The new round of Palestinian-Israeli direct talks stumbles along. Israel's semi-moratorium on construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem is currently scheduled to end later this month. Abbas has threatened to walk out of the talks if the moratorium is not maintained. Whether the talks will overcome this immediate hurdle is still unclear. If they do, negotiators must then address the major gaps between the two sides regarding key issues. What is the fall-back position if the talks fail? Is there another solution waiting in the wings? Yes, there are several of them, though none as popular right now as two states for two peoples. Before looking at the trouble spots for the two-state option in upcoming blog posts, let us briefly examine the alternatives as they stand today. All of them have obvious flaws; some would say fatal flaws: A) One State: There are at least four different models for a so-called “one-state solution” based on the establishment of a single political entity encompassing all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: 1) One big Jewish State; 2) One big Arab State; 3) A federated state; 4) A bi-national state. 1) One big Jewish State (“Greater Israel”) The problem this idea faces, from the perspective of its supporters, is how to claim all the land without claiming all the people living on the land. One version of this solution, promoted by former MK Benny Elon, is called the “Israeli Initiative”. It calls for Israeli sovereignty to be extended across all the territories. But you can't have one big Jewish State without a majority of Jewish citizens, so the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza would not be given Israeli citizenship. Instead, according to this plan, they would become Jordanian citizens. It should be noted that this particular initiative is not based on transfer or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes. But it does face a major hurdle. Jordan objects to extending citizenship to those living on the west side of the Jordan River. After all, they don't live in Jordan nor do they consider themselves to be Jordanians. Following the 1948 war Jordan did give citizenship to West Bankers and Palestinian refugees who fled to Jordan. In recent years it has declined to renew expiring passports of West Bankers, in effect revoking their Jordanian citizenship. Without Jordanian cooperation, which is completely absent, Elon's idea won't work. If the Arabs living in Palestine do not become Jordanian citizens and do not have a Palestinian state of their own, what will become of them? No proposal can be called a solution that leaves millions of residents permanently stateless while living in their own homes. 2) One big Arab State (“Historic Palestine”) For a single Islamic or secular Palestinian state to come into existence, Israel would have to go out of business or be put out of business. Since Israelis are not ready to commit collective suicide nor are they likely to be decisively defeated militarily, this idea won't fly. Still, some Palestinians harbor hopes of eventual Jewish evacuation rather than eviction: Once Jews finally realize that the Middle East will never accept a Jewish state, Israelis will leave of their own accord, moving to places friendlier to them, such as Europe or the U.S. Indeed, some will; many have. But wishing that the enemy will give up and go away does not constitute a sound basis of plans for the future. As Israelis demonstrated by their behavior during the very dark days of the second intifada, they are as tough a people as the Palestinians. Their morale did not break nor did they flee the country en masse. If they did not leave then, they are unlikely to do so in future violent confrontations with the Palestinians. 3) A Federated State This idea doesn't receive much attention, and probably for good reason. It represents a half-way position between a two-state solution and a bi-national state. While sharing some joint political institutions, Jews and Arabs would possess not only individual rights within a single state but also group rights. The cantons of Switzerland and Belgium's Flemish and Walloon regions offer working models for such a federal system. Even though that model has worked in Europe, the problem with applying it to Israel/Palestine is that neither of the two almost-evenly-divided national groups would have a state of its own, thereby frustrating the aims of both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. And the very areas in which the component groups of federated states typically come together – foreign policy and national defense – are among those on which Jews and Arabs are deeply divided. In foreign policy, while the Jews would naturally look to the U.S. and the E.U. for friends and allies, the Arabs would feel more at home in the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. But a federated state of Israel/Palestine would not fit well with any of the above. As for national defense, an integrated Arab-Jewish military would require a high degree of mutual trust, which is conspicuously lacking on both sides. 4) A Bi-National State As for the one big happy family proposal, Israeli Jews are consistent in their overwhelming opposition to a bi-national state. Adopting this model would mean the end of Jewish self-rule, which has always been an essential component of Zionism, and the Zionist dream is far from dead. Israeli Jews are still willing to fight for it. As long as that's true, a bi-national state will not emerge. There is a notion out there that something fundamental will shift against Israel on that day in the near future when the total number of Arabs exceeds the total number of Jews residing between the river and the sea. The thinking goes something like this: Israel sees itself and presents itself to the world as a Jewish and democratic state, but on the day when Jews are no longer a majority, Israel will cease to be either, for the following reasons: (A) When there are more non-Jews than Jews in the land of Palestine, Israel can no longer call itself a Jewish state; and (B) Unless the Arab majority is enfranchised, Israel won't be able to call itself a democracy either. What is overlooked in this formulation is that little concept called citizenship. Israel claims to be a democracy for its citizens, not for the non-citizen population living under occupation. As in the United States and most democratic countries the world over, only citizens can vote in national elections. Arab citizens of Israel are eligible to vote in Israeli elections, and they do. Arabs in the occupied territories are not Israeli citizens and therefore are ineligible to vote in Israeli elections. Part of the tragedy of this prolonged occupation is that so many Palestinians remain stateless – not citizens of Israel, Jordan, Palestine, or any other nation. Those Palestinians and their supporters who think that Israelis can be forced or pressured into giving the vote to Gazans and West Bankers are sadly mistaken. Certainly as regards the Gaza strip, from which Israel forcibly removed all its citizens in 2005, Israel has shown that it has no intention of annexing the land or relating to its population as