WASHINGTON: After nearly a decade of deadlock, Israel and the Palestinians should revise their elusive peace efforts to engage Jordan and Egypt as partners in a land-for-peace agreement, a former Israeli national security chief proposed Tuesday. The gap becomes wider and wider rather than narrower and narrower in passing years, former Lt. Gen. Giora Eiland said in sketching out his proposal at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Even if resumption of negotiations occurs from time to time we will be sitting here 15 years from now, he said. The basic outline of Israel yielding land for a Palestinian state in exchange for peace and security would remain at the core of Eiland s peace accord, as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But he said the Palestinians would contract out the role of security in part of the new Palestinian state to neighboring Jordan. And, Eiland said, Gaza would be expanded to take over a slice of Egypt s Sinai desert in exchange for some land in southern Israel. The proposal drew a tepid response from Martin Indyk, who was US ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration, and from Jordanian Ambassador Prine Zeid Ra ad Zeid al-Hussein, who also attended the seminar. Indyk said the next US administration should inject more energy into the basic trade-off plan former President Bill Clinton pushed with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. And the Jordanian ambassador said 27 percent of Israelis approve of the long-time proposal and it remains the right approach.
