Principles

Outside the Box

The Just Peace Agreement has been created by thinking outside the box. The box in this case is the long-running cycle of terrorism and reprisal and half-hearted negotiations that drag on for decades between participants whose hands are tied by the very problems they are trying to solve, leading to agreements that are barely implemented or not implemented at all.

Some of the results of thinking outside the box are unfolded in the next paragraphs...

No Zero-Sum Game

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed insoluble because it was left to the two parties themselves to negotiate a solution with limited territory, resources, money, power and goodwill to divide between them. Whatever was a gain for Palestine was seen as a loss for Israel, and every gain for Israel was a loss for Palestine.

In the Just Peace Agreement we break out of this zero-sum game, creating a new situation in which a gain for one party is a gain for the other. Both Israel and Palestine benefit from every step. Whatever Palestine gains in territory, security, development, prosperity and power helps to remove the causes of violence and so makes Israel more secure and prosperous too. Every gain for Israel is balanced by a comparable gain for Palestine, making it overwhelming attractive to all Palestinians to sign up for a non-violent future under the Just Peace Agreement.

The agreement is not tied into a zero-sum game because of the next principle...

External Donation

In the Just Peace Agreement, everything that is needed to create equality between Israel and the new State of Palestine, and that cannot be found inside the two states, is got from outside; from neighboring states, from America or Europe or Japan or China or Russia, or from the rest of the world.

For instance, everyone assumes it is impossible to create the State of Palestine with the same area of territory as the State of Israel. But, thinking outside the box, the Just Peace Agreement asks Egypt and Saudi Arabia (helped a little by Jordan, Syria and Israel, and other Arab states who want join in) to donate territory to Palestine and make the two states the same size.

The same principle is applied in the much more important matter of development, with the aim of bringing Palestine to the same level as Israel in prosperity, employment, and every other measure of economic, social, environmental and cultural attainment, within two decades. Yet amazingly the Just Peace Agreement does not ask anything of any country in the world that they cannot easily afford and will not be willing to contribute to the overall peace package.

Israeli and Palestinian politicians could never have come up with a solution to their conflict so ambitious, so complete and so audacious, however long they talked...

Not Negotiated

The Just Peace Agreement is not the result of any negotiations. In fact an agreement like this cannot come out of a gradual incremental process of demand, rejection, and compromise. It has to be constructed as a total package, by people who have nothing to do with the conflict...

Independent and Neutral

The authors of the Just Peace Agreement are not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Jewish, not Arab, not Muslim, not Christian. We have nothing to do with the countries, the peoples or the religious sites. We understand but do not share the beliefs and the emotions of Palestinians and Israelis. We will gain nothing from the agreement.

As a result, the Just Peace Agreement is strictly independent, neutral and balanced, even if some people say it is not. Our aim in writing this treaty has been to make a way that leads straight, rapidly and practically to two equal states living side by side in complete peace, security and growing prosperity and co-operation, with balanced rights and powers, and surrounded by countries who are at peace with both of them. Only people from outside the region, with nothing to gain from it, could have the audacity to ask everyone in the world to contribute in the way that we do in this agreement.

The Just Peace Agreement always looks for the positive solution that is not destructive, but is constructive...

Ambitious yet Practical

The agreement is certainly the most ambitious plan ever for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — it may be the most ambitious plan for resolving any conflict in human history. It needs to be so ambitious because we want every Palestinian to be quite sure this is the best path, better than the path of violence, not just at the beginning but throughout the decades over which the implementation of the JPA will unfold in practice: this is the only way security can be assured in the long term for both Israel and Palestine.

So the plan must be attractive and yet must be deliverable. It is a dream which has to come true in reality.

The agreement promises a just peace and is carefully crafted to make its promise affordable and deliverable in practice. But is this justice?

Justice through Parity

The Just Peace Agreement will deliver justice based on parity — approximate equality and comparability between Israel and Palestine and between their two peoples.

This is not justice based on restoration. Still less is it justice based on retribution. It was never going to be possible to restore to everyone what they had lost; that would be unjust to those on the other side who would lose what they had fought for and built. And instead of retribution, the Just Peace Agreement implements a total amnesty on both sides, drawing a "line in time" under all previous offences and wrongs, so that everyone can start afresh.

Parity is not just one of the principles used by the authors of the JPA in writing the treaty; it is written into the treaty itself, and applied in every article to ensure just treatment and equality of the two peoples.

Parity is one key unusual principle of the Just Peace Agreement, but not the only one. The way the agreement will be implemented is also unique...

Rolling Program

The Just Peace Agreement is first published as a working draft on the web and attracts millions of ordinary people from all over the world who sign up online to support it.

As soon as one of the principal parties decides they want to see the Just Peace Agreement implemented, they can adopt it, which means they publicly state their intention to implement it. Then they start to implement the parts of the agreement that are their responsibility, even before the opposite party does so and before the agreement is formally signed. This builds credibility in them and their commitment to the agreement in advance of signing.

When all the parties join in the early stages of implementation, which are sequenced by an international representative, they can go ahead and sign the agreement. Later stages of implementation over the following fifteen years are guided by an inter-governmental committee set up under the agreement, the Israel-Palestinian Co-operation Committee, and its many subcommittees.

But how long will it take?

Fast Track to the Future

The Just Peace Agreement always looks to the future peace that it will achieve and not back at the past. So nothing in the agreement is punishment or revenge or oppression or control. Everything is reaching forward to co-operation, mutual trust, harmonious trade and working together, interchange and equality. Because it never looks back, the agreement can be implemented very fast, as a quantum leap to the final state rather than a drawn-out evolutionary process.

Even those parts of the implementation that will take time are fast tracked. The economic development program to parity is scheduled over just fifteen years, driven by robust financial support from the international community, on-the-job training by international experts, and the ambitious timetable for resettlement of Palestinian refugees.

The agreement is yours, and its implementation...

Bottom Up

Above all, the Just Peace Agreement is democratic. Created and written and supported by ordinary people from all round the world, it is a gift from us to the ordinary people of the region, Israelis and Palestinians alike. We are confident this Just Peace delivers what you really want, that you will support it too and get your leaders to adopt it and implement it, just as we will get our leaders to fulfill their parts. In the end it is ordinary people who will implement the Just Peace Agreement completely and make it work.