The Jewish state - the essence of peace

Follows an article by former Knesset member Einat Wilf I found very interesting, and an occasion to tell you about my own conceptions.

I liked this article, yet, I don't agree with her when she says that "Israel does not need Palestinian recognition in order to know what it is".
If Israel was really a Jewish state, recognizing Israel would be automatically a recognition of the Jewish state. Israel don't know what it is in fact: the state of all its population living in its territory, like all nation-states. Israel is meant to be the state of its nation, the Israeli nation, 'the Israeli people' or 'the people in Israel' as some say. The problem is that the Israeli nation is a pure fiction... We are two nations here, at least, a Jewish one and an Arab one.

I do not quite agree either  when she write that "Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world where the Jewish people, as a people, are free and sovereign to interpret Jewish civilization and determine their own fate".
I would have written 'free and independent to interpret...' because the Jewish political conception says that the Creator, through His Law, is the sovereign, a supranational sovereign, Him and not its people, which He took out of the Egyptian slavery and turned immediately into His servitors.
The Children of Israel have not been 'sovereign' one second. Free, and independent of other peoples, yes, but still under the rule of the transcendent Law.

I have another reservation: "Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world...", a Jewish state is not a place, it is not defined by a territory. The Hebrew word for 'state' is 'medina', from 'din', which means 'law' or judgment'. A Jewish state is defined by its laws, it needs to have the Jewish law as the basis,  at least,  of his legislation in order to be called Jewish. It do needs a place in order to be independent of other peoples - this place is Eretz Israel - but the state is not a place. It doesn't need a place to exist, the Jewish state with its Talmudic laws and institutions existed in exile for centuries, without a territory...

Does this question of the nature of a Jewish state - a nation-state like others for Jews, or a state having a political Jewish structure - may have an impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Yes, I think so: a state based on Jewish law wouldn't impose itself on another people: Jewish law applies only onto Jews personally - like Islamic law applies only on Muslims - and not on the territory and anyone found being there. Muslim and Christian Arabs might finally recognize that, like them, Jews submit themselves to the Sovereign of the World, and have the same conception that 'to Him belongs the Earth'. Jews couldn't be seen then as a western colonialist offshoot. The door would be open for Jews and Arabs to see each other as another tribe of the People of God, and sharing by covenant the Holy Land would be most natural....


Emphasizes mine.

The essence of peace

02/24/2014
To build a peaceful future, the Palestinians need to leave behind the idea that the Jewish people are strangers who have come to a strange land.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her entire government are in Israel as great friends of the State of Israel and its people. The talks between the two governments are taking place in anticipation of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Framework Agreement for Peace. Early leaks indicate that the document will include a statement, requested by Israel and its prime minister that, as part of any final peace agreement, the Palestinians recognize Israel as the “Jewish state” or as the “Homeland of the Jewish People.”

While this request is supported by the vast majority of Israelis, as well as the chairman of the Opposition and the Labor party Isaac Herzog, some have not understood what it means and why it is necessary. Others have argued that it is merely a hawkish ploy to avoid reaching any agreement with the Palestinians, or that it is a sad mark of Israel’s low self-confidence that it needs the Palestinians to tell it what it is.

The prime minister’s request is none of the above. It is the one core demand that, once met, will mean that peace is possible. Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people is not a condition for peace – it is the very essence of peace.

Israel does not need Palestinian recognition in order to know what it is. Those who have dreamed, founded and built it have done so with one purpose in mind: create a sovereign state for the Jewish people in their ancient homeland. It doesn’t matter if those who established the Jewish state were secular atheists who set out to build an egalitarian socialist utopia in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets, religious Jews who hoped to restore biblical traditions to the modern state, or national liberals who imagined Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, living side by side in peace in a Vienna-inspired Judenstaadt. They all wanted a Jewish state, but their visions of it were very different.

Being the Jewish state was never to be a simple concept.

Jewish civilization, like all ancient civilizations, is so rich as to support any system of governance and any set of values that its bearers choose. Unlike what Palestinian leaders say when they reject the Israeli request for recognition, there is nothing in the concept of Jewish state that is necessarily religious rather than secular, nor anything that implies that such a state is only for Jews.

Like all ancient value systems that have been constantly evolving, Judaism serves as a repository of liberal, as well as ultra-conservative values; it is in the eye of the beholder and the interpreter. It is partial to neither.

Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world where the Jewish people, as a people, are free and sovereign to interpret Jewish civilization and determine their own fate. Being the Jewish state means nothing more, but also nothing less.

The Palestinians need to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, not for the sake of the Jews, but for their own sake and dignity and for the cause of peace. Time and time again, the Palestinians have rejected opportunities to live freely in their own sovereign state because doing so means coming to terms with the Jewish state.

Already in 1947, the Arab world, including the Arabs of Palestine (later to be termed Palestinians), rejected the partition of the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state as proposed by the United Nations. They did so because they told themselves that Zionism is not the self-determination movement of the Jewish people, but rather a colonial movement that has brought strangers to their land, strangers who – faced with determined resistance – are destined, sooner or later, to leave it.

In comparing the Jews in the Land of Israel to foreign colonials who will succumb to sustained resistance, the Palestinians might have told themselves a comforting story about a future without Jews and without Israel, but one that has repeatedly robbed them of their present.

They have refused any solution that would create a Palestinian state because the price of doing so meant finally accepting that the Jews should have their own state, too. They preferred to have nothing rather than the dignity of their own state, if it meant sharing the land with the state of the Jewish people.

To build a peaceful future, the Palestinians need to leave behind the idea that the Jewish people are strangers who have come to a strange land and, therefore, will one day go away. Once the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, they will finally be accepting that in creating the State of Israel, the Jewish people have come home. In doing so the Palestinians will signal to the world, to Israel and, above all, to themselves, that they are finally ready to part with a false future in order to build a real present: one in which both the Jewish people and the Palestinians people can live in peace as a free people in their own sovereign states – one Jewish, one Palestinian.

The author is a Senior Fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former member of the Israeli Knesset. A version of this article was published in German in Der Zeit.

Race against space

Here is an article by the journalist Khaled Diab, who is a member of our Federation.

I like his expression "non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments":

"I am personally in favour of a single binational state made up of two non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments which oversee the affairs of their peoples, and a joint federal government which manages common issues, such as trade, defence and foreign policy."

It expresses well my concept of non-territorial nation state, which sounds too abstract and technical.

Race against space

By Khaled Diab

Both time and space are running out for the two-state solution. If Israelis wish to preserve the Jewish identity of their state, they need to act now to create a Palestinian state.

The Jerusalem Post
Monday 25 July 2011

Perched on a scenic hilltop named ‘Mont de Joie’ (‘Mountain of Joy’) by the Crusaders for its commanding view of the Jerusalem they were about to conquer, Nabi Samwil’s 250 or so Palestinian inhabitants have little to feel joyous about. They are cut off, by Israeli settlements and the separation wall, from the rest of the West Bank, while the West Bank IDs they carry deprive them of access to Jerusalem, even though Israel considers their village to be within the municipal boundaries of the city.

“We’ve become like a tiny island,” describes Mohammed Barakat, a local lawyer, who lives with three branches of his family, i.e. 13 people, in a small house of about 120m2. “If a child needs a doctor, you have to embark on a very long journey to get to other nearby villages or Ramallah.”

As he speaks, Barakat, who was crippled in a car crash in Amman, is sitting on his bed working on his computer, one of the few connections he has with the outside world. In addition to being a key advocate of the villagers’ rights, Barakat runs an NGO appropriately called, given the confinement of his village, Disabled without Borders.

One practical problem associated with their imposed isolation is getting relatives and friends from other parts of the West Bank into the village. Mohammed’s brother, Rebhi, who is a member of the village council, is somewhat anxious about a local wedding that is due to take place later in the week.

