"While Israel is consumed with the issue of disengagement," he says, in the style of someone well-versed in diplomacy, "the rest of the world isn't standing still; it's already thinking about the post-disengagement period. And over time, if we're not articulating what our long-term goals are, others' impressions of what final-status talks will look like begin to coagulate and harden."

It is for this reason, he explains, that he and JCPA senior policy analyst Dan Diker, who is also Knesset Affairs correspondent and analyst for Channel 1, have been working behind the scenes in the world of ideas to prepare for the aftermath of the pullout.

Gold blames Israel's constantly being "bombarded by short-term developments – with a new news cycle every six hours" for its difficulty in creating and conveying an overall message.

Appearing regularly on foreign television as an informal spokesman for the country, Gold is familiar with having to put out immediate tactical fires at the expense of hitting home a broader strategic point.

What do you mean by 'articulating our long-term goals? What are they?

For the past 10 years, if you ask most Palestinians what they want from the peace process, they will uniformly answer, "a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital." A well-defined, specific objective. Over the same 10 years, if you ask most Israelis what they want from the peace process, they say, "Uh... peace."

When one side has a defined goal, and one side has an abstract goal, the advantage is to the party with the defined goal.

Isn't this because the Palestinians are trying to obtain something concrete – territory – while Israel has to retain legitimacy? What objective could Israel possibly focus on other than peace?

I've been involved in many negotiations with the United States over presenting Israel's ultimate goals. During the Hebron negotiations in 1997, the American team asked our advice about what kind of assurances we would like from secretary of state Warren Christopher. We received a letter of assurances stating that Israel had the right to secure and defensible borders. Our idea was that a defensible border was one that Israel could defend by itself, not merely through a NATO guarantee or a US-Israel defense treaty with a trigger that prompts American intervention.

Later on that year, prime minister Netanyahu asked me to accompany him to the White House, where we presented maps giving an approximate idea of our ultimate goals in territorial terms.

I also accompanied Ariel Sharon on his first trip to the White House in 2001, and helped prepare the presentation to President Bush which also went over some of these points about Israel having certain defense requirements in territorial terms.

When you refer to 'defining our territorial requirements,' don't you mean withdrawals? Unlike the Palestinians, who can aim at something they don't have, Israel is saying: "We are willing to retreat from X, Y, and Z. Whatever we put forth as a territorial goal, it is less than what we have now. Correct?

That's true. It is less than what we have today.

So, would you still call it a goal?

Unless we articulate that we have territorial rights in the West Bank for defensible borders, sooner or later we will find ourselves fighting over the '67 lines. This is what I want to avoid.

When most people talk about the boundaries between a Palestinian state and Israel, they have certain reference points. For example, they use the term "viable Palestinian state." They claim that the '67 lines are absolutely necessary for a such a state, because anything less would not be viewed by the Palestinian people as legitimate.

Furthermore, many analysts look at the whole issue of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood and ask what its limitations are. Their answer is Israeli settlements. So the methodology goes like this: How does one draw a line in the West Bank to pack in the maximum number of Israelis into the minimum amount of territory? Once that line is figured out, they assess, a solution to the conflict is at hand.

I was approached two years ago by members of Congress, who said, "When you say 'Palestinian state,' most people think '67 lines. No one is hearing any counterpoints to that."

When Prime Minister Sharon presented the disengagement plan to President Bush on April 14, 2004, it was pretty clear – since Arafat was still alive – that he didn't think he could get a quid pro quo from the Palestinians. He did think, however, that he could get one from the United States. What he got was a letter from the president which talked about Israel's realistic expectation to retain settlement blocs in the West Bank. It also used the expression "defensible borders."

I took that expression and built a conference around it at the Knesset six months later, in conjunction with MK Yuval Steinitz.

At the conference, I talked about US policy – about Resolution 242 and about "defensible borders," among others – and turned it into a user-friendly booklet in English, with pull-quotes and attractive maps.

Everybody forgets that Resolution 242 never required Israel to withdraw fully from the territories it accrued in the '67 war. In fact, the fight over the wording of the resolution – whether to say, "withdraw from territories," "withdraw from the territories" or "withdraw from all the territories" – wasn't at the level of a nit-picking drafting team in New York.

