A Modest Proposal

Autonomous Arab Regions within the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael. An idea whose time has come.

I know, I know, it's been thought of before. But always on such a limited scale. The Land of Israel is far larger than the small part we are happen to call our homeland at the present time. At some stage, we're going to have to start taking responsibility for the other parts of the land God gave us.

Certainly, we have no interest in imposing direct rule over lands which are heavily populated by non-Jews. But it behooves us to make the point that this land is ours, even though we are content to allow the native populace to rule themselves.

Looking at the map, we can see the following autonomous regions:

• The Sinai Autonomous Region
  Egypt would be considered responsible for maintaining order in the SiAR. The President of Egypt would be considered the Israeli governor of that region, and a token stipend sent to him each year for services rendered.
• The Jordanian Autonomous Region
  The Jordanian monarchy would be one of the three hereditary governorships of autonomous regions, along with the monarchy ruling the Arabian Autonomous Region and the rulers of the Syrian Autonomous Region. It is currently divided into 52 districts (link).
• The Lebanese Autonomous Region
  It may be worthwhile to divide the LAR into two districts, or even into separate autonomous regions, using the Litani River as a boundary. In this way, the regional government of the LAR north of the Litani could be dealt with separately from that of the area south of the Litani, which might, if the unrest continues, be replaced with direct administration.
• The Arabian Autonomous Region
  This consists primarily of the Al Hudud ash Shamaliyah and Al Jawf provinces of what is otherwise known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• The Syrian Autonomous Region
  The SyAR consists of 11 of the 14 governorates currently governed by Damascus: Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Quneitra, Dara, As Suwayda, Homs, Tartous, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Aleppo. Note that parts of Quneitra are already under direct Israeli rule.
• The Turkish Autonomous Region
  This is a very small part of the area controlled by the government of Turkey.
• The Iraqi Autonomous Region
  With the current changes in the makeup of Iraq, it's difficult to pin down precisely which governorates would be included in the IAR.

Once all of this is set down on paper, and the local authorities apprised of their responsibilities as governors of parts of Eretz Yisrael, we can deal with "land for peace" issues in a more seemly manner.

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Edit: This is a scan I found online of one of the maps from Rabbi Yisrael Ariel's multi-volume Atlas of the Boundaries of Eretz Yisrael. They're in Hebrew, and there may be more than the two volumes I have, but if so, I haven't seen them.