YOSSI BEILIN

Israeli and Palestinian public figures have drawn up a new proposal for a two-state confederation that they hope will offer a way forward after a decade-long stalemate in Mideast peace efforts. The plan calls for an independent state of Palestine in most of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel and Palestine would have separate governments but coordinate at a very high level on security, infrastructure and other issues that affect both populations.

An independent Palestinian state is widely seen as meeting both sides aspirations. For many Jews, Israel is an integral part of their identity, on religious grounds or as an insurance policy in the wake of the Holocaust and an age of modern anti-Semitism. Beinart readily concedes that he and many other American Jews have historically paid little attention to Palestinian voices. In the past, he has accused mainstream Jewish American leaders of blind support for what he thinks are self-destructive Israeli policies. Israel is interesting to me only because this is a Jewish state but Jewish and democratic.