Another reason we chose the term "defensible borders" as our mantra had to do with the late Yitzhak Rabin. One month before he was assassinated, he presented the interim agreement for ratification by the Knesset. Amazingly, in that speech, he laid out the future borders of Israel! He spoke of the Jordan Valley in the widest sense of the term. He talked about the settlement blocs. He talked about united Jerusalem.

Why is it relevant that he laid out future borders? Had he lived, what guarantee is there that he would have upheld his own speech?

There's no guarantee. But remember, this speech was given two years after the Oslo process was launched. If you pull a speech from Rabin from 1976, you'll say, "So what?" But he's already two years into Oslo. What has happened is that Rabin's successors confused what his legacy really was. Many have taken the Rabin legacy and run off with it to the far Left. But the real Rabin legacy is what the man said in the Knesset a month before he was killed.

So, our initiative leans heavily on his legacy. And it's been very well-received in Washington.

Was it well-received because of the connotations Rabin's name invokes?

I think it's because there's a thirst for understanding what Israel's bottom line is. This is mainly why we didn't include a map of Israel's future borders in our booklet, but rather a description of the map. We felt that if there were a map, people would tear out the map and throw away the rest of the study.

One main point we are stressing is the vital importance of the Jordan Valley. Rabin talked about the Jordan Valley in the widest sense of the term: not the riverbed, but after the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge from above the Allon Road down to the Jordan River.

Classically, the concern with the Jordan Valley was in response to the threat of an Iraqi expeditionary force that could join the eastern front coalition against Israel and cross the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 36 hours. So you could say, "Wait a minute. The Iraq war removed that threat, so maybe Israel doesn't need the Jordan Valley anymore."

Our answer – which comes from the former deputy head of military intelligence and current head of the national war college – is: Does anybody know what's going to be in Iraq in five, 10, 15 years' time? Most people don't know what's going to be in five months. So can Israel develop a national strategy on the basis of a snapshot of reality in 2003? Or does it have to take into account long-term possibilities?

Second of all, most people say, "Wait a minute. You're at peace with Jordan. Why are you concerned with a few future developments in Iraq or Iran?"

Well, again, I think every Israeli hopes that the Hashemite Kingdom stays there forever with the Hashemite monarchy in power. But can anybody be certain that in 10 or 15 years the Hashemite Kingdom will be there in its current form?

But the fact is that many Israeli academics and politicians have argued that we no longer need the Jordan Valley. And the US certainly would want to base Israel's strategy on the "snapshot" of the Iraq war. Many American academics and politicians claim that the threat to Israel from its eastern border has been removed.

I think that's fundamentally wrong. The United States needs to retain military strength for all kinds of scenarios in the future – if Russia becomes hostile again and the Cold War is resumed, for example, or if China becomes a great power in 10 or 15 years and challenges American supremacy in the Pacific. With Israel's narrow security margins, shouldn't Israel have that kind of thinking as well?

On the more tactical level, because I wrote a book on Saudi Arabia and the rise of al-Qaida, I'm very sensitized to developments in global jihad. Today there is a regional al-Qaida presence developing in Iraq that stretches from southern Syria into western Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia, and is active in all those countries.

Now, I promise you that if Israel leaves the Jordan Valley, that presence of both advanced weaponry and insurgents could link up with Palestinian organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and pose a mortal threat to Israel.

People say: "Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

I always answer: "Where are the shoulder-to-air missiles, the SA7's, that belong to the Iraqi army? Where's the arsenal? It's gone. It's with the terrorist organizations."

Imagine SA7's coming across the Jordan Valley to the hills of the West Bank that are aimed at Ben-Gurion Airport!

That's why we must retain the Jordan Valley as Rabin suggested in his final address.

Why is the Jordan Valley different from Gaza? Doesn't relinquishing control of the Philadelphi Corridor to Egypt leave the area open to al-Qaida presence as well?

We decided as a group that we were not going to discuss Gaza abroad. Gaza is a point of tremendous dispute in Israel. And we didn't want to bring our internal debate to the United States. Different people in our "defensible borders" group have different views on the issue of Gaza. I have my very own strong feelings, but I don't want to go into them right now. I am focused on the next phase. Debating Gaza, I felt at this point, was fruitless. I felt that if somebody wanted to debate Gaza, or talk about what Israel might have needed in Gaza, that should have taken place six years ago. Now is the time to look ahead.

