Our Policy
J Street supports a comprehensive regional agreement that ends the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and provides Israel full acceptance by 22 former Arab adversaries, global recognition of its borders, and comprehensive security and economic relationships with neighboring states. Such an agreement is only possible if it allows for Palestinians to achieve their rights through the creation of a state of their own.
As exemplified by the Abraham Accords, Sunni Arab states have concluded that it is in their economic and security interest to find a way to normalize relations with Israel. However, while some in Israel and the United States may have seen a path to normalization without addressing the Palestinian question, particularly in the wake of the Gaza War, Arab leaders including in Saudi Arabia, have made it abundantly clear that normalization is only possible with a clear commitment to a path to Palestinian statehood.
J Street has proposed a viable path to an effective diplomatic process in the wake of the Gaza war that builds on the regional normalization efforts of the past two administrations. It starts with major international investments in rebuilding Gaza and establishing a transitional governance and security architecture that can lead to the reunification of Gaza and the West Bank, and includes significant unilateral measures to be taken by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the United States, Israel’s neighbors, and the International Community, and finally dual-track negotiations that culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state and recognition of Israel by the Arab Sunni States.
As for what a Palestinian state would entail, despite a drop in support in recent years for the two-state solution, the contours of a workable negotiated outcome that would be broadly supported by both peoples are well known. Various initiatives by the parties and others have spelled out the principles and even many of the the details of such a resolution, including President Clinton’s parameters in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s proposal in 2008, the offer by Arab states and the Palestinians in 2013 to adjust and negotiate based on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and the official US principles put forward by Secretary of State Kerry under President Obama in 2016. These positions would ultimately have to be negotiated between the parties, and updated for the evolving situation.
J Street’s policy positions on the individual final status issues – and how they can be resolved as part of a conflict-ending agreement – can be found below.
Our Policy
A conflict-ending resolution that results in an internationally-recognized Palestinian state alongside Israel that is viable, secure, and prosperous is the only way to guarantee Israel’s security – and the safety of Israelis and Palestinians alike – in the long term. Nobody can guarantee a complete end to all violence once a peace deal is reached. But it is clear that without a negotiated resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, violence will continue. Indeed, Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory has not made Israel secure; in fact, as many Israeli senior security experts – and former security officials – have argued, the opposite is the case.
A negotiated resolution will ensure that Israel has secure, defensible, universally recognized borders. A cornerstone of such an agreement will be the fulfillment of Palestinian security obligations and the cessation of acts of violent terror. Accordingly, a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be accompanied by strong and enforceable security arrangements, such as those proposed by General John Allen in 2014, as well as an international mechanism that holds the parties responsible for maintaining their commitments.
Our Policy
A viable resolution to the conflict will result in the establishment of final, internationally recognized borders between Israel and a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines with limited, agreed-upon land swaps of equivalent size and quality. These borders would allow established Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and some of the large West Bank settlement blocs close to the Green Line to be incorporated into the State of Israel – resulting in communities that are currently home to three-quarters of all Israelis living over the Green Line becoming part of internationally recognized Israel.
Our Policy
The 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel also left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians as displaced refugees. Today, their descendants are scattered across the globe, many lacking citizenship and residing in refugee camps. A solution that offers a measure of justice, recognition of their plight and a mutually agreed-upon resolution of their status is a necessary part of a peace treaty.
Past peace proposals have offered Palestinian refugees citizenship in a future state of Palestine. Israel has also offered monetary compensation and a symbolic acceptance of some refugees into Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert reportedly offered to accept 5,000 refugees, while President Abbas has pressed for up to 60,000.
J Street believes that this issue may be resolved by giving all Palestinian refugees the right to live in the State of Palestine, providing monetary compensation for those who choose not to do so, launching an international effort to resettle all Palestinians still living in refugee camps into permanent homes, allowing those in other countries to resettle permanently in the countries in which they reside and allowing a very limited, primarily symbolic number of refugees to return to Israel for the purpose of family reunification.
Our policy
Jerusalem’s ultimate status and borders are matters that can only be resolved as part of a negotiated agreement between official Israeli and Palestinian authorities and endorsed by both peoples.
J Street believes that Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem and will be internationally recognized as such in the context of an agreed conflict-ending resolution, through which the majority-Jewish areas of Jerusalem are recognized as the capital of Israel and Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem become the capital of the future Palestinian state.
Negotiations have produced creative ideas for resolving the hardest issues, including sovereignty and management arrangements for the Old City and the Holy Basin that guarantee all Jews freedom of access and worship at the Western Wall, as well as freedom of access and worship for all peoples to their respective holy sites.
In advance of a negotiated resolution, all sides should refrain from unilateral actions – including new construction of Jewish housing in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, evictions, demolitions and mass revocations of Palestinians’ residency status – that will make the ultimate resolution of this issue even more difficult.
J Street believes diplomacy and the prospects for progress toward a resolution to the conflict would be aided by reinstating an independent US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in East Jerusalem that is physically and institutionally separate from the US Embassy — and by declaring that it is the intention of the United States, upon the achievement of a negotiated resolution to the conflict, to open an embassy to the Palestinian state in East Jerusalem.
A viable resolution to the conflict will recognize the right of the Jewish people to statehood and recognize the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the parties’ respective citizens – in other words, two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Palestinian, with mutual recognition and full equal rights for all their respective citizens.