“The Israeli civilian administration insists on knowing the names of everyone who is coming,” he complains. “But you can never know who exactly is coming because each person you invite usually brings along their family and friends.”

The villagers’ woes don’t end there. Owing to draconian Israeli building restrictions, the bride and groom, like many other young people, are forced to abandon the village in search of housing elsewhere. Villagers report that only two houses have been built since Israel took over control in 1967, while numerous homes were demolished near the mosque and the tomb that is believed by some, despite the absence of archaeological or biblical evidence, to house the prophet Samuel.

One of the sad consequences of this inability to build which I witnessed is that some two dozen children have to squeeze into the village’s tiny one-room school, which will soon lack a properly functioning toilet because the one they built has a demolition order on it.

Isolated as Nabi Samwil is, it is not an isolated case – demolitions and displacements are a daily fact of life. This is clearly illustrated in a new report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) which is due out on 21 July. Entitled Forced Out, the sobering document focuses on displaced communities in Area C, more than three-fifths of the West Bank over which Israel retains full civil and security control under the Oslo Accords.

It documents how local communities – faced with restrictions on their movement, a freeze on building and settler violence and intimidation – are facing severe housing shortages, with many moving to Areas A and B as a result. Among the hardest hit are farming and Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley, some of whom have even resorted to building concrete structures inside their tents to conceal them from the army.

“While the intent behind the various policies applied by Israel to Area C is unclear, their effect is to make it impossible for many Palestinian communities to develop,” says UN Humanitarian Coordinator Maxwell Gaylard who expresses “concerns about demographic shifts and changes to the ethnic make-up of Area C”.

Although Israel’s intentions are indeed unclear, the fact that a sharp increase in demolitions and evictions has taken place this year seems to suggest a bid to “create realities on the ground” before the Palestinian leadership gets a chance to go to the UN to seek recognition for an independent Palestine. OCHA’s records show that over 1,100 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced so far in 2011 in Area C and East Jerusalem.

Area C, which has experienced a massive upsurge in settlement building since the signing of the Oslo Accords, is currently home to twice as many Israeli settlers as Palestinians (300,000 as opposed to 150,000). Nevertheless, it possesses the majority of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land and is the only contiguous territory in the West Bank, which was foreseen to provide, under the ‘land for peace’ formula, the bulk of the space upon which a future Palestinian state would be established.

However, with 70% of Area C currently set aside for settlements or the IDF, there is little room left for the two-state solution. This might partly explain why the Palestinian leadership, caught as it is in a race against space, has desperately resorted to the UN path, despite its slim chances of success.

But it is not just Palestinians who should be worried about the changing reality of Area C and East Jerusalem, ordinary Israelis should be, too. If current policies remain unchecked, most of the Palestinian population will soon be living in a series of disconnected islands that will be impossible to join up into a coherent territory, leading to a de facto single Israeli-Palestinian state.

Once they realise that their dream of an independent state is dead, Palestinians are likely to start focusing their attention on demanding equal civil rights and Israeli citizenship. This will leave Israel with a dilemma: either live up to its democratic credentials and grant Palestinians full rights and dilute the country’s prized Jewish identity, or continue an unsustainable and increasingly oppressive occupation, with all the disenfranchisement it involves, to hold on to this Jewishness.

I am personally in favour of a single binational state made up of two non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments which oversee the affairs of their peoples, and a joint federal government which manages common issues, such as trade, defense and foreign policy.

Although a growing minority of Israelis supports this vision, most favour a state with a clearly Jewish identity which, by implication, makes them supporters of an independent Palestine on the pre-1967 borders. However, the current government, which holds the land to be holier than its people, is unlikely to take any meaningful steps to achieve the two-state vision.

This leaves it up to ordinary Israelis to bring pressure to bear on the government to act now or risk forever holding back peace. Last Friday, some 4,500 protesters, mostly Israelis, marched through East Jerusalem to voice their support for an independent Palestine. The time has come for hundreds of thousands more to join them.

An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope

An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

I had the occasion to meet former Knesset member dr. Einat Wilf and professor Mohammed S. Dajani, and have great respect for both. Einat Wilf has a doctorate in Political Sciences, Mohammed Dajani is the founder of Wasatia, a moderate Islamic movement.

 Can this common declaration, written by Einat Wilf and Mohammed Dajani, unite Israelis and Palestinians around the divisive issue of Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as the Palestinian people's homeland?

"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.
Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?"


How can we guaranty the sustainability and safety of the sharing of the Land of Israel/Palestine between two nation states, a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, in a sharing allowing everyone to settle and live anywhere in this land? How are we going to prevent religious or nationalist extremists from both side to torpedo any such agreement?

The fact that Prof. Dajani asked to change the word "partition", used by Mrs. Wilf, to "sharing" is very significant in this perspective.

In my view, the solution is to include those two states into a federation, the only sovereign onto the undivided land, having one federal army and Jerusalem as united federal capital. I don't see another possibility.

We propose to get out of the usual partition rationality and try another, a sharing rationality:

This land belongs to God and shouldn't be divided. It should be shared.
Neither Jews nor Arabs should have sovereignty: our common Creator alone is the Sovereign, we can only be independent and free from each other under His supranational rule of Law and Justice. This religious ideal has to be politically translated into the rule of a supranational and secular Federation of the two peoples.

I wouldn't justify the right of either of both peoples to self-determination in this Land by indigeneity:
- the ancestors of many Palestinians, may be most of them, came from diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire when no political borders existed inside the Middle-East.
- the ancestors of most Israeli Jews emigrate from abroad, and none can prove his descent from the Jews of 2000 years ago...

The point is that as Nations, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs don't conceive of any other homeland than this Land of Israel-Palestine. This is the way we both define ourselves. We have to reciprocally recognize this fact, despite its apparent subjectivity, because it is a political and historical fact.

For Wilf, only this recognition by Palestinians will allow a real peace. The problem is that if we wait for Palestinians to understand Jewish identity and Zionism, we might wait for a long time.
The federal model we propose is based on a covenant between the two peoples themselves, and not between states; the constitutional democracy neutralizes the demographic problem. It means that the political frame really embodies the mutual recognition of the peoples and their right to live on the Land of Israel-Palestine.
It can be hoped that this federal frame and the fruit of civil peace will influence individuals to progressively  understand the point of view of the other side, but we don't need to wait and reach this stage in order to create the Federation of Israel-Palestine.


Here is the article by Einat Wilf. Emphasis is mine:

An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope
I was born into the Israeli left. I grew up in the left. I was always a member of the left. I believed that the day that the Palestinians would have their own sovereign state would be the day when Israel would finally live in peace. But like many Israelis of the left, I lost this certainty I once had.

Why? Over the last 14 years, I have witnessed the inability of the Palestinians to utter the word "yes" when presented with repeated opportunities to attain sovereignty and statehood; I have lived through the bloody massacres by means of suicide bombings in cities within pre-1967 Israel following the Oslo Accords and then again after the failed Camp David negotiations in 2000; and I have experienced firsthand the increasing venom of anti-Israel rhetoric that only, very thinly, masks a deep and visceral hatred for the state and its people that cannot be explained by mere criticism for the policies of some of its elected governments.

But one of the most pronounced moments over the past several years that has made me very skeptical toward the left were a series of meetings I had with young, moderate Palestinian leaders to which I was invited by virtue of being a member of Israel's Labor Party.

I had much in common with these young Palestinian leaders. We could relate to each other. However, through discussion, I soon discovered that the moderation of the young Palestinian leaders was in their acknowledgement that Israel is already a reality and therefore is not likely to disappear. I even heard phrases such as, "You were born here and you are already here, so we will not send you away." (Thank you very much, I thought). But, what shocked and changed my approach to peace was that when we discussed the deep sources of the conflict between us, I was told, "Judaism is not a nationality, it's only a religion and religions don't have the right to self-determination." The historic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel was also described as made-up or nonexistent.

