lie would comprise the west bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip. Transjordan could join it if its inhabitants were able and willing so to decide.
Jerusalem as a unified city would become the federal capital, as well as the capital of both states, thus finding a solution-the only practical one, I believe-to an issue charged with emotions, both religious and nationalist, which make retreat for either side impossible.
The federal agreement should be preceded by an economic, political and military pact. It should safeguard the military security of Israel by forbidding foreign armies to enter the territory of Palestine, guaranteeing this in a practical way by a system of military coordination between the armies of Israel and the Arab republic of Palestine on the lines of NATO or the Warsaw Pact. It should unify the economy of the area, which had been one economic entity from the dawn of history to 1948, including the two hundred years of the Crusader State. It should establish some form of political coordination, providing, for example, that neither Israel nor Palestine should enter any foreign alliance without the agreement of the other. This is the bare minimum, which could be expanded, gradually and by mutual consent, into a deeper and more significant federation, once Arab Palestine catches up, economically and socially, with Israel.
Such, then, is the plan which the government of Israel should offer the Palestinian-Arab nation, those residing in the territories now occupied by the Israeli Army and those outside, who must be allowed to return.
Many doubts and objections have been raised to this plan. Some of my Arab friends fear that such a Palestinian republic would be free in name only, becoming in reality a kind of Bantustan, like the so-called "autonomous" Negro reservations set up by the racist white regime in South Africa. This danger would exist if the plan were used by an anti-Arab regime in Israel as a camouflage for what would really be colonialist expansion. But every