“When you balance between peace and war, who is the human being–what kind of values would he have–to choose war?” asks Attiyah, a 42-year-old language teacher. “Only killing comes out of that. Only hate.” All this could be over, he said, if Israelis and Palestinians could live in peace “in two states.”

Israeli specialist Dr. Reuven Or–a religious settler living on the occupied West Bank–will perform the procedure on Attiyah’s son. Dr. Or also believes that coexistence is possible. “In here it’s very peaceful, very optimistic,” he says. “If the peace process depended on the people, it could move much faster.”

George W. Bush thinks much the same way. So does Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrived in Israel late last week to mediate. Saudi Arabia has bought into the idea of a comprehensive peace. Even Palestinian Chairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon support a two-state solution, at least rhetorically. Who doesn’t support peace? Everyone does–on his or her own terms. (Press Attiyah and Or for the details of their respective visions of peace, and they’d almost surely be very different.) So what, precisely, is meant by Mideast “peace”? How do you define the borders? How do you ensure stability? And how do you get there when suicide bombers are on the prowl and troops are on the move?

Because it’s so very hard to get Arafat and Sharon into the same room, much less to negotiate, it makes sense, now, to start talking again about the parameters of a final peace, not just the process to get there. The 1993 Oslo accords that foundered, the Mitchell and Tenet plans that have never been implemented, were all based on step-by-step confidence-building that failed to end the violence or to build any confidence at all. In the current atmosphere of utter distrust, both sides believe they are fighting an us-or-them war of survival. Both need to know exactly what they are getting before they agree to give. Yet oddly, given the scope of the violence, realistic peacemakers on both sides know, basically, what that final deal would look like.

So here, then, are the basic contours of an eventual peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. It is not plucked out of nowhere. The ideas are mostly derived from the work of negotiators who have struggled, with the patience of Job, to find a middle ground. The most positive picture thus far was provided by the then Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton at the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001. By then, Clinton was a lame duck, Arafat had opted for violence and Sharon was on his way to replacing Barak as prime minister. The ideas were orphaned when Sharon was voted into office by Israelis who wanted tough measures, not peace talks, to end the violence. But the ideas did not disappear. And they can be improved upon:

ARTICLE I

Territory: Ever since Israel blitzed the Arabs in 1967’s Six Day War–taking the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank from Jordan–the concept of “land for peace” has been the cornerstone of all efforts to negotiate an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s still the only option. Israel will part with Gaza and almost all of the West Bank. On that land, the Palestinians will establish their own independent state. In return, the Palestinians and other Arabs will formally end their claims on the Jewish state and normalize ties.

But there must be some adjustments to the pre-1967 borders. Israel and the Palestinians should swap equal amounts of territory, allowing a majority of Israeli settlers in the West Bank to be brought under Israeli sovereignty, mainly in the large Gush Etzion, Ariel and Maale Adumim communities. By the same token, the Israelis would give up a land corridor between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, allowing for a free flow of traffic between the two. Conceivably, the Arab-Israeli communities inside Israel near the border of Palestine would like to be included in the new state. But that decision must be left to them.

ARTICLE II

Jerusalem: At Camp David, Bill Clinton wanted to prove a point about the sacred core of the antagonists’ 100-year conflict. So he sent Palestinian and Israeli negotiators back to their cabins to come up with a list of civic responsibilities they might be able to share in Jerusalem. The next day they brought back a list of roughly 60 items, from garbage collection to mail delivery. There was remarkable consensus. And Clinton thus gave them a glimpse of what was possible. He isolated the practical questions of running a municipality from the abstract and emotionally fraught issue of ownership–or sovereignty. He also identified a principle to deal with the most insoluble part of the riddle: how to divvy up the intangibles of a holy place with too much history and not enough geography.

In the end, Jerusalem must be divided–but shared, and serve as a capital to two states. The starting point is Clinton’s seductively simple notion that in occupied East Jerusalem, “what is Arab should be Palestinian and what is Jewish should be Israeli.” Of course, the closer one gets to the “holy basin,” Jerusalem’s religious core, the stickier things become. But following the Clinton formula, the Old City of Jerusalem would be divided between Israel and Palestine. Palestinians would hold sway in the Muslim and Christian quarters. The Jewish quarter would remain under Israeli sovereignty. The Armenian quarter would also go to the Palestinians, except for a corridor giving Jews passage to their holy places.

The showstopper, all along, has been the Temple Mount, the site where the ancient Jewish temple once stood, also known as the Haram al-Sharif, revered by Muslims as the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven. Here, Israelis and Palestinians must accept split-level sovereignty. The Islamic sites on the Temple Mount plaza, the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, would fall under Palestinian sovereignty. But the Western Wall and the subterranean space below the plaza, where Jews believe their temple lies in ruins, would be controlled by Israel. Neither side would be permitted to excavate beneath the Temple Mount platform. The painful principle behind this plan is that Jews and Arabs would have to set aside their competing claims over whose God is the True God and whose history is legitimate.

