The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians looks so hopeless that only crazy people can still imagine a solution.

But, lo and behold, two ex-Cabinet ministers, one Israeli, one Palestinian, have been daft – or brave – enough to put forward a detailed plan for a final agreement that lays out plausible solutions for the most divisive issues.

Called the Geneva Accord, the plan has no official standing. (Yasser Arafat vaguely backed it, Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party denounced it). But that is precisely its virtue.

The plan aims to go over the heads of leaders who have propelled their people toward disaster, and to appeal directly to the two publics. At a time when the official peace process is dead, the Geneva Accord shows a way out.

“On both sides … people are desperate,” said former Labor Party Justice Minister Yossi Beilin in his Tel Aviv office. “They don’t believe they have a partner. The question was how we could convince Israelis and Palestinians that they did have a partner.”

So Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, with a group of prominent Israeli and Palestinian moderates did something unprecedented. They mapped out details of a final accord that might be acceptable to both sides – and dared to sign the document.

A copy has been mailed to every Israeli home, and tens of thousands of copies are being distributed by major Palestinian newspapers. The hope is that broad public discussions will create a groundswell for peace.

“It’s the first time in our history,” Abed Rabbo told me in Ramallah, “that Israeli and Palestinian groups laid out a solution which is final, detailed, conclusive, no ambiguities.” The goal, he said, was to show there could be an agreement “that could make both sides understand what is win/win.”

The document builds on proposals made by President Clinton at the end of the Oslo process. The Palestinians would get a demilitarized state in all of Gaza and 97.5 percent of the West Bank, monitored by a multinational force. Most Israeli settlements would go, but Israel would keep the many suburbs it has built on West Bank land around Jerusalem.

In a key concession, the number of Palestinian refugees permitted to return to Israel would be sharply limited to around 30,000 to 40,000. Refugees’ “right of return” would be only to the new Palestinian state, though they would get compensation. Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (where an international presence would guarantee free access to visitors). Israelis would have sovereignty over the Wailing Wall.

Israeli government critics point out that both publics rejected the Oslo process, in which Beilin and Abed Rabbo were negotiators. Yet polls on each side show that around 40 percent of Israelis and Palestinians support the Geneva Accord concept. Polls also show a majority on each side still supports a two state solution.

What motivates both Beilin and Abed Rabbo is the fear that the window is closing on a two-state option.

For Beilin the nightmare is this: If Israel keeps the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli Jews will soon become a minority in Greater Israel. Either they will rule over a disenfranchised Arab majority, fueling unending violence, or they will be submerged in a binational state that no longer serves as a safe haven for world Jewry.

Abed Rabbo’s nightmare: If hope for a Palestinian state dies, religious fanatics will dominate the West Bank and Gaza.

Both men see rightly where things are heading. The situation is so grim that four former Israeli security chiefs just warned that Israel faces catastrophe if it doesn’t soon reach a peace.

Fully focused on Iraq, the United States has virtually turned its back on the peace process.

Beilin and Abed Rabbo will formally launch the accord in Geneva on Dec. 1, in hopes of unfreezing a paralyzed peace process. Wish them well.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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