Reflecting on the comments of these "moderates," I was forced to realize that the conflict is far deeper and more serious than I allowed myself to believe. It was not just about settlements and "occupation," as Palestinian spokespeople have led the Israeli left to believe. I realized that the Palestinians, who were willing to accept the need for peace with Israel, did so because Israel was strong. I realized that, contrary to the leftist views in Israel, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state because the Palestinians have a right (repeat: right) to sovereignty in their homeland, there is no such parallel Palestinian "left" that recognizes the right (repeat: right) of the Jewish people to sovereignty in its ancient homeland.

These did not remain personal reflections. For the following years, these conversations impacted my political career as I found myself within the Labor Party increasingly alienated from what I began to term as the "self-flagellating left," to which the conflict was entirely due to Israel's actions and which demanded no responsibility or recognition from the Palestinians. As a member of the Knesset, on behalf of the Labor Party, I helped carry out a split within the party between its dovish and hawkish wing in order to allow the hawkish wing headed by then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak to remain in the coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This realization has also motivated my continued work around the world to defend Israel and Zionism, insisting that all peace must be rooted in the mutual recognition of the equal right of both peoples to the land.

So, it was somewhat ironic when, just several months ago, I received an email from the Israeli-Palestinian meeting's organizer to write a response to one of the program's core funders as to whether the program had an "impact on anything or anybody." I was asked to "reflect back a few years" and to write whether the program "had any impact on you — personally, professionally, socially, politically … " Naturally, I responded. I wrote that the program had a "tremendous impact on my thinking and I continue to discuss it to this day in my talks and lectures." I shared the above story with the organizer, recognizing that "it is probably not a perspective you want to share with your funders."

In response, the organizer sent me an email saying that there are "many, not one, grass-roots and political Palestinians who truly believe that Jews have a right to part of the land." I responded enthusiastically that meeting even "one Palestinian who believes that the Jewish people have an equal and legitimate claim to the land would be huge for me," and that "I've been looking for someone like that ever since I participated in the program many years ago."

Shortly thereafter, I received the following quote from a Palestinian participant who expressed a desire to renew the program so that "we can reach a resolution to this conflict by having an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as it's capital living in peace side-by-side with the State of Israel." I responded, "I do not see that this individual writes that he recognizes the equal and legitimate right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in their own homeland." I was then asked to write precisely what would convince me that we have a true partner for peace in the Palestinians. So, I drafted the following phrase:

"The Jewish people and Palestinian people are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate claim to a sovereign state for their people on the land." I added that this sentence could be expanded to say, "Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people around the world have an equal and legitimate claim to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in partitioning the land into a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home." I would also add here that it should be clear that neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.

The organizer promised to get back to me. Weeks and months passed, and I was about to publish this piece, opening up the conversation, hoping to find partners who share my belief, so that I could rekindle my hope that peace is possible. At the last minute, I was contacted by professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, the head of American Studies at Al-Quds University and founder of the Palestinian centrist movement, Wasatia. All he asked was to change the word "claim" to "right," and "partition" to "sharing," saying that "right" was more positive, and "partitioning" had in the deep psyche of the Palestinians the negative connotation of the 1947 UN partition plan recommendation. He emphasized that 67 years later, he hopes that Palestinians would realize that sharing the land by a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, as envisioned by the UN resolution, was "the right thing to do" in 1947, since both people do have a legitimate right to the land, and remains "the right thing to do" today. I found these changes wholly acceptable and welcome. So the statement we share now reads as follows:

"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people."

Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?

Oslo is dead, what's next?

This article by Avrum Burg is about principles. Their institutional implementation is lacking, but it is obviously a federation.
The right of Alyah for Jews should be stressed in the same strength as the Right of Return is for Palestinians, and not only left as a possibility in situations of danger according to UN decisions.
This is the right direction though, the only hope of freedom from insecurity and military control for the peoples of Israel-Palestine:

Oslo is dead, what's next?
By Avraham Burg | Mar.29, 2013

This fall will mark 20 years since the Oslo Accords were signed. The euphoria and the hope that accompanied the birth of the peace process gave way to bloodshed, cynicism and boundless despair, anger and fear.

We've reached a crossroads of decisions. We could continue with the same negative feelings for years to come - more humiliation and scorn, more revenge and hatred. We can wait for new cycles of suspicion, arrogance and disregard. We've become used to it all.

However, things could be different.

For both Israelis and Palestinians to get on the right path, we have to go back and honestly discern what went wrong in the previous attempt. It's easy to pin the blame on obvious external factors such as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestinian leadership, George Bush's term in office, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu and the repercussions of the Twin Towers attack. But the truth also lies in harder to reach places: One is political; the other goes far beyond politics.

On the political front, every one of us, Israelis and Palestinians, did not do enough, if at all, to rein in the peace-destroying mechanisms within us. The Israelis signed a peace accord and didn't stop the occupation enterprise via the settlements for one moment. Israel never understood Palestinian sensitivities to the Zionist movement's greatest colonial undertaking. The Palestinians' expectation was, and remains, that in exchange for the great concession of the majority of their homeland, the erosion and creeping annexation of the little that remains would come to a halt. The Palestinians didn't understand Israeli sensitivities to the continued culture of incitement and violence that emanated from the mosques and was expressed horrifically in terror attacks.

The clash between the settlements and the incitement was unavoidable. When it happened, every structure collapsed. And the result? Oslo has been dead for years; they just forgot to inform the nations and their leaders.

The Oslo Accords were not born to live forever. They were just temporary scaffolding, meant to restructure reality, from occupation and control to partnership among equals. However, the absence of a Palestinian state that can sit at the negotiation table as an equal to the state of Israel created trouble for the unequal process. The Palestinian state was the ultimate decree that Israel, in its fear, never wanted to allow. The Palestinians, for their part, were never prepared to give up, and rightly so.

Meanwhile, current events don't wait for us. New realities now clash: The Palestinian state is an accomplished international fact. The Palestinian statesmen, by turning to the United Nations, revived the formula of two states for two peoples for the foreseeable future, while opponents of the two-state approach want to skip the stage of separating the communities and go straight to one, bi-national state. Some of the latter are positive voices, believing we can live together. Other voices, on both sides, which are stronger, are negative, violent and radical. They dream of one state in which one nation will dominate the other.

To return to the path of dialogue, reconciliation and peace, we, and everyone in our communities must bravely stand against those who are trying - both in Israel and Palestine - to kill the thirst for peace through violence and by sowing fear.

I believe the time has come to explore new paradigms that will save us from the enormous price of more humiliation and arrogance, occupation and violence.

Twenty years after Oslo, 45 years after Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 64 years after the establishment of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba, we have reached a dead end in which there is no freedom for the Palestinian nation and no security for Israelis. We have grown no closer to a just and viable solution of two states for two peoples. We all live under one, discriminatory, Israeli regime. Moreover, many of us lost hope and are no longer able to imagine a just solution for the foreseeable future.

In an effort to pave a new way toward a historic reconciliation and a true political engagement between the nations, we must abandon the perception of the current solution based on multiple layers of separation, isolation and structural discrimination. We must replace it with completely different principles and methods.

We, an international group of Israelis and Palestinians, some from here and others from the Diaspora, have met over the past two years through the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, and we have reached the conclusion that a joint dialogue and understanding is both possible and essential.

These principles have no intention of offering practical and detailed solutions, rather they intend to lay totally different foundations for a fair and viable Jewish Israeli-Palestinian partnership.

