For the first time in 14 years the Labor Party, now part of Zionist Union, has come out with a plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s based on the two-state solution crafted by Labor MK Hilik Bar, but the courageous innovation is opposition leader Isaac Herzog’s plan for separation in Jerusalem.

Herzog calls for most Jewish neighborhoods to be separated from Arab neighborhoods by a fence. This step would no doubt have wide ramifications that not everyone understands.

After all, one can’t close off a quarter million Palestinians in a pen between the new fence and the wall built after the second intifada, so the wall would have to be opened for Palestinian passage into the West Bank. Residents of those neighborhoods would be cut off from Jewish Jerusalem but would be linked once again to the West Bank economy, which they were cut off from by the separation barrier.

There would no longer be justification for these Palestinians to hold blue Israeli ID cards of the city from which they were separated. With or without coordination with the Palestinian Authority, the PA’s powers would gradually extend to the neighborhoods that have been connected to the West Bank.

Read the article in full at Haaretz.