Back from the Brink (Paperback) | Released: 22 Jun 2020

The conflict over the Holy Land has been an epic tragedy for over a century. It is considered the epitome of an intractable conflict, comprising a deeply entangled religious and national struggle that affects Jews, Muslims and Christians, Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs and Jews alike. And yet it is more crucial than ever a solution is found as the Middle East again spirals towards war, G-d forbid it should happen. In the mid-17th century, conventional thinking had not generated sustainable peace for a Europe roiled by one hundred years of national and religious conflict. So the peacemakers changed the thinking. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia laid the foundation for European prosperity. The innovations it introduced shaped the modern international state system as we know it today.The Oslo Accords for 25 years have shaped the conventional thinking on Palestinian-Israeli Peace. The global consensus views Oslo in a similar way Winston Churchill considered democracy - a flawed idea perhaps, but the best there is. This is a mistake. Grounded in separation, segregation and secularism, Oslo has not worked in the past. It seems unlikely to work in the future. The peacemakers need to change their thinking. A new framework is required that can generate the Middle East's own 'Westphalia moment', a constitutional settlement that lays to rest a century of national and religious struggle and provides the foundation for future prosperity and growth.Counter-intuitively, perhaps, the Trump Plan, in moving away from the Oslo parameters, may provide a framework for something better than Oslo to emerge. The Trump Plan is explicitly conceived as a starting point for negotiation. However, in recent times, the dynamics of permissive short-term politics has given rise to the mistaken sentiment that the same outcomes can be achieved unilaterally as would have been achieved through negotiation. As has already been learned through previous raw experience, there is a crucial outcome that cannot be achieved through unilateral imposition - a peace dividend, comprising its moral, security, social and economic dimensions. The radical new framework outlined here goes way beyond the conventional thinking of Oslo. It squares five apparently irreconcilable propositions that hold the key to a just and sustainable peace. In so doing, it introduces innovations not previously considered in the problem-solving toolkit on Israeli-Palestinian peace. Each party can go beyond previously held red lines, on a solid long-term foundation rather than as a result of shifting short-term political calculations, on the basis that both sides' national and religious imperatives can be secured much more holistically through a positive-sum peace than through a zero-sum conflict.By respecting the sincerely held, legitimate and reciprocal interests of both parties, and with guidance and support from the US and the wider international community, this framework can help lead to a negotiated peace that allows a hundred years of conflict finally to be resolved.All profits from this book shall be donated to peace-making charities.