Our starting point is based on the belief that the fate of both nations is inextricably tied together; that Israeli Jews and Palestinians are part of the Middle East; and also that neither of them is entitled to privileges or exclusive sovereignty over the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

For this purpose:

- Every person living (or possessing residence status) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be guaranteed equal personal, political, economic and social rights. These rights include: defense and security; receiving equal treatment free of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or religion; freedom of movement; ownership and possession of property; legal access; and election and being elected.

- The collective rights of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians - linguistic, cultural, religious and political - will be guaranteed in every political framework. It is understood that neither side will have exclusive sovereignty on the entire land area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (including exclusive ownership of land, exclusive access to natural resources, etc.).

- All exclusive privileges currently accorded to Israeli Jews will be canceled, among them: land ownership and access to natural resources. All the resources - material and political - will be redistributed on the basis of principles of restorative justice.

- Recognizing the Palestinian right of return as expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Implementing this decision will take into account the current reality. A lack of moral and political justice of the expulsion of Palestinians in the past won't be corrected by creating new injustices.

- The new political institutions will enact democratic immigration laws for regulating citizenship. At the same time, Jews and Palestinians living in the Diaspora will enjoy immunity in situations of danger (according to UN decisions). They will have a special status in the citizenship process relative to all other ethnic and national groups.

Like many, I believe with all my heart that mutual recognition based on these principles can bring forth an alternative political reality in which memories of exile and expulsions will turn into a comprehensive implementation of rights, citizenship and belonging. Loss will turn into life and despair will turn into hope.

Hannah Arendt's federation of councils "שיטת המועצות" של חנה ארנדט

Israel as the state of all its citizens in the light of the  "method of councils" of Hannah Arendt

Avner Dinur

Summary 

(Translation is mine)
I do not know if Arendt was right when she suggested, shortly before the establishment of the state, that a federation of councils is the only way to save the Jewish homeland from the threatening clutches of the Jewish nation-state.
From the perspective of the passed 50 years, it is clear that the Israeli - Palestinian conflict is fueled by fiery nationalist ideas, Zionist and Palestinian as well, and it is hard to imagine a substantial federation between Jews and Arabs.
But you can also see the bloody conflict as a kind of historic opportunity.

In the State of Israel, in this era between the second and third Intifada, both Israeli and Palestinian publics are aware that a nation-state following the classical model will never exist here. It might be precisely because of the continuing impasse in the conflict that the Israeli public will not have any choice but to look elsewhere for a solution.

I want to learn from the method of Arendt's councils that the war against the nation-state and the atrocities and distortions that it produces on the ground does not have to be realized  through a generalized anarchist revolution, nor through the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state, nor even through the establishment of the State of all its citizens.
The struggle against the nation-state can bear the character of a voluntary association, coming from the bottom, and of free connections among individuals, between Jews and Arabs, among Arabs themselves and even, as hard to imagine, among Jews themselves.

Arendt's conceptual framework can improve the contemporary Israeli discourse in its struggle for the definition of a Jewish nation-state

Here is the full article in Hebrew:

ישראל כ"מדינת כל אזרחיה" לאור "שיטת המועצות" של חנה ארנדט

ישראל כ"מדינת כל אזרחיה"
לאור "שיטת המועצות" של חנה ארנדט

אבנר דינור

מבוא
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חנה ארנדט (1906 – 1975) נחשבת בעיני רבים ל"הוגה הפוליטית"[1] המשפיעה ביותר במאה העשרים ובתור שכזו לכאורה אין חשיבות ליהדותה ולכתחילה נקראו כתביה מבלי להדגיש את "האספקט היהודי”, אולם בשנות התשעים כשהחל גל גדול של מחקר סביב הגותה החלו קריאות של ארנדט הטוענות שהפילוסופיה שלה נועדה בראש ובראשונה להתמודד עם המצב הפוליטי שבו שרויים היהודים בעידן המודרני[2]. הדברים שלהלן מצטרפים במידה רבה לזיהוי הזה של ארנדט, לא רק כ"הוגה פוליטית" כפי שנהגה לכנות את עצמה, אלא כ"הוגה פוליטית יהודית" ובתור שכזו, לנצל את הדיון שלה על מדינת הלאום בכדי לבחון את המחלוקת על "מדינת כל אזרחיה" בפוליטיקה הישראלית. בכוונתי להציע שיש במסגרת המחשבתית של ארנדט בכדי לקדם את השיח הישראלי העכשווי הנאבק על הגדרתה של מדינת הלאום היהודית. בכדי לעשות זאת אבחן תחילה את גישתה של ארנדט למדינת הלאום ולציונות, לאחר מכן אציג בקצרה את הויכוח על מדינת-כל-אזרחיה, ולבסוף אציע את "שיטת המועצות" של ארנדט כדגם שיש בו להועיל לבחינתה של הפוליטיקה הישראלית הנמתחת על הדיכוטומיה בין שני קטבים מנוגדים.
ארנדט טענה שבמדינת הלאום טמון פרדוקס: מצד אחד מדינה השולטת על שטח מסוים, שואפת כל העת להרחיב את גבולותיה ולהתפשט על פני שטחים נוספים שבעזרתם תוכל להגדיל את המשאבים העומדים לראשותה. מצד שני כל ניסיון להתפשט אל מעבר לגבולות המדינה הקיימת, כולל בהכרח סיפוח של בני לאומים אחרים ומערער על הגדרתה כמדינת לאום:

“Of all forms of government and organizations of people, the nation-state is least suited for unlimited growth because the genuine consent at its base cannot be stretched indefinitely, and is only rarely, and with difficulty, won from conquered people. No nation-state could with clear conscience ever try to conquer foreign people...”[1]

פרדוקס נוסף הנובע ממדינת לאום מתרחבת הוא שכיבושיה מפתחים תמיד תודעה לאומית אצל הנכבשים הגורמת להם להתקומם כנגדה ולבסוף גם לנצח אותה[2]. הלאומיות אחראית לדעתה לכמה מהטרגדיות הגדולות והעקובות מדם ביותר של העת החדשה. במדינות הלאום השתלט הלאום על המדינה ותבע להעניק זכויות רק לבני הלאום[3]. הענקת זכויות זו לא היתה בעייתית אילולא היתה המדינה הכוח היחידי המעניק זכויות בעולם המודרני. ארנדט הדגישה שזכויות אינן טבעיות אלא הן תמיד פוליטיות, כלומר הן נובעות מהכוחות המרכזיים המופעלים בחברה, וכוחות אלה, במאה העשרים הם בראש ובראשונה לאומיים. כיוון שלדעת ארנדט אין בעולם המודרני זכויות מלבד זכויות במסגרת המדינה, הרי שהענקת זכויות על בסיס לאומי-פרטיקולרי יוצרת בהכרח עיוות מוסרי. לדעת ארנדט יש ללאומיות אפקט מונוכרומטי הצובע גיוון תרבותי ומחשבתי בגוון אחד וכך יוצר זהות מיותרת וכוחנית בין שונים[4]. כל התשובות לבעיה הלאומית הן רעות לדעתה כיוון שהן תוצר של חיבור כפוי בין אינדיבידואלים. למרות ששפיכויות הדמים הקשות של המאה העשרים נעשו על ידי, ובשמן של מדינות, "ארנדט מציעה לראות את הרע בלאומיות, לא במדינה"[5]. הלאומיות היא פרוורסיה של המדינה, והיא נסמכת לדעתה על שילוש קדוש: עם, שטח ומדינה[6].

