The idea, most recently championed by Avigdor Lieberman, has long been seen by mainstream Israel as racist and undemocratic, a "transfer" of Israeli Arabs by another name; the ramblings of the far right; thoughts not suited for polite company.

Until now.

Uzi Arad, director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at Herzliya's Interdisciplinary Center and chairman of the Herzliya Conference, arguably the country's most prestigious conference, has come out squarely in favor of the idea. Indeed, it is a subject that will be discussed at length at the upcoming conference, scheduled to begin on December 13.

"The beauty of a swap is that you trade in kind," Arad says this week in an interview with The Jerusalem Post in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel. "It's not I give you money, and you give me land, or you give me peace and I give you land. It's I give you land, and you give me land."

The land-for-land deal Arad envisions is relatively simple. Israel hands over large Arab population areas contiguous with the West Bank, such as the Little Triangle in the center of the country, and in return receives the large settlement blocs and strategically vital, uninhabited areas along the Jordan River and in the southern Hebron Hills.

What Arad proposes is to take that parcel of disputed land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and re-partition it along today's demographic lines, and do so in a way that will ensure territorial contiguity.

Contiguity is essential, and is why the Galilee – even though it includes a large Arab population – cannot become part of the new Palestinian state: there is no contiguity.

You don't want to create cantons, Arad says, but rather contiguous units. An enlarged West Bank on one side, and Gaza on the other. If every Arab population center inside Israel becomes part of the Palestinian entity, then you would have to include Jaffa, something completely unrealistic.

"When you really think clearly, with a sense of historical depth, you notice the following things," says Arad, who worked in the Mossad for 25 years, and also served as senior foreign policy adviser to then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

"The whole history of the Israel-Palestinian dispute has been over land, and since the 1930s, whenever anyone came to the issue, the solution of choice was always one of partition. Whatever partition plan was drawn, it always followed demographic logic. Not planes, not history, not religion, not even security."

Arad, whose arguments follow impeccable logic and whose train of thought is not even interrupted by one incoming cellphone call after the next, says the same logic that fueled partition plans in the past based on demography and contiguity should be employed today. All that needs to be done, he says, is to update the ideas "and integrate them into the present."

"Therefore the Little Triangle – and some other part along the border with the Palestinian entity – could easily be handed over to the Palestinian Authority. This can be done because they are contiguous, because the people there feel more allied with them, and because we are certainly sovereign to withdraw. You cannot let a minority have a veto power over a majority decision."

Arad rails against the idea that the 1949 armistice line, known today as the Green Line, is sacrosanct. Umm el-Fahm, he recalls, became part of Israel in 1951 as a result of a secret deal between David Ben-Gurion and Jordan's King Abdullah I.

One such idea was raised over the summer in terms of a three-way Israeli-Egyptian-Palestinian land swap.

Israel, under this plan, would give Egypt a swath of land in the southwestern Negev; the Egyptians would give the PA land from Rafah to El Arish, tripling the size of Gaza; and then every kilometer given to the Palestinians would be subtracted from the 1967 lines, meaning that if the Palestinians received 600 square kilometers, Israel would retain an equal amount of land in the West Bank, around the settlement blocs.

The Egyptians, predictably, dismissed this out of hand. But Arad says some Egyptians have said that while this idea won't work during President Hosni Mubarak's lifetime, it may be something that could gain traction when the 77-year-old leader dies.

"This is not an idea for immediate implementation," Arad says. "It is something that could take place five or 10 years down the road." One plan that doesn't fit in with any of Arad's grand plans is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, a plan Arad dismisses as "silly," and which he says may irreparably damage Israel's ability to negotiate in the future with either the Palestinians over the West Bank or the Syrians over the Golan Heights.

"I feel Sharon did a terrible thing by completely relinquishing any security demands on the Palestinians in Gaza," he says. "He has created a precedent – a willingness to give land and uproot civilians – without asking for any quid pro quo. He asked for nothing, not a token arrest, not even a one-day police operation, not even having the 10,000 security personnel that [Muhammad] Dahlan conduct one search for explosives."

