RAMALLAH, April 5 (JMCC) - Several prominent Israelis plan to unveil a peace initiative Wednesday, in an effort to break what they view as Israel's international isolation and drum up public support for peace.
“We looked around at what was happening in neighboring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public raised its voice as well,’ ” said Danny Yatom, a signer of the document and former head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. “We feel this initiative can bring along many members of the public.”
Another member of the group, Yaakov Perry, a former head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, said he sent a copy of the document on Sunday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who replied that he looked forward to reading it.
The two-page plan,
made available to the New York Times, calls for a Palestinian state on the borders occupied by Israel in 1967 with adjustments and land swaps.
The city of Jerusalem would be a capital for both Palestinians and Israelis, with Arab parts of the city under Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish neighborhoods controlled by Israel. Only the city's main mosques, the Haram al-Sharif compound, would remain outside this arrangement.
While the document acknowledges the suffering of Palestinian refugees, it only allows them to be financially compensated and to return to the state of Palestine.
The plan also contains a regional component in answer to the Arab peace initiative, ideas endorsed by the Arab League were Israel to withdraw from land occupied in 1967.