protection of an Israeli citizen, thereby reducing marginalizing the IDFs anti-terror capability, and ultimately costing Israeli lives.<<


Again, only trustworthy Palestinians would be eligible to naturalize. Any doubtful cases remain in limbo until they prove themselves one way or the other. But those trustworthy, why not. What constitutes "trust" is to be decided by the Israeli voter and government, Jew and Arab alike. Yet if you have someone, for example, who has saved an Israeli from an angry Arab mob, why would you not want such a person to join the State of Israel?

>>Pragmatically speaking, this "Conflict" has no end in sight, meaning that that Israel must act unilaterally to protect it's sovereignty and security.<<

The most unpragmatic thing would be to allow weaker peace plans to proceed ahead of Everyone Wins. At least Everyone Wins has built-in flexibility to grow as new conditions arise. Israel can't just keep dedicating itself over and over again to a different peace plans, neither can it not pursue peace.

I am all for unilateral naturalization of nice Palestinians Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza, according to a fair ratio of Jewish immigration rates. Happy? :)


Prof. A.F.