Robert Wexler, former Florida congressman. Photo: PD.

Leaving the Jewish city of Ariel inside the borders of a future Palestinian state would make it a sitting duck for extremists on the Palestinian side, former Florida congressman Robert Wexler said at a Feb. 6 Princeton University event titled “Is Middle East Peace Possible?”

In any potential “land swaps” with the Palestinians, Israel’s stance is it cannot give up land with Jews living on it or land that contains valuable infrastructure, Wexler explained. Ariel—home to almost 20,000 residents and another 10,000 students—is situated inside the West Bank.

“There is no Israeli prime minister who could sleep at night knowing tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis are over the border,” he said. “You could have a massacre or scenario that obliterates any type of agreement you have.”

Wexler, now president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, was joined at the Princeton program by Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel and current professor of Middle Eastern policy studies at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.