ארנדט גיבשה את עמדותיה על הלאומיות המודרנית בעיקר לנוכח "הבעיה היהודית". היא חשבה שיש למצוא פתרון פוליטי לבעיה היהודית אולם בניגוד לציונות המדינית, היא חשבה שהיהודים הם הנפגעים העיקריים של מדינת הלאום במאה העשרים ולכן יהיה זה אבסורד שהיהודים עצמם ירצו להקים מדינת לאום. היהודים לדעתה הם מאז ראשית העת החדשה הפרדיגמה הברורה ביותר של חסרי-מדינה ולכן הרעיונות הלאומיים מהווים כמעט תמיד בעיה עבור יהודים. ארנדט סווגה לא פעם כיהודיה שונאת עצמה (self hating Jew)[7] המכתב של גרשום שלום אליה, בו הוא טוען שאין בה שמץ של "אהבת ישראל"[8] הוא אולי המפורסם ביותר לעניין זה, והסיבה המרכזית לטענה זו היא שרבים הבינו את התנגדותה למדינת הלאום המודרנית כהתנגדות ללאומיות יהודית באשר היא. אולם ארנדט לא היתה אנטי-ציונית. עוד לפני קום המדינה היא טענה שהציונות השיגה תמיכה רחבה כל כך בעם היהודי עד שרק בודדים, שאף אחד לא מתייחס אליהם ברצינות, נשארו אנטי-ציונים[9]. ארנדט העריכה מאוד את המפעל הציוני וראתה בו את הניסיון הרציני היחיד בעת המודרנית להחזיר את היהודים למצב פוליטי, מצב שממנו לא יכלו עוד להתחמק לאחר האמנסיפציה. הציונות שלה היא במידה רבה ציונות תרבותית בסגנון אחד-העם[10] והפתרון הפוליטי לבעיה היהודית שעמד לנגד עיניה הוא הקמתה של ארץ-מולדת (homeland) עבור היהודים, ולא הקמת מדינת לאום (nation state)[11]. הישוב היהודי בפלשתינה, לפני קום המדינה היווה לדעת ארנדט צורה מסויימת של ארץ מולדת יהודית, כלומר החלוצים לדעתה הגשימו במידה רבה אידיאל פוליטי יהודי. הישוב היה טריטוריה פוליטית שמאפשרת לתרבות היהודית להתקיים ולפרוח מבלי להזדקק לריבונות לאומית.
דאגתה לקיום היהודי אחרי השואה הביאה את ארנדט לבקר את הציונות על אדישותה כלפי הקיום היהודי בגולה. הציונות לדעתה היא הדרך שבאמצעותה מתייחס רוב מוחלט של יהודי העולם לזהותו היהודית אולם דווקא משום כך מהווה לדעתה הציונות איום על עצם הקיום היהודי. הציונות המדינית היתה מודעת לעובדה שבמדינת ישראל אין מקום מספיק כדי להכיל את כל יהודי העולם. התשובה הציונית לבעיה זו לבשה לדעת ארנדט שתי פנים, מצד אחד היו אלה שטענו שרק החלק הטוב של היהודים יעלה לארץ ואילו היתר ילכו ויתבוללו אל תוך העמים שמסביבם. תשובה מעיין זו מדגישה את אדישותם, אולם למעשה היא לא התקבלה. התשובה השניה, שבתחילה היתה עמדתם של הרביזיוניסטים בלבד, היתה בדומה לכל הלאומנים הקיצוניים של אירופה: "פאן-שמיות כתגובה לאנטי-שמיות”[12], כלומר הציונים הפנימו את שאיפות ההתרחבות הלאומניות שהיו נחלתן של התנועות הפאן-סלאביות והפאן-גרמניות ובכך נכנסה הציונות למילכוד שטמון לכל לאומיות המעוניינת להתרחב.


[1] ארנדט, OT, מהד' שלישית עמ' 126.
[2] ארנדט, OT, מהד' שלישית, עמ' 134.
[3] ארנדט, OT, מהד' שלישית, עמ' 230, ראו גם: ביינר, ארנדט ולאומיות, עמ' 51.
[4] קוקס, על לאומיות, עמ' 223. אולם קוקס לא הבחינה שהמניע לעמדה זו של ארנדט הוא בדיוק מחוייבותה ליהדות ולשמירה על פרטיקולריות יהודית בתוך מדינת הלאום הלא-יהודית.
[5] לאור, אף מילה על ציונות, עמ' 18.
[6] ביינר, ארנדט ולאומיות, עמ' 51.
[7] קוקס, על לאומיות, עמ' 225.
[8] שלום, דברים בגו, עמ' 92.
[9] ארנדט, להציל את המולדת, עמ' 180.
[10] פלדמן, היהודי כפריה, עמ' 35.
[11] ביינר, ארנדט ולאומיות, עמ' 49.
[12] ארנדט, הציונות בראיה מחדש, עמ' 151.

מדינת כל אזרחיה ומדינת לאום בישראל
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הפרדוקס של מדינת-לאום-מתרחבת, ממש כפי שתיארה אותו ארנדט, עומד במרכז הדיון הציבורי בישראל בשנים האחרונות. המודעות לדרך שבה מסכנת מדינת הלאום את עצמה בכיבושיה, הביאה רוב מוחלט של הישראלים להסכים לשלם מחיר טריטוריאלי בכדי לשמור על הגדרתה של המדינה כמדינת לאום יהודית ודמוקרטית. יותר מ70% מהציבור הישראלי תומך בעשור האחרון בתוכניות נסיגה שונות, אך גם מעבר לרוב מוצק זה נראה שיש הסכמה ברורה גם של המפלגות שימינה מהליכוד, שהשאיפה למדינת לאום יהודית חשובה מהשאיפה לארץ ישראל השלמה (אגב, ביטוי שכיום נעלם כמעט לגמרי מהשיח הפוליטי הישראלי). הויכוח בין ימין לשמאל איננו על הגדרתה של המדינה כמדינת לאום. אם יש בכלל ויכוח מדיני בין המפלגות הרי שהוא עוסק במחיר שהן מוכנות לשלם על מנת לשמור את המדינה כמדינה יהודית. לעומת הסכמה רחבה זו, מיעוט קטן בפוליטיקה הישראלית, מציע להפוך את המדינה ל"מדינת כל אזרחיה"[1]. לשם הצגה ברורה, גם אם מעט פשטנית של רעיון זה, אני נעזר בדבריו של ישעיהו לייבוביץ:
“המדינה אין לה אלא משמעות שימושית בלבד, באשר היא אינה אלא מנגנון (כלי, מכשיר, אינסטרומנט) לפעולה, ומהות פעולתה – הכפיה. המדינה אינה "עוסקת בהבהרת יחסים וכו'” [...] אלא כופה יחסים ... במובן זה אמרתי שהמדינה (כל מדינה) היא אויב האדם. [...] אולם בעקבות ההתפתחות ההיסטורית (מדור הפלגה ואילך) היתה המדינה לרע הכרחי של המין האנושי ואין לאדם היום מפלט ממנה..."[2]
ברור שעבור ליבוביץ "מדינת לאום יהודית" איננה רק "רע הכרחי", כדבריו, בדומה לכל מדינה אחרת, "מדינת לאום יהודית" הינה פשוט צירוף מילים חסר פשר. אין מדינה יהודית ולא יכולה להיות מדינה כזו. יהדות היא דבר אחד ומדינה היא דבר אחר בתכלית. לא כאן המקום להרחיב על עמדותיו המורכבות והסותרות של לייבוביץ' בשאלה הציונית, אולם לעניינינו די אם נראה כי לדעתו מדינה לא אמורה להשפיע על זהותו, תרבותו ובוודאי לא על דתו של אדם. מדינה הינה מכשיר טכני שעניינו הפעלת כפיה על הפרט. נידמה לי שגם אם רוב התומכים ב"מדינת כל אזרחיה" לא קראו את לייבוביץ ממש, יסכימו רובם שהמדינה אמורה להוות מנגנון מעשי בלבד.

