David,

Offering to compensate 70,000 settlers is very cheap because those hard-core settlers that live deep inside the west bank will refuse the money and fight with teeth and nails, so Israel will not be able to take them out no matter what agreements it makes!

My question to you was not about those hopeless 70,000, it was about the poor 250,000 Israelis (mainly in eastern Jerusalem) that were forced to become occupier-settlers only for economic reasons and are not happy about it: would you or won't you agree that the state of Israel ought to compensate them so they can afford alternate housing within Israel?

You wrote: "A land swap offered by Israel equivalent to the other 6.5% would allow the remaining 430000 Jews to stay in their current homes in the West Bank."

- What kind of a favour, "allowing" people to do something they don't want and live in a place they hate: can't Israel be more compassionate towards its own citizens?

As for those 6.5%, Why insist on an "equivalent" when you can close a deal by offering the real thing? could that be because those 6.5% are not truly equivalent? perhaps not as fertile as the original 6.5%, perhaps not as continuous? or perhaps not as holy?

Strange, why should Israel "compensate" 70,000 Palestinians which it hasn't wronged in the first place (as it did to its own citizens)?

Here is a simple peace offer Israel could make:

1. Israel withdraws from the west-bank (perhaps in stages to the extent necessary for security reasons).
2. Israel provides alternate housing to all its citizens that live beyond its border who want it.
3. Israelis that choose to remain in the west bank, do so at their own risk: from then on it is considered an internal matter of the PA in which Israel does not interfere.

Keeping its own land; getting rid of the land which is the source of all its troubles (internal and international); doing justice to its good citizens; getting rid of its troublesome elements: What could be better for Israel?

Yuyutsu

Your proposal is not very original - parroting the Arab League demand for the last 41 years that the West Bank become Jew free and the Arabs get back every square metre they lost when they engaged Israel in the Six Day War.

Maintaining this kind of intransigence will ensure no progress towards ending the Arab-Jewish conflict. Until the Arabs moderate these claims you can kiss any peace agreement goodbye.

I still believe the only solution to progressing an end to the conflict involves Israel and Jordan dividing sovereignty of the West Bank between them.

David,

You still did not answer my question about providing alternate housing to those Jews who do not want to remain settlers, but are stuck in the west-bank because they have no other dwelling.

You believe that "the only solution to progressing an end to the conflict involves Israel and Jordan dividing sovereignty of the West Bank between them.":

Indeed, among all possible solutions, this is the only solution acceptable to you, but it is a very terrible solution that will mark the end of both Israel and Jordan as we know them now.

Never mind, the Jordanian king is intelligent enough to never accept this solution, so unless you want Israel to divide sovereignty between itself and itself, this is a mere fig-leaf, but just suppose...

Shortly after your solution is implemented, both countries will be undermined and overtaken by their fanatic extermists - Jewish and Muslim respectively, turning both into versions of Iran or Afghanistan where ordinary reasonable people, especially women, find it very hard to live. The conflict, also, will subsequently resume.

For reasons you have not yet disclosed, you simply want Israel to hold on to at least some of its occupied territories, and so far, unless you clarify your reasons, it seems to have nothing to do with security (at least you did not mention it) and everything to do with religious ideology. It seems that you do not have Israel's well-being in mind, but rather the well-being of something else that you wish to turn her into.