THINKING OUTSIDE PANDORA’S BOX

The Two-State Solution is dead!  Long live the Two-State Solution! 

Despite its failure to bring peace to historic Palestine, “from the river to the sea,” the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has once again become a rallying cry for peace among observers of the conflict.  But the reality is, the two-state solution has not worked, and neither Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, nor the Netanyahu government has expressed any current interest in reviving it.  Despite the partition of historic Palestine in 1948, there have never been two independent, functioning states within that land.  Today it is perhaps unpleasant, but more accurate, to think of Israel and the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank as a de facto single apartheid state, as  Foreign Affairs labeled it earlier this year.

If the two-state solution is moribund, and if a single state of control exists on the ground and in the minds of Israelis and Palestinians, lacking only Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, then is it time to think outside this Pandora’s Box and consider whether a single-state solution has merit?  Is it time to consider a conflict resolution that addresses each side’s historical and moral claims to the same land and also satisfies each side’s national identity aspirations?

A 2018 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Carnegie Report) entitled, Two States or One? Reappraising the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, endorses neither two states nor one, but instead argues for the reconsideration of the possibility and viability of each:

The number of settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has exceeded 650,000 [estimated ca. 700,000 now], putting in major doubt the prospect of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state…Moreover, there are clear signs of a growing perception among Palestinians and Israelis that a two-state solution that meets the minimum needs of both communities might be impossible to attain…[D]emographic trends and settlement construction mean that the two communities are growing ever closer physically while remaining separated politically, socially, and economically…[A] one-state reality is emerging, whether desirable or not, and calls for scrutinizing solutions that take this reality into account instead of wishing it away.

This report attempts to look at actualities and trends with a fresh and analytical eye. At first glance, the two halves of this report contain two very different views of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: one presents the case for a two-state solution, the other suggests that it is time to look at the idea of a single state with all its variations.

A single-state solution is not new.  In 1947, a single binational state was recommended to the UN by a working group composed of India, Iran, and Yugoslavia.  The recommendation took the form of a Minority plan (Federal State) and was offered as an alternative to the ultimately endorsed Majority plan (Partition).  The Minority plan for a single binational state was not adopted, of course, but it is instructive and useful to know that it exists, how it might be implemented, and what a single binational state might look like. Excerpts from the Minority plan follow below.

Twenty-two years after the Minority plan died, Edward Said, (above), a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, musician, political activist, scholar, and one of the founders of postcolonial studies, reanimated the idea of a one-state solution in a 1999 essay in the New York Times.  Said described his reasons and vision as follows (emphasis added in bold):

…it is time to question whether the entire process begun in Oslo in 1993 is the right instrument for bringing peace between Palestinians and Israelis. It is my view that the peace process has in fact put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the hundred-year war between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end. Oslo set the stage for separation, but real peace can come only with a binational Israeli-Palestinian state.

I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such.

The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle for coexistence. In a modern state, all its members are citizens by virtue of their presence and the sharing of rights and responsibilities. Citizenship therefore entitles an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab to the same privileges and resources. A constitution and a bill of rights thus become necessary for getting beyond Square 1 of the conflict because each group would have the same right to self-determination; that is, the right to practice communal life in its own (Jewish or Palestinian) way, perhaps in federated cantons, with a joint capital in Jerusalem, equal access to land and inalienable secular and juridical rights. Neither side should be held hostage to religious extremists.

Said’s essay calls for a secular state where citizenship, not religion, defines rights and responsibilities.  This, it seems to me, is the critical first step to forming a binational democratic state--apart from mutual trust, which is the foundation of any resolution of this conflict.  Resolving to become a secular state, as opposed to a religious state, is a momentous step, one that would need to be agreed upon by a majority of Israelis and a majority of Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories.  There is some evidence that such majorities in favor of a secular state existed as recently as 2018, when the Carnegie Report was written, but that report is now five years old and a lot has happened to erode mutual trust and change conditions on the ground since then, including additional settlements in the West Bank, but even more importantly, the current Israel-Hamas war.  Who knows if and when mutual trust can be regained or where public opinion now stands on the question of “Secular state or religious state?”  Only the people who actually live in historic Palestine--as opposed to external observers—can answer those questions. Any resolution of their conflict must come from them and cannot be imposed from without.