בויכוח שבין מדינת-כל-אזרחיה לבין מדינת לאום, אפשר לצפות למצוא את ארנדט כתומכת של מדינת-כל-אזרחיה. אולם החשיבות שארנדט מקנה לכניסת היהודים למצב הפוליטי, הצורך בארץ מולדת ליהודים, ההערכה הרבה שרכשה למפעל הציוני, גם כאשר הסתייגה ממנו, והכוח שהיא זיהתה במדינות הלאום, כל אלה מלמדים שהדגם הפוליטי שעמד לנגד עיניה הוא דגם שלישי, שכמובן איננו מדינת-לאום (שאת ההתנגדות אליה ניסחה ארנדט במפורש כפי שראינו) אך הוא גם שונה ממדינת-כל-אזרחיה בכך שיש לו יומרות ברורות להשפיע על זהות האזרחים וכן בכך שהוא נמנע מחלק ניכר של אותה כפיה המהווה את הבסיס לכל מדינה לדעתו של לייבוביץ. את הדגם הזה שרמזים לזהותו פיזרה ארנדט בין כתבים שונים, היא מכנה "שיטת המועצות", "Council System", וברצוני לטעון שיש בו בכדי לקדם את השיח הפוליטי בישראל התקוע, זה כמה עשורים על הדיכוטומיה הבלתי מתפשרת בין מדינת-לאום למדינת-כל-אזרחיה.

[1] בעוד שמדינת הלאום זכתה לדיון נרחב למדי בהגות הפוליטית בחצי השני של המאה העשרים, הרי שהמושג "מדינת כל אזרחיה" אינו מופיע בדיון התיאורטי ולמעשה, למיטב ידיעתי, הוא תוצר של הדיון הציבורי הישראלי. בדיון התיאורטי מופיעה הבחנה בין מדינת-לאום-אתנית (שמקבילה פחות או יותר לרעיונות שראינו אצל ארנדט), לבין מדינת-לאום-אזרחית (ביינר, ארנדט ולאומיות, עמ' 50). מדינת הלאום האזרחית בנויה על ההנחה שכל אזרח במדינה שותף במידה שווה ביצירת הזהות הקולקטיבית של המדינה. נידמה לי שאלה בישראל הדוגלים ב"מדינת כל אזרחיה" מציעים רעיון מעט שונה, על פיו למדינה אין כל יומרה להשפיע על זהותם של אזרחיה. המדינה לדידם היא רק מכשיר טכני שנועד להסדיר את היחסים בין האזרחים.
[2] מכתב לצוריאל אדמנית ודב רפל, מאי 1970, מתוך: ליבוביץ', רציתי לשאול, עמ' 371 – 372.

שיטת המועצות
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במאמר ממאי 1948 שנקרא "להציל את המולדת היהודית”, מציעה ארנדט, בעקבות יהודה לייב מאגנס להקים בפלשתינה מדינה פדרטיבית יהודית-ערבית[1]. כמה חוקרים כבר הצביעו על הקשר שבין דעותיה של ארנדט על מדינת הלאום היהודית לבין העמדה הדו-לאומית של אנשי קבוצת ברית-שלום, בעיקר לפני קום המדינה[2] אולם עיון מעמיק ברעיון הפדרציה בכתבים אחרים של ארנדט מגלה שיש בשיטה גישה מהפכנית בהרבה מהתביעה של אנשי ברית-שלום לכך ששני העמים יחיו במדינה מאוחדת. לטענתי אי אפשר להבין את קריאתה של ארנדט לפדרציה יהודית-ערבית מבלי להידרש לדיון נרחב יותר של ארנדט על פדרציה של מועצות, דיון שהיא עורכת במהדורה השניה של ספרה הנרחב על מקורות הטוטליטריות[3] ובספרה על המהפיכה[4]. אמנם במאמר ממאי ארבעים ושמונה אין היא מפרטת את השיטה, וב"מקורות הטוטליטריות" ו"על המהפיכה" היא אינה מזכירה את ההקשר הישראלי-פלסטיני אולם אם נחבר בין השניים (חיבור בשיטה שהרמב"ם מכנה "השב פרקיו זה על זה"[5]) יתברר שהרעיונות האוטופיים של ארנדט בסוף ספרה על הטוטליטריות אינם אלא פתרון לבעיית היהודים ולהתגלמותה במדינת ישראל.

שיטת המועצות היא מצב של השתייכות פוליטית וולנטרית עם רמת מחוייבות הולכת ופוחתת שבה אדם מחוייב באופן עמוק לקהילה מקומית (למשל שכונה, ועד עובדים, ועד הורי בית ספר וכולי), וקהילה זו מחוייבת לקהילה רחבה יותר (למשל עיר) שבעצמה מחוברת לקהילה רחבה יותר (מחוז, מדינה) וכן הלאה. רמת המחוייבות של האינדיבידואל לקהילות הרחבות תהייה אם כן קטנה, אך בכל זאת לא מבוטלת. אולי מוטב להדגים את עקרונות השיטה באמצעות התנועה הקיבוצית[6]. כל קיבוץ בפני עצמו הוא התארגנות וולנטרית של בודדים המעוניינים להתאגד, לוקחים חלק פעיל בפוליטיקה הפנימית של הארגון ומעוניינים להשפיע גם על העולם שמחוץ לארגונם הקטן. התנועה הקיבוצית גם היא התארגנות וולונטרית של מספר מועצות מקומיות כאלו שהתאגדו לשם קידום ענייניהן. מחוייבותו של חבר קיבוץ לקיבוצו גדולה מאוד ואילו לתנועה הקיבוצית המחוייבות קטנה בהרבה ובכל זאת, חבר קיבוץ מזוהה מיד כחבר בתנועה (על פי לבושו בדרך כלל). נידמה לי שמה שעמד לנגד עיניה במועצות הוולנטריות שלה, לא היתה כל כך התנועה הקיבוצית (שלה רכשה ארנדט הערכה רבה) אלא דווקא הקהילה היהודית המסורתית שבה כל קהילה היא התארגנות וולנטרית ויש קשר בין קהילות שונות בעולם כולו. ניתן לטעון כמובן שהקהילה היהודית אינה נקיה מיחסים של כוח וכפיה ושהיא מפעילה על חבריה כפיה רבה בדרכים מגוונות – גם אם לא דרכים של חוק ריבוני. כפי שהראה פוקו, אין במציאות אירגון חברתי כלשהו שאינו מפעיל מנגנונים סמויים וגלויים של כפיה וכוח, ובכל זאת נזקם של מנגנוני הכוח והכפייה של הקהילות קטנים בהרבה מנזקה של קולקטיביות פוליטית בסגנון מדינת הלאום. הכוח הפנימי של הקהילה לפחות לא מביא ברוב המקרים לשפיכות דמים.

ארנדט איננה מציינת במפורש בשיטת המועצות שלה, לא את התנועה הקיבוצית ולא את הקהילה היהודית משום שעיקר עניינה בדיון על המועצות הוא בדרך שבה משמרות המועצות את הרוח המהפכנית לאחר סיומה של המהפיכה. התקדים ההיסטורי שהיא מוצאת לשיטה הוא בהפיכה ההונגרית ב-1956. ארנדט טענה שמועצות דומות לאלה שקמו בהונגריה הופיעו עם כל התקוממות עממית מאז אמצע המאה ה-19, אך כולן דוכאו ונעלמו תחת מכבש הטוטליטריות שאפיין את המשטר שבא בעקבות המהפיכה[7]. ארנדט רואה במועצות אלה מצב פוליטי אידיאלי שבו מתקיימות כפיה וריבונות ברמה המינימלית ההכרחית לשם קיום חברתי. המועצות הן "מרחבים של חופש"[8] שנועדו למסד את הרוח המהפכנית ולשמר אותה לאחר המהפיכה מפני כוחה של הרפובליקה. כישלונם של המהפכנים לראות את החידוש שטמון בשיטת המהפיכות[9] הוא שהוביל לדריסת הרוח המהפכנית ושקיעתה אל תוך משטרים טוטליטריים חשוכים.