Yet many issues that didn't used to be "points of dispute" in Israel have become so. Today, even Jerusalem is no longer beyond debate.

I firmly say that Jerusalem must never, ever, be divided. The proposals made at Camp David by prime minister Barak and later enshrined by president Clinton, must simply be – have been – formally removed from the negotiating table, and must never come back. Former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter said that the only way to go back to the Clinton parameters would be if Ahmed Tibi were to become prime minister of Israel and Dehamshe defense minister. I'd sign on to that assessment.

Then why doesn't your mantra, "defensible borders," include the phrase "with Jerusalem as its undivided capital"?

A policy-maker down the road may decide to do that, but we are focused here on a purely security argument. And since "defensible borders" came out of President Bush's lexicon and has been in the American diplomatic parlance for more than a decade, we felt that it was the proper issue for us to focus on, both in our original seminar in the Knesset and in our presentations abroad.

Doesn't "defensible borders" lend itself to broad interpretation?

I believe all those who are concerned with Israel's security can get under the tent of "defensible borders," whether they support Israel retaining 20 percent of the West Bank or 50%.

Also, I have found that in Washington there is always the danger that the last set of proposals that were put on the negotiating table can come back to haunt you. So while president Clinton himself stated that the Clinton parameters are off the table – and president Bush said they're off the table – nevertheless, the ghost of those proposals is still hovering over the discourse about Israel's future borders. And we've got to counteract that.

Is that ghost haunting the road map?

The road map is silent about the issue of borders. But many former officials in the administration could say that the road map is consistent with the Clinton proposals.

What I'm trying to do here is to break the grip of those who are locking in our future to withdraw to nearly the '67 lines.

The argument could be made that if Israel withdrew to the '67 borders, the Palestinians would no longer be hostile, and therefore those borders would be defensible.

What Israel found in 10 years of negotiating and implementing the Oslo agreements was that the Palestinian side consistently was in breach of its security responsibilities to Israel. And there is no excuse for justifying support of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians because negotiations slowed down, or because there was an unbridgeable gap on a specific point. What Israel learned is that in any agreement with our neighbors, we have to have a safety net in the event that the other side fails to live up to its security responsibilities.

I think it's fair to say that any deal Israel negotiates with the Palestinians in the future must take into account noncompliance by the Palestinians. If it says that you can't have shoulder-fired missiles, someone's going to smuggle in shoulder-fired missiles. And if Israel assumes that the Palestinians will live up to every letter of any future agreement, it's living in a dream world.

Are you saying that none of what is on the table in Washington, Ramallah or Jerusalem is really about territory?

It is about territory, because the international community, through Resolution 242, has created the formula of an acceptable peace: it's Israel trading some of the territory it captured in the Six Day War for a full peace treaty with its neighbors, so that any Arab party who wants to become part of the peace process in the future has to live within the parameters of 242.

We know there are indications of residual intentions out there that could be hostile and have to be taken into account. For example, over the last two years, the route of the security fence from 2005 approved by the cabinet was moved close to the Green Line. This means that areas from which an SA7 could be launched toward Ben-Gurion air traffic are now beyond the security fence.

How does Israel remedy this? By having patrols in the area. But this clearly shows that the security fence cannot become the border. The security fence today, with its new positioning – and after repeated changes of government policy – addresses one threat and one threat alone: infiltration by suicide bombers. But, if the Palestinians want to use mortars, as they've been using very effectively in Gaza, or if they want to use Kassam rockets, or shoulder-fired missiles to bring down aircraft, it doesn't address those threats.

So I would say that when we talk about defensible borders in the future, we have to provide adequate security for the most important part of Israel's national infrastructure. That includes the airport, and that includes Route 443, the second Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, which is also beyond the fence at present.

Has Sharon seen your booklet?

Sharon was given two copies on his plane ride to America.

Has Binyamin Netanyahu seen it?

Bibi has received copies as well.

Which of them do you think will be more receptive to the borders you outline?