This precedent, Arad says, will come back to haunt Israel in talks with Syria. "That was a terrible, terrible destabilizing concession," he says. "It's no wonder Sharon's position has been weakened vis-a-vis the Syrians."

Arad says the Syrians may ask themselves why Sharon is being so demanding that they act against Hizbullah, yet at the same time is "so cavalier in not asking Dahlan to deal with Hamas."
"Why is a deal between Abdullah and Ben-Gurion holier than anything else, or why should it override an agreement by the sovereign government of Israel and the sovereign Palestinian entity?" he asks.

Arad says his logic in promoting the idea is simple: "I want a Jewish state as Jewish as it can be, with as substantial a majority of Jews. The Palestinians of Umm el-Fahm and the rest consider themselves Palestinians, they have mixed loyalties to Israel, about one-third are Islamic radicals, many of them have trade relations with the West Bank and they are contiguous to it.

"So rather than them being – in their own eyes – second-class citizens here, let them be patriotic, first-class citizens in their own entity."

But what if they don't want it, what if the residents of Tira and Taiba would rather stay second-class citizens here?

They don't want to be second-class citizens here, he argues, "they want to be subversive from within. They do not accept Israel as a Jewish state. If you ask them, 'Do you accept being Israelis?' they say yes. But when you ask if they accept Israel as a Jewish state, they say 'hmm.'"

This type of situation, Arad argues, would never be tolerated in other democracies. "If in America a national said 'I'm willing to live here but want to subvert the Constitution because I hate it, and I would like to turn America into an Islamic Republic,' no way would he be able to participate in political life."

What makes Arad's comments significant is not so much the content – these arguments have been heard in the past – but rather who is making them.

Arad is not coming from the far right-field bleachers. He is no Kahanist or Benny Elon groupie. He is a man with a doctorate from Princeton, a professor of government, a man who worked his way up to become the Mossad's director of intelligence and is so well-respected in academic and political circles internationally that his conference attracts marquee political and academic names from around the world year after year.

Asked why the Palestinians would go for such a scheme, Arad replies that it fits in logically with arguments they proffer regarding claims to east Jerusalem.

The only reason the Arabs have a claim to Jerusalem, Arad says, is because they accept the logic of the centrality of demography and contiguity. If they claim the Jerusalem Arab suburbs of Eizariya and Abu Dis because they are predominantly Arab, then they can't turn around and say Umm el-Fahm has to stay an integral part of Israel.

"Why do they claim Abu Dis and Eizariya, and why did they successfully convince Clinton of this claim? Because these areas are inhabited by Arabs – otherwise Jerusalem is ours, both historically and by virtue of our presence there. The only reason why we have to entertain their wishes, is because these areas happen to be dominated by Arabs.

"Now if that is the criterion in suburbs of Jerusalem, then it is also the case in Umm el-Fahm. You want to see Eizariya become part of the Palestinian entity, then take Umm el-Fahm. You reject Umm el-Fahm, then you can't make a similar claim on Jerusalem. The criteria cannot be applied selectively."

But if Israel uses this logic, then isn't it weakening its own position on the future control of Jerusalem? Maybe, Arad says, "but it may be acceptable as part of a grand deal."

Arad speaks often of "grand deals" – of different players making different moves. "Many things will happen only when you have a grand deal. That is why we have talked about swaps. If you work piecemeal, nothing gets done, but if you have the ability to have many tradeoffs, then you can do many things."

Unilateral disengagement from Gaza will hurt Israel's future negotiating position, Arad argues. "You should never make unilateral concessions, never. Look at the manual in Harvard on negotiations – negotiations do not proceed by leaps of unilateral concessions, because these types of concessions corrupt the process. When you then want to turn to real reciprocal concessions, the other side is spoiled, because its expectations have risen."

With Yasser Arafat's death and a new Palestinian leadership potentially emerging, Arad says Israel has the opportunity to revise the process and "introduce reciprocity into it." Now, he says, "is the time to restructure the plan."