Said’s essay also calls for the inhabitants of Israel and the occupied territories to share the land, all the land, from the river to the sea, together.  My reading of his essay is that, while Said would prefer no internal land divisions within historic Palestine, he realizes that initially, cantons (i.e., autonomous states) within a single nation might be a necessary first transitional step to an ideal:  a binational, non-federal state.  Indeed, a biography of Said by Timothy Brennan, one of his former students, confirms this view.  But whether such cantons remain or are in time replaced by a binational, non-federal state, Said’s vision requires freedom of movement and equal access to land.  There can be no involuntary ghettos and no apartheid.

The chapter of the Carnegie Report dealing with a single state, anticipates three possible variations of the model:  (a) a unified, single state without internal land divisions; (b) a federal state with two sub-states, one Jewish and one Palestinian; and (c) a federal state with multiple Jewish and Palestinian sub-states, similar to the Swiss canton system.  (Given the current non-contiguous population distribution within Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, alternative [c] might be the most realistic and feasible variation of the binational state for the parties to consider, and the Swiss canton system might be adaptable to their unique situation.)

The Minority plan mentioned above fits into variation (b) in the preceding paragraph:  a single federal state contained within the borders of historic Palestine, composed of a Jewish state and an Arab state.  Because this iteration is the most developed single-state plan with which I am familiar (not being more than superficially conversant with the Swiss cantonal system), the Minority plan is the one I will focus on in this post.  Before doing so, some background is in order.

Upon the defeat of the Ottomans and the disintegration of their empire after World War I, Britain received the Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1920.  The years following World War I had seen increased immigration of Jews into Palestine, provoking unease in the Arab population, as well as violence between the two groups.  That immigration only intensified during World War II, largely spurred by the Holocaust, and resulted in significant civil unrest.  Instability in Palestine became an emergency, and the caretaker British government, having suffered a terrorist bombing by a Zionist extremist organization at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (above) in 1946, was no longer willing to provide security.  Britain relinquished its mandate to the UN.

As a result of this vacuum in security, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was tasked in 1947 to resolve the Question of Palestine.  To address the emergency, UNSCOP convened working groups to produce a UN Report, which consisted of a Majority plan (Partition) and a Minority plan (Federal State).  The partition plan was not only not supported by the UN’s Arab member nations, they boycotted the working group that developed it.  Nonetheless, the Majority plan was approved on November 29, 1947, by 59% of the UN member states, resulting in the partition of historic Palestine in 1948. 

Partition resulted in the displacement of over 700,000 Arabs and was immediately followed by an invasion of Israel by its surrounding Arab neighbors.  The war was won by Israel, but it marked a dramatic first failure of the two-state solution.  India, Iran, and Yugoslavia may have been prescient when they stated in the Minority plan that, “Political and geographical disunity by partition is impracticable, unworkable, and could not possibly provide for two reasonably viable States.”

The Minority plan is set out near the end of the Report in CHAPTER VII, entitled RECOMMENDATIONS (III).  The plan is remarkably similar to Said’s vision of a binational Israeli-Palestinian state, with two cantons. 

Instead of partition into two separate nations, the Minority plan proposed a single, federal state to be known as the Federal State of Palestine, where all peoples living within its borders would be citizens of that nation state, and which nation state would be comprised of an Arab state and a Jewish state.  This plan provided for state boundary configurations similar in location to the land division boundaries drawn on the well-known partition map attached to the Majority plan (shown below), except that the land areas shown on the UN federal map (shown above) were more in line with then-existing Arab and Jewish population distributions. 

That is, whereas the Majority plan allocated 56% of historic Palestine to the new Jewish state of Israel, even though the Jewish population was only half that of the Arab population at that time, the land allocation pursuant to the UN federal map was proportional to each party’s land ownership, as shown on the maps below.

The working committee of the Minority plan details why it thought a binational federal state was necessary, how its plan could be implemented, and how such a binational federal state would be organized and governed.  

(PERSONAL NOTE:  Critics of a one-state solution lament the lack of detail in proposals for a single state.  [See the Carnegie Report.]  I disagree, citing the Minority plan as an example.  Whether a single-state solution is the right solution or even a viable solution, however, is up to the parties, as is when and if they regain mutual trust and are open to consider any political solution.  But to criticize a one-state solution in general for vagueness and lack of specifics is to ignore the existence of the Minority plan.  In my opinion, that plan is sufficiently detailed to be considered as part of future peace and reconciliation discussions, as is the Swiss cantonal system.)  