The Jerusalem Center and its "defensible borders" initiative is not getting involved in personal politics in the state of Israel. We're involved in the struggle for ideas. And right now, those of us who are behind this initiative have been concerned that Israel's legal rights to modifying the 1949 armistice lines so that it will obtain defensible borders – those legal rights have been lost to many people. And therefore, we face a very real prospect that we could be under international pressure or under international initiatives in the future to try and roll us back close to the '67 lines. We've seen tragedy involved in trying to move 8,000 people out of the Gaza Strip. We're talking about over 200,000 people in the West Bank.

As someone focusing on ideas, would you say that disengagement jibes with, or goes counter to, the Bush Doctrine?

That's a separate subject because it deals with whether democracy is a point of security. In this study, we haven't even gone near that subject. Democracy, frankly, can take many years to develop. We're seeing that you can't build democracy overnight in Iraq. And among the Palestinians, you can always have the formal holding of elections, but that doesn't mean you pass Sharansky's "Town Square" test. That may take five, 10, 15 years. In the meantime, Israel has very real threats and needs very real security measures to defend itself against them.

Describe your map of Israel in the future.

I stress the Jordan Valley; I stress areas near points of vital Israeli infrastructure, such as the airport; I stress the Jerusalem defensive perimeter, which, of course, assumes a united Jerusalem, but includes a thickening both in the northern parts and the southern parts of the Jerusalem corridor, and coming out beyond Ma'aleh Adumim in the east. We mention, however, that these are security considerations. We don't talk about Hebron, because that's not a security issue. It's a national, religious, sentimental issue but not a security-related one.

Let me give you two scenarios: After disengagement, members of the Quartet come to Washington and they say, "Look, we have a very serious problem before the January elections in the Palestinian Authority. Abu Mazen is too weak; Hamas is gaining strength; the way to build him up is to provide him with 'political horizon.' It's not enough that he's getting a Palestinian state. He needs to know what that state will look like – what its territorial contours are." Then it could be proposed that the Quartet get behind a unified position that the Palestinian state will be based on the '67 borders. Though the words "based on" provide Arik Sharon with a little wiggle room.

In my view, the United States should reject such an effort for a variety of reasons, but on one basis in particular, and that is that it's contrary to the Bush letter to Sharon.

Scenario number two: The year is 2008. Israel and the Palestinians are at Camp David III. The Palestinians and Israel are deadlocked on territorial issues. The Palestinians turn to the US hoping the US will impose on Israel a withdrawal to the '67 lines. Because of the Bush letter, the US will say, "If you ask us, the American position is that Israel is entitled to defensible borders and it's only realistic that it retain settlement blocs."

What if Hillary Clinton becomes president? Would the Bush letter still be upheld?

There's continuity of presidential guarantees. Such commitments have been shown historically to survive if you insist upon them. If you let them drop away and go into a museum and gather dust, then that's what will happen to them.

So, you're resurrecting the Rabin legacy that you claim was misunderstood?

After the assassination, all kinds of people claimed the Rabin legacy. Rabin's legacy is based on the Allon Plan – a modified version of it. So what we're talking about is resurrecting a new Israeli consensus that can bridge the Left and the Right and that can become a basis for preserving what have always been our vital interests in Judea and Samaria.

Both the Left and the Right understand that there are vital security assets for Israel in the West Bank. But the Left says it can put early warning stations and brigades on the soil of the Palestinian state. The Right has been saying that we need sovereignty in those territories. When push came to shove and this thesis was tested at Camp David II in 2000 – that was where Barak broke from Rabin – Dahlan utterly rejected the idea of Israeli military deployment on the soil of a sovereign Palestinian state. That's another reason why we should go back to the idea of defensible borders. It's simply untenable to protect Israeli interests in sovereign Palestinian territory.

Also, our history has shown that these arrangements are easily eroded over time. The Palestinians won't accept it; in Hebron it was also tried; it just doesn't work. Some people would say, "Hey, wait a minute. Didn't we have US forces in Germany during the Cold War?" But in the case of Germany and the US, you had a mutual threat of the Soviet Union, and there's nothing like the divisions of the Warsaw Pact to get your attention focused. Palestinians don't view Israel as a strategic partner against a common threat. They view Israel as a state whose presence they want to get rid of.