המועצות הוולנטריות עומדת כמובן בניגוד גמור להגדרתה של המדינה שראינו אצל לייבוביץ. לייבוביץ טען שכל מהותה של המדינה היא כפיה. ארנדט שואלת האם ניתן לדמיין מצב פוליטי שאינו מבוסס על כפיה, או לכל הפחות מנסה לצמצם את מימד הכפיה לרמה המינימלית. "מדינת כל אזרחיה", שאיננה אלא מכשיר שלטוני שמאגד קבוצת אזרחים שאין ביניהם כל קשר בסגנון לייבוביץ איננה ברת מימוש לדעת ארנדט וגם איננה רצויה. היא איננה ברת מימוש מכיוון שגם לו "רצתה" המדינה להיות רק עניין טכני היתה מייצרת זהות קולקטיבית ברמה מסויימת, והיא אינה רצויה משום שבכל מדינה נדרשת מידה של אמון ודבק חברתי מינימלי בכדי לקיים את מוסדות השלטון. מעצם היותה וולנטרית, מחייבת פדרציית המועצות של ארנדט הזדהות לא מעטה של האזרחים עם המסגרת הגדולה ולכן צריכה הפדרציה להשפיע ולעצב את זהותו של האינדיבידואל. היא אינה יכולה להוות מכשיר שלטוני בלבד.

שיטת המועצות נראית אוטופיסטית לגמרי. קשה היום לדמיין מדינה שתיבנה כך לאורך זמן, וגם אם מציאות כזו תיתכן, הרי שמדינה וולנטרית שכזו תעמוד בפני איום משמעותי ממדינות לאומיות שמסביבה ומי יודע אם כוחה יוכל לעמוד לה. אולם ארנדט רחוקה מלהיות הוגה אוטופיסטית. כהיסטוריונית וכהוגה פוליטית (לא "פילוסופית", כדבריה) היא הקפידה לבסס את ביקורת הלאומיות שלה על מקרה היסטורי ולכן היא מזכירה את רעיון הפדרציה בקונטקסט של המהפיכה ההונגרית, אולם היא לא עשתה זאת משום שחשבה כי רק בזמן המוגבל שלאחר המהפיכה יכולים האזרחים ליצור לעצמם "מרחבים של חופש", אלא משום שמהפיכה היא הביטוי המובהק ביותר לביקורת הנובעת מלמטה, מהאזרחים עצמם, על השלטון. ביקורת מהפכנית בדרך כלל מציעה אלטרנטיבה מדויקת של המצב הרצוי לאחר המהפיכה. ביקורת פוליטית יכולה, ולדעתי גם חייבת, לסמן כיוון שלאורו יהיה עלינו לשפוט את המציאות המשתנה.

אולי מדינה של מועצות מקומיות איננה מן האפשר, אולם אני מבקש ללמוד מארנדט שפוליטיקה הדלה ביחסי כפיה וריבונות היא כיוון ראוי שההתקדמות אליו איננה עניין של אוטופיה אלא של מגמה מתמשכת בהווה. יתכן שפתרונות פוליטיים אמיתיים אינם מסוג הדברים המגיע במהפכות ולכן עלינו לשאוף ולהגשימם צעד אחר צעד, ביצירת צעדים בוני אמון בין יהודים לערבים, ביצירת חיבורים על בסיס מקומי ועל רקע אינטרס משותף צר, חיבורים וולנטריים שייצרו קהילות קטנות המתחברות לקהילות גדולות יותר, המתחברות לקהילת-על בסדר גודל של המדינה המודרנית.

מדינת כל אזרחיה ומדינת לאום בישראל סיכום

[1] ארנדט, להציל את המולדת, עמ' 191.
[2] רז קרקוצקין, דו-לאומיות; אדון, שולם ארנדט והפרדוקס.
[3] מעניין לציין אולי שהדיון על שיטת המועצות במהפיכה ההונגרית היא תוספת שהוסיפה ארנדט למהדורה השניה של הספר והשמיטה מהמהדורה השלישית, כיוון שהיתה "מיושנת" לדבריה.
[4] ארנדט, על המהפיכה.
[5] הרמב"ם, מורה נבוכים, חלק א, צוואת ספר זה. שוורץ מתרגם מעט אחרת: פרש את פרקיו זה לפי זה" (עמ' 19).
[6] במקומות אחרים ארנדט ביטאה התלהבות לנוכח הרעיון והביצוע של תפיסת הקיבוצים.
[7] ארנדט, OT מהדורה שניה, עמ' 500.
[8] ארנדט, על המהפיכה, עמ' 268.
[9] ארנדט, על המהפיכה, עמ' 284.

סיכום
אינני יודע אם צדקה ארנדט כשהציעה, זמן קצר לפני הקמת המדינה, שפדרציה של מועצות היא הדרך היחידה להציל את המולדת היהודית מציפורניה המאיימות של מדינת הלאום היהודית. בפרספקטיבה של חמישים שנה שעברו מאז, ברור שהסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני מלובה על ידי רעיונות לאומיים עזים, ציוניים ופלסטינים כאחד, וקשה לדמיין פדרציה משמעותית בין יהודים לערבים. אולם אפשר גם לראות בסכסוך העקוב מדם סוג של הזדמנות היסטורית. במדינת ישראל, בעידן שבין האינתיפאדה השניה לשלישית מודעים הציבור הישראלי והפלסטיני כאחד, שמדינת-לאום במודל הקלאסי לעולם לא תתקיים כאן. יתכן שדווקא בשל המבוי הסתום המתמשך בסכסוך לא תהייה לציבור הישראלי כל ברירה אלא לחפש את הפתרון במקום אחר. אני מבקש ללמוד משיטת המועצות של ארנדט שהמלחמה במדינת הלאום ובזוועות והעיוותים שהיא מחוללת במציאות לא חייבת להתממש, לא במהפכה אנרכיסטית כוללת, לא בכינונה של מדינת לאום פלשתינית ואפילו לא בכינונה של מדינת-כל-אזרחיה. המאבק במדינת הלאום יכול לשאת אופי של התאגדות וולנטרית, מלמטה, ושל חיבורים חופשיים בין אינדיבידואלים, בין יהודים וערבים, וגם בין ערבים לבין עצמם ואפילו, עד כמה שקשה לדמיין זאת, בין יהודים לבין עצמם.

יש במסגרת המחשבתית של ארנדט בכדי לקדם את השיח הישראלי העכשווי הנאבק על הגדרתה של מדינת הלאום היהודית.

Toward confederation

Interesting article by a Professor of Political Science.

In his confederation, Palestine is supposedly sovereign but have no army.
No solution for borders and sharing of Jerusalem...
He does not explain either why "A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better" than a unitary state.
A confederal treaty not mentioning Jerusalem, borders and refugees could be a first step, but it will have to evolve into a true supranational federation: like Europe, made too of different nation-states.

Emphasis is mine.

Toward confederation
By RONALD TIERSKY
08/05/2012

Palestinians know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task.

Israel’s strategic problem in historical terms is, ultimately, how to win a war well. The Palestinian problem is to avoid losing this war in the most drawn-out, worst possible way.

Palestinians (including any realistic Hamas leaders), know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task. Yet neither is Israel completely free, because victory can be dangerous. Israel needs a strategy that isn’t in the end self-defeating.