The Minority plan begins with 17 points of justification for the federal-state solution.  Among the most salient are the following:

2. It is recognized that Palestine is the common country of both indigenous Arabs and Jews, that both these peoples have had an historic association with it, and that both play vital roles in the economic and cultural life of the country.

3. This being so, the objective is a dynamic solution which will ensure equal rights for both Arabs and Jews in their common State, and which will maintain that economic unity which is indispensable to the life and development of the country.

7. The objective of a federal-State solution would be to give the most feasible recognition to the nationalistic aspirations of both Arabs and Jews, and to merge them into a single loyalty and patriotism which would find expression in an independent Palestine.

11. Future peace and order in Palestine and the Near East generally will be vitally affected by the nature of the solution decided upon for the Palestine question. In this regard, it is important to avoid an acceleration of the separatism which now characterizes the relations of Arabs and Jews in the Near East, and to avoid laying the foundations of a dangerous irredentism there, which would be the inevitable consequences of partition in whatever form.

16. While it may be doubted whether the will to co-operate is to be found in the two groups under present conditions, it is entirely possible that if a federal solution were firmly and definitively imposed, the two groups, in their own self-interest, would gradually develop a spirit of co-operation in their common State. There is no basis for an assumption that these two peoples cannot live and work together for common purposes once they realize that there is no alternative. Since, under any solution, large groups of them would have to do so, it must either be taken for granted that co-operation between them is possible or it must be accepted that there is no workable solution at all.

Following the justification preamble, the Minority plan enumerates its recommendations for implementation:

1. The peoples of Palestine are entitled to recognition of their right to independence, and an independent federal State of Palestine shall be created following a transitional period not exceeding three years.

2. With regard to the transitional period, responsibility for administering Palestine and preparing it for independence under the conditions herein prescribed shall be entrusted to such authority as may be decided upon by the General Assembly.

3. The independent Federal State of Palestine shall comprise an Arab state and a Jewish state.

4. In delimiting the boundaries of the Arab and Jewish states, respectively, consideration shall be given to anticipated population growth.

5. During the transitional period, a constituent assembly shall be elected by the population of Palestine and shall formulate the constitution of the independent Federal State of Palestine. The authority entrusted by the General Assembly with responsibility for administering Palestine during the transitional period shall convene the constituent assembly on the basis of electoral provisions which shall ensure the fullest possible representation of the population, providing that all adult persons who have acquired Palestinian citizenship as well as all Arabs and Jews who, though noncitizens, may be resident in Palestine and who shall have applied for citizenship in Palestine not less than three months before the date of the election, shall be entitled to vote therein.

6. The attainment of independence by the independent federal State of Palestine shall be declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations as soon as the authority administering the territory shall have certified to the General Assembly that the constituent assembly referred to in the preceding paragraph has adopted a constitution incorporating the provisions set forth in II immediately following.

The section on implementation is succeeded by an outline of the structure of the constitution of Palestine, which builds a federal system similar to those of the United States and other Western democracies.  The committee recommends its constitutional outline with an important qualification:  “(The provisions set forth in this section are not designed to be the constitution of the new independent federal State of Palestine. The intent is that the constitution of the new State, as a condition for independence, shall be required to include, inter alia, the substance of these provisions.)”

 

Below are what I consider the most important constitutional provisions, which include some of the principles advocated by Said for a binational state (emphasis added in bold): 

 

1. The governmental structure of the independent Federal State of Palestine shall be federal and shall comprise a federal Government and the governments of the Arab and Jewish states respectively.

 

2. Among the organs of government there shall be a head of State and an executive body, a representative federal legislative body, a federal court and such other subsidiary bodies as may be deemed necessary.

 

3. The federal legislative body shall be composed of two chambers.

 

4. Election to one chamber of the federal legislative body shall be on the basis of proportional representation of the population as a whole.

 

5. Election of members to the other chamber of the federal legislative body shall be on the basis of equal-representation of the Arab and Jewish citizens of Palestine.

 

6. The federal legislative body shall be empowered to legislate on all matters entrusted to the federal Government.

 

7. Legislation shall be enacted when approved by majority votes in both chambers of the federal legislative body.

 

9. The head of the independent federal State of Palestine shall be elected by a majority vote of the members of both chambers of the federal legislative body sitting in a joint meeting convened for this purpose, and shall serve for such term as the constitution may determine.