ARTICLE III

Refugees: The issue of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced out of Israeli territory in 1948, and their descendants, was the real deal breaker in Arafat’s talks with the Barak government at the end of 2000. There are more than 3 million such refugees living in camps on the West Bank and in Gaza, as well as in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Most of the Arab countries–and Arafat–have kept them stateless, poor and angry for half a century, preaching that one day they would return to the land they came from. A partial solution lies in bringing some of the refugees out of the foreign camps to live in the newly established state of Palestine. And a small, symbolic number might be allowed to move to Israel. But all must also have the option to stay, and gain citizenship, where they are. If the Arab world is serious about a lasting peace, it must give up the idea that all the refugees’ descendants should go back to Palestine or, for that matter, to Israel. If they did, the Jewish state could not survive as such. Nor can the Israelis be expected to admit the Palestinians’ “right of return” even as a theoretical notion. “This is where the narratives collide,” says Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst and former Mossad official. “They want us to say that our country was born in sin, and we’re responsible for all their misery all these years. That’s not going to happen.”

In lieu of return, the refugees must receive compensation from the international community, perhaps as part of a massive regional development plan. They must also be allowed the means and mechanisms, through international tribunals, to win further settlements. The objective should be to end violent conflict, and move the problem to the courts, where anger and resentments can be vented peacefully.

ARTICLE IV

Security: Throughout the peace talks in the fall and winter of 2000, one issue seemed oddly easier than all of the others: security. If politicians could forge a deal on the most contentious issues, then no-nonsense generals certainly could work out acceptable arrangements to defend their countries’ borders. But after 18 months of bloodshed, security agreements have become harder to take for granted. Now, more than ever, both sides will need clear assurances. Any Palestinian state must be largely demilitarized, though not “non-militarized.” Palestinian police forces would be allowed to maintain light arms to enforce domestic law and order. But Palestine, for a substantial period of time, should have no offensive capability, including heavy armor, missiles or air force. For its part, Israel would have to gradually withdraw its forces from the Jordan Valley, long considered of vital strategic importance. The withdrawal would take place under the supervision of an international force, and Israel would be allowed to maintain up to three early-warning stations on Palestinian territory. The state of Palestine would have sovereignty over its airspace, but would be limited to civil aviation. In exchange, Israel would not be permitted to conduct military operations or training in Palestinian airspace. Finally, Israel must allow Palestine to have sovereignty over its borders and international crossing points. But those borders and crossings should be monitored by an international presence.

ARTICLE V

The Syrian and Lebanese Fronts: So when the deal is done with the Palestinians, is peace at hand for Israel? Not quite. There remains the enormous obstacle of Syria and its vassal state, Lebanon. According to Itamar Rabinovitch, Israel’s chief negotiator on the Syrian track in the 1990s, “four Israeli prime ministers–Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Bibi Netanyahu [yes, Netanyahu] and Ehud Barak–all agreed to full withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for a peace agreement that matches Israel’s definition of full and secure.” Yet the deal collapsed in January 2000 because the late Syrian president, Hafez Assad, would not allow Israel to keep a road that runs around the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee at the foot of the Golan. Syria now should accept the return of the Golan and make peace. Israel, having given up the strategic heights, should be able to keep the road around the Sea of Galilee. The deal should also include an early-warning station on Mount Hermon, to be manned by a third party.

Can Sharon, Arafat and Bashar Assad reach these settlements on their own? No. “I’ve always thought that if both sides looked into the abyss, they’d back away,” one member of the Powell team confided to NEWSWEEK. “Well, we’ve seriously underestimated how much pain they could take–and how much they would inflict.” Saudi Arabia and Egypt now need to pressure their Arab friends; Washington needs to pressure Israel. And, still, that may not be enough. Which is why U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week called for the deployment of an international force in the occupied territories.

In practical terms, that means Americans. But that could become a quagmire every bit as nasty and brutal as Lebanon 20 years ago. (Hundreds of Americans lost their lives there trying to bring peace between Israel and the Arabs and, indeed, between Sharon and Arafat.) Today some parties to the conflict do not want a negotiated peace. Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians, and the zealots of Hizbullah in Lebanon, do not recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist. Effi Eitam, who has just been brought into the Sharon government as a member of the cabinet, does not recognize the rights of Palestinians to live on their own land in their own state anywhere west of the Jordan River. If such voices prevail, then the only strategy for peace is for one side or the other to impose surrender. And both sides can take–and inflict–a lot more pain before that will happen.