The April 30 announcement by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani that the Arab states agree in principle to a land swap between Israel and Palestine, based on the 1967 border lines, failed to stir any particular excitement among Israel’s top political offices. That is a natural reaction, given the views of those leaders — it’s obvious they cannot trade sovereign Israeli territories for other territories that they also regard as their own and call “Judea and Samaria,” despite the fact that the rest of the world defines them as “occupied territories.” This is a non-starter. Even a child understands that in order to trade stamps with a friend, both of them have to at least agree that each is the proprietor of his own collection. As far as Israel is concerned, it owns most of the other side’s stamps, as well.

In a previous article, I noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strenuously objects to recognizing the June 4, 1967 lines as a basis for discussion from which to launch negotiations on mutual exchanges of land. His stand is deeply rooted in the revisionist worldview on which he was raised and educated.

Zionist Revisionism espoused a diplomatic struggle alongside a military one as a solution to the problem of the Jewish exile that was to culminate in the establishment of a Hebrew state in the Land of Israel along both banks of the Jordan River. Netanyahu is thus part of a school that believes Israel already made a major historical compromise when it declared independence 65 years ago: it gave up its right to sovereignty over the east bank of the Jordan. This school of thought rejects the internationally accepted Palestinian approach, which contends that the Palestinians adopted a compromise 25 years ago when they gave up their demand for a state in all of Palestine and recognized UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Those resolutions, which essentially call for Israeli withdrawal to secure and agreed-upon boundaries, define the 1967 borders (known as the Green Line) as the "peace lines" between Israel and the Arab states. In doing so, they leave the Palestinians with no more than 22% of the land of Palestine as it was defined under the British Mandate (the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean).

When negotiations on a permanent arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians began at Camp David in the summer of 2000, the Palestinians responded favorably to the Israeli-American proposal to alter the 1967 boundaries in a way that would enable Israel to annex the large settlement blocks in the West Bank. After it became public knowledge that Palestinian President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) had reached understandings in 2008 with then-prime minister Ehud Olmert regarding an exchange of territories, the Arab League and the the Organization of Islamic Cooperation still reiterated their unequivocal support for the Arab Peace Initiative. Even the major turmoil in the Middle East, including the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, did not change the Initiative.