 

12. The executive branch of the federal Government shall be responsible to the federal legislative body.

 

13. A federal court shall be established which' shall be the final court of appeal with regard to constitutional matters.

 

18. Full authority shall be vested in the federal government with regard to national defense, foreign relations, immigration, currency, taxation for federal purposes, foreign and interstate waterways, transport and communications, copy-rights and patents.

 

19. The constitution shall forbid any discriminatory legislation, whether by federal or state governments, against Arabs, Jews or other population groups, or against either of the states; and shall guarantee equal rights and privileges for all minorities, irrespective of race or religion.

 

20. The constitution, having regard for the customs of the people, shall be based on the principle of the full equality of all citizens of Palestine with regard to the political, civil and religious rights of the individual, and shall make specific provision for the protection of linguistic, religious, and ethnic rights of the peoples and respect for their cultures.

 

21. The constitution shall include specific guarantees respecting freedom of conscience, speech, press and assemblage, the rights of organized labour, freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary searches and seizures, and rights of personal property.

 

22. The constitution shall guarantee free access to Holy Places, protect religious interests, and ensure freedom of worship and of conscience to all, provided that the traditional customs of the several religions shall be respected.

 

23. Arabic and Hebrew shall be official languages in both the federal and state governments.

 

25. There shall be a single Palestinian nationality and citizenship, which shall be granted to Arabs, Jews and others on the basis of such qualifications and conditions as the constitution and laws of the federal State may determine and equally apply.

 

26. The Arab state and the Jewish state shall enjoy full powers of local self-government, and may institute such representative forms of government, adopt such local constitutions and issue such local laws and regulations as they may deem desirable, subject only to the provisions of the federal constitution.

 

27. Each state government shall have authority, within its borders, over education, taxation for local purposes, the right of residence, commercial licenses, land permits, guiding rights, interstate migration, settlement, police, punishment of crime, social institutions and services, public housing, public health, local roads, agriculture and local industries, and such aspects of economic activities and such other authority as may be entrusted to the states by the constitution.

 

28. Each state shall be entitled to organize a police force for the maintenance of law and order.

 

31. The constitution shall make provision for its method of amendment, provided that it shall be accepted as a solemn obligation undertaken by the independent federal State of Palestine to the United Nations not to alter the provisions of any part of the constitution or the constitution as a whole in such manner as to nullify the provisions herein stated as a prior condition to independence; except by the assent of a majority of both the Arab and Jewish members of the federal legislative body.

I leave to those who actually live in Israel and the occupied territories the question of whether the secular binational state (with or without cantons) envisioned by Said and others merits consideration as an alternative to the two-state solution.  If it does, then the Minority plan could be a useful vehicle for such discussions.  But even with a one-state solution, unless it is without internal land divisions, there remains the fraught question of the map.

The question of Palestine has always been fundamentally a question of land and who is entitled to it.  The current Israeli leadership wants it all, but so do Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and each is willing to turn a Pandora's Box into a Kill Box to get it.  A two-state solution requires a map.  So does a one-state solution with internal borders.  There are only two ways to avoid a map:  either one party drives the other completely off the land militarily, or both parties agree to share the land together with freedom of movement and full right of settlement (and resettlement) anywhere and everywhere.  Unless the parties are willing to think beyond maps and outside the box, they will always be boxed in. 

Adam Shatz, writing in the London Review of Books, says:

The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the Palestinians can win an Algerian-style liberation war: Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, unless Israel, the far stronger party, drives the Palestinians into exile for good. The only thing that can save the people of Israel and Palestine, and prevent another Nakba – a real possibility, while another Holocaust remains a traumatic hallucination – is a political solution that recognises both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.

Said concurs:  

The alternatives are unpleasantly simple: either the war continues (along with the onerous cost of the current peace process) or a way out, based on peace and equality (as in South Africa after apartheid) is actively sought, despite the many obstacles. Once we grant that Palestinians and Israelis are there to stay, then the decent conclusion has to be the need for peaceful coexistence and genuine reconciliation. Real self-determination. Unfortunately, injustice and belligerence don't diminish by themselves: they have to be attacked by all concerned.

Keep it real!

Marilyn