The baseline figure for the total Gaza/West Bank area is 6,195 square kilometers (about 2,392 square miles), which is the relevant area won by Israel in the 1967 war. It includes the northwest portion of the Dead Sea, one-half of No Man’s Land, and all of East Jerusalem, except Mount Scopus.
Although negotiators understand the importance of ensuring territorial contiguity for a future Palestinian state—a key principle in determining the swaps suggested here — these maps do not currently include a proposal for contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank. However, the parties have discussed a variety of options for such a corridor, including sunken roads and tunnels. Any of these options would involve a relatively small amount of land.
Under these three map scenarios, the number of settlers not annexed by Israel ranges from 59,782 settlers in 77 settlements in Map 1 to 94,226 settlers in 88 settlements in Map 3. Voting records from 2009 indicate that approximately half of these non-bloc settlers are probably children. Many consider Jewish construction projects in East Jerusalem as settlements, but Israel considers East Jerusalem an inseparable part of Israel. Thus each map contains two calculations of the settler population; one with the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem, and one without. However, the total land area calculated in this report is based on all relevant territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
Kiryat Arba will most likely be the most contentious settlement in any land-swap agreement. It is located on the outskirts of Hebron, home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Ibrahimi Mosque, a shrine that holds religious and historical significance for both Jewish and Muslim people. Yet, Kiryat Arba’s protrusion into the West Bank, and the fact that it is surrounded on almost all sides by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, renders it very difficult to annex. Given the religious significance of Hebron, however, Israel might attempt to negotiate a narrow corridor connecting Kiryat Arba to Israel through the southeast corner of the West Bank. This would make travel to Jerusalem more cumbersome for settlers of this bloc, but would be preferable to their dislocation.
After Kiryat Arba, the largest non-bloc area not included in any of the maps is Kedumim, home to 3,500 settlers. This is a northern protrusion off the north of the Ariel bloc; since it is separated from the main bloc by several Palestinian villages, its inclusion in Israel would be difficult.
The settlers in these areas and others outlined in Maps 1-3 will most likely have to be evacuated completely, as the alternative of remaining under Palestinian rule is both problematic and unlikely.
Theoretically, the parties could pursue an alternative scenario in which non-bloc settlers were not displaced at all, but rather remained where they were under Palestinian sovereignty. On paper, this approach has surface appeal because it would eliminate the need for coercive dislocation.
However, there are several reasons to be skeptical. First, virtually all of the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank moved there intending to live under Israeli, not Palestinian, sovereignty. Second, for the small number who chose to remain in a Palestinian-run West Bank, it is unclear whether they could live there harmoniously. Specifically, once Israel withdraws its military forces from non-annexed portions of the West Bank, Hamas elements and other extremists may decide to take advantage of the emergence of the fledgling state to settle longstanding scores with remaining settlers. Some have even speculated that the most ideological settlers could initiate a confrontation, which could force the Israeli military to return in order to defend them. For these and other reasons, allowing non-bloc settlers to remain in the West Bank might complicate the implementation of any peace agreement.
The scenarios outlined in Maps 1-3 are aimed in part at minimizing the pain for Israeli decision makers, while maintaining the 1:1 ratio that is so important to the Palestinians, thereby making a solution more feasible. Interestingly, recent voting behavior indicates that the bloc settlers who would be annexed under these scenarios may be amenable to such land swaps.
In fact, the correlation between where the settlers live and how they vote is remarkably strong. In the 2009 Knesset election, for example, bloc settlers felt comfortable voting for the Likud Party and its presumptive prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, trusting that in any two-state scenario, their homes would be annexed to Israel. In contrast, the non-bloc settlers are more likely to vote for the more radical National Union settlement party, which opposes any form of territorial partition with the Palestinians.
Settlement areas not discussed in these three scenarios are non-bloc settlements, and therefore isolated and not adjacent to the pre-1967 borders.
By David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.