ALL THAT'S LACKING IS THE WILL TO LEAD:

In Mideast, peace map is in sight (H.D.S. Greenway, March 1, 2011, Boston Globe)

The good news is that majorities in both Israel and the West Bank favor peace and a two-state solution, polls show. And leaders on both sides have agreed in principle to land swaps to allow some Jewish settlements to stay inside Israel. These poll numbers decrease when you get to the specifics, but in general both peoples are for it.

The Palestinians will insist on an equal, acre-for-acre swap. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, in a move for which he has not been given enough credit, has said Israel need not annex the Jordan River Valley, which goes beyond other Likud Party positions. This makes an equal land swap possible without too much disruption. Of course, Israel would have to be assured that the Jordan-West Bank border would not be a tunnel-ridden sieve like the Egyptian-Gaza border. That might necessitate stationing Israeli border guards within a Palestinian state. But border controls are not an insurmountable obstacle.

Israel wants to leave as many Jewish settlers in place as possible, rather than go through the social and political agony of removing them. Palestinians care more about the equality of the swap: getting good land back for what they give up.

Enter David Makovsky, former editor of the Jerusalem Post and now director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Project on the Middle East Peace Process. In a report entitled “Imagining the Border,’’ Makovsky offers three detailed maps of possible land swaps that are all within the parameters of what former Israeli and Palestinian leaders have already agreed upon in previous negotiations.