part of the Israeli people. The international community which applauded Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, unilateral though it was, is not going to turn around and demand that Israel take back Gaza and confer citizenship on its inhabitants. As to Israel's remaining a Jewish state, the citizens of a country, through the political parties they vote for, determine the nature of the state they live in. A majority of Knesset members, elected by the citizens of Israel, continue to support the idea of a Jewish State, even while they disagree about its specific meaning in both theory and practice. [For a thorough and thoughtful debunking of the bi-national state idea, see “What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda,” by Hussein Ibish.] B) Jordanian Option: From 1967 on, periodic efforts were made to conclude a deal between Israel and Jordan that would allow for Jordan to regain control of most of the West Bank. None of these efforts came to fruition. In 1988, Jordan washed its hands of the West Bank Palestinians and the trouble they brought to the Hashemite kingdom. The so-called “Jordanian Option” would allow for a Jordanian state on both sides of the Jordan, but King Abdullah II, like his late father King Hussein, is adamantly opposed to the reincorporation of an unwilling West Bank Palestinian population into an expanded Jordan. With most Palestinians and Jordanians opposed to the idea, support from Israel is insufficient to revive it. C) Palestinian-Jordanian Federation: Jordan, under King Abdullah II, remains an active monarchy where the king not only reigns but rules. How could a nascent Palestinian democracy co-exist with a Jordanian monarchy inside the same state? The federation model of a single nation composed of Jordanians and Palestinians is vehemently opposed by both peoples. Therefore this idea is out of the running. D) Palestinian-Jordanian Confederation: Some Palestinians have expressed interest in the creation of a voluntary confederation of the two sovereign states at some point after Palestine achieves independence. But this arrangement would not be effectuated at the same time as a Palestinian state is declared, and therefore it might never occur. From an Israeli standpoint, it cannot be considered separately from the two-state solution which would precede it. D) Egyptian Option: From 1948 to 1967 the Egyptians ruled Gaza through a military administration. Once the Egyptians left Gaza, they were not anxious to return. To Egypt's problems with the Muslim Brotherhood have now been added the difficulties of dealing with Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood. Egypt's leaders want to keep their distance from possible “infection” of the body politic by Gazans loyal to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This is one reason why Egypt has cooperated with Israel in keeping Gaza bottled up. Mubarak & Company have no interest in once again assuming responsibility for the Gaza Strip. E) Three-State Solution: Gaza and the West Bank are not only geographically distinct and non-contiguous, but politically and culturally they have grown far apart since the first intifada, Israel's severance of the link between the two regions, Gaza's forced isolation from the world, and the rise of Hamas. Now each has its own government. Fatah and Hamas are bitter rivals, and genuine reconciliation between the two seems more remote than ever. While the two political parties both claim that Gaza is an inseparable part of Palestine, they each act on a different set of principles towards a different vision of the future. If Abbas can reach agreement with Israel for a two-state solution, officially that agreement will include Gaza. Hamas, however, is highly unlikely to support any conceivable deal that the Fatah-dominated PA/PLO and Israel find mutually acceptable. As the ruling party in Gaza, it is in a position to prevent the deal's application there, which could eventually result in three distinct entities in the land of Palestine. Though no one is proposing a three-state solution, that possibility looms large over the current round of negotiations. F) Autonomy: Autonomy under Israeli rule was tried in the 1990s and lost all credibility. Palestinians don't trust that Israeli overlordship will ever lead to true Palestinian independence. G) Trusteeship: A U.N. Trusteeship could be established as a temporary solution, though possibly of open-ended duration, pending the outcome of negotiations. This would speed up the end to occupation for all of Gaza and much of the West Bank as international troops replace the IDF. But therein lies the problem. Israel will not accept a multinational force that proves to be as risk-averse and ineffective as the UNIFIL troops in south Lebanon. The alternative is a serious and battle-ready fighting force which would likely find itself routinely clashing with Palestinian militants. In that case the troops would become targets rather than peace-keepers. What country would be willing to place its soldiers in an environment where they are likely to be regularly shot at by the people they are there to support and defend? What nation would want to provide troops for such a mission, when the entire Palestinian population would want them out as soon as they had replaced the IDF? Palestinians say they have had their fill of interim measures. They want a permanent solution in the form of a Palestinian state, not a new, global version of the British mandate. H) Status Quo: The status quo for Palestinians is not static. Those who oppose the continuation of the Occupation, including Obama, Clinton, Abbas, various officials of the UN and the EU, as well as many Israeli intellectuals and peace groups, have for some time now called the Occupation “unsustainable”. Yet it has been sustained for decades, with US, EU, and UN support for the PA, US support for Israel, Iranian and Gulf States' support for Hamas. All this financial, diplomatic, and military support help to keep current conditions in place, maintaining a set of players in power, and ensuring that money keeps flowing into Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The status quo is incredibly hard on the people of Gaza, highly disruptive of the lives of West Bankers, and uncertain for Israelis. But given the enormous capacity of people to adapt, as well as the power of inertia, the 43 years of occupation could easily stretch into 50 or 60 years, even if no one wants that. Unfortunately, the status quo may well be sustainable. Particularly for Israelis, who suffer far less than do the Palestinians, the two-state solution is always measured against the alternative of continuing the Occupation. And while the other possible solutions were dealt with here in summary fashion and sometimes dismissively, that which is impossible and unpopular today can gain strength and support tomorrow. Any of these ideas could become viable if attitudes and circumstances sufficiently shift in their favor. The background of alternative options should be kept in mind as we turn, in subsequent blog posts, to review the most serious drawbacks of a two-state solution. ** To read more from Michael Lame, go to his blog BM
