As a young and alert person growing up in Israel, my witnessing of the Israeli-Palestinian brutal conflict and constant hostilities provided my fertile mind with all sorts of dreams and thoughts. From a very early age, I began searching for possible paths to end this vicious cycle. Studying history, philosophy and political science were helpful to me, but did not provide real answers. Eventually a good start to figuring it all out occurred at the end of my military service, when an article in one of the Israeli newspapers provided me with a partial answer. The article was an interview with the former Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Amit. Amit’s argument, or call it the summation of his lifelong service to the Israeli Nation, was summed up in one sentence: to rephrase it, If we the Israelis will not integrate into the region, our chances for survival are slim.

A number of years later, as a graduate student in New York City, I worked part time as a researcher in the office of Hillel Kook, better known in America as Peter Bergson. In his office 45 years ago, I finally put together and wrote down on paper what I understood to be an overall theory of the peaceful survival between the Israelis and Palestinians. I named my theory Am Lo Levadad Ishkon, a Nation Cannot Survive in Total Isolation. Therefore, in order to end the conflict, the Israelis and the Palestinians will have to build a political partnership, creating one nation best modeled after that of the Swiss Republic. They will have to write a constitution, divide the land into cantons, and thus start a new beginning in their political and cultural existence.

The current conflict in Gaza has provided me with additional intellectual energy. If there is a way to bring Hamas and the Israelis together to converse about a start to a solution, here is what I would suggest: that a city-state be built on the border between Israel and Gaza, the model of which might resemble Singapore, with a seaport, an airport and an Israeli Palestinian partnership that will mark the beginning of a new era in Middle East politics. If such a project were to come about, I think it would consequently reduce antisemitism and hostility toward both Jews and Muslims. It would also provide the world-at-large with an idea that conflicts can be resolved if there is the desire to solve them.

Eliyho Matz lives in Great Barrington.