Realistically, the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma is this: In what circumstances could the strong safely show magnanimity and the weak believe they are getting an acceptable result? Intractable conflicts can sometimes be unblocked by enlarging the problem, by increasing the number of players, stakes and potential rewards.

All the “one-state” solutions – whether bi-national or a federation – are non-starters because Israeli Jews rightly refuse to sacrifice their own interest in a grand gesture of philanthropy.

Majorities in Israeli and Palestinian public opinion would doubtless accept a simple two-state solution if leaders agreed on it. Israel’s current government, however, seems not really interested whatever lip-service it is given from time to time. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “economic peace” formula in effect replaces the creation of a Palestinian state with Israeli-sponsored economic development in the West Bank combined with an oppressive, volatile political status quo.

A way forward is to find a larger formula that increases the rewards and reduces costs for Israelis and Palestinians, and involves outside states as guarantors. Complexity and flexibility in this case are advantages. What is necessary is an institutional structure that limits to a minimum the binding links for Israel and at the same time provides time and space for Palestinian self-government and proof of competence to evolve, including stopping the violence on both sides.

A minimal, complex and flexible Israeli-Palestinian confederation, here meaning a two-state solution within the confines of a larger confederation, is a promising alternative.

Two sovereign states wrapped in a semi-state, a less-than-a-state.

Confederation – political and economic – could provide what Israelis and Palestinians, and outside powers, want most: guaranteed mutual security of the two states, reliable peace in the region, diminished capacity for Islamist terrorist groups to use the conflict as a pretext, and economic and social progress.

What is a confederation, how does it differ from a one-state solution, and what would be its international legal basis? A confederation differs from a binational single state and also from a federation of two states.

Some states are unitary, ruled entirely from the national capital (France). Others are federations in which power is shared in some balance between a national government and the states that compose it (the US, Germany). A few are confederations (Switzerland is a modern example).

Unique in world political development, the European Union is extremely complex: a hybrid combination of historical nation-states and national capitals with European-level institutions located in Brussels and elsewhere.

EU institutions are in part confederal (EU summit meetings in various cities), part federal (the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt) and part strict national sovereignty (major foreign policy decisions, above all decisions for war or peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya).

In the EU, complexity is often a curse but it does provide benefits as well, for example deflecting conflict into ambiguity and permitting the whole to survive even as one part falls into crisis (cf. the current Eurozone debt mess).

The EU is of particular relevance here because, although not wellknown, in international legal terms the entire EU is still a treaty organization (Maastricht) because a proposed constitution for it didn’t achieve ratification in 2005.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it is also unique, requires a particularly imaginative legal and institutional structure.

Why not one state or two states? In the Holy Land a unitary state called Israel-Palestine makes no historical or political sense. A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better.

What of a confederation? Normally a confederation means a constitution, weak but nonetheless more than a treaty. Sovereignty rests with the composing states.

(The American Articles of Confederation before 1789 are an example.) But if a Holy Land confederation is based on a treaty rather than a constitution, Israel’s national constitution and sovereignty are always superior (as would be true also for a Palestinian state). A treaty in this case would be more durable than a constitution.

A treaty is usually made for a specified period of years and renewed (NATO is an example). A constitution, however, is implicitly permanent.

If the situation on the ground goes sufficiently bad, a treaty can perfectly well be renounced (cf. current concerns about Egyptian repudiation of the peace treaty with Israel.) What would happen in practice as politics in the confederation? For example, there would be no common elections or governments.

Israeli and Palestinian parliaments might meet jointly once or twice a year for a few days, to get to know each other and create common culture more than to legislate. Existing Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation could be given formal legal status in the treaty. Once or twice yearly summit meetings of top national leaders could be mandated along with more frequent councils of ministers in a particular policy area, say agriculture (as in the EU).

In short, a treaty-based confederation sidesteps the entire zero-sum one-state two-state drama.

For Israel, in particular, confederation deals with intractable issues of Palestinian political sovereignty.

Creating a Palestinian state within a confederation would not increase but actually diminish threats to Israel’s security. Having their own state, Palestinian obsession with Israel, the ideological passion about sovereignty, borders and revenge, would shift to ambitions for more prosperous lives with individual dignity. Gaza, now such a special case, could join the Palestinian state immediately combined with the West Bank. If, however, Palestinian unity were impossible, Gaza could evolve over time one way or another.

For Palestinians, entrepreneurial energy and private sector business development would stimulate the growth of a more complex civil society connected to the wider world. A Palestinian state that issues internationally recognized passports permitting its citizens to freely visit the world would change the mind-set of young and old generations alike.

Speculating even further ahead, the confederation could encompass not just Israel and Palestine but, sooner or later, Jordan as well. Stimulating Jordanian economic and social development is a good in itself. Security across the entire confederation could be guaranteed by a combination of sovereign Israeli military and police forces, a Palestinian internal police force, a Jordanian participation, and overlapping security guarantees in the form of international boots on the ground: the US, UN and NATO (including Turkey). Jordanian domestic political reform would be de-dramatized.

A more cosmopolitan Israel can afford to deal differently with the Palestinians, who have by now suffered and been punished enough for disastrous policies of the past.

Israel would win its war well if a Palestinian state were created not against Israel’s will but sponsored and even mentored by Israel.

Inevitably, new international esteem would follow. The high cards are in Israeli hands.

The writer is the Eastman Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.

A federated state for Israelis and Palestinians

Source: A federated state for Israelis and Palestinians
By JAY BUSHINSKY
03/05/2012

Emphasis is mine.
Source:
[...] If Netanyahu manages to forge a new coalition that would have the middle-of-the-road Kadima party as a major component and leaves the Jewish religious and nationalist extremists on the parliamentary sidelines, he may escape the pressure constantly bearing down on him from the West Bank settlers who constantly seek territorial acquisitions.

Theoretically, he could then launch a process that would require the dismantling of a substantial number of settlements and the removal of unauthorized outposts further to the east.

A proposed exchange of territory that might enable many of the settlements to remain intact already has public support from Kadima. Its newly elected leader, Shaul Mofaz, is on the record as favoring a deal of this kind. But the transfer of thousands of hard-line settlers from the West Bank to ante bellum Israel would be a daunting if not politically impossible task.

This apparent fact of life bears out the contention that the permission given by the incumbent government and several of its predecessors for 350,000 to 500,000 Jewish settlers to move into the West Bank was a major mistake.

The financial cost of relocating them would be prohibitive, not to mention the fury of the inevitable social backlash in ante bellum Israel that would be a by-product.

All of these considerations suggest that it would be wise for Netanyahu, his party and the electorate as a whole to consider seriously whether there indeed are alternatives to the seemingly inoperable two-state solution.

One of them may be the hitherto unthinkable one-state solution: Annexation of the West Bank and extension of Israeli citizenship to its Palestinian inhabitants on the basis of total equality and political freedom.

This notion has been resisted in the past by Orthodox religious politicians who fear that it would set the stage for intermarriages between Jews and Arabs. But where and when did such an esoteric issue like intermarriage form the basis of any country’s political program? That has not been the case in Ireland, Ceylon or Nigeria where rival ethnic or religious groups also are required to live under one political roof.

In the local case, the one-state solution would take the form of a federation made up of two entities – one primarily Jewish and the other primarily Arab (in demographic terms).

Each entity could have its own parliament and governmental administration.


The state as a whole could have a federal government which would be responsible primarily for national security (for the entire territory of the federated state) – foreign policy and economic affairs including a common currency for both entities (as already exists in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). The federal government’s personnel and leadership would be drawn from the two entitities.

Ironically, annexation was originally proposed by the late Chaim Herzog when he served as the first military governor of the West Bank immediately after the Six Day War.

He was opposed then by the National Religious Party which was destined to spawn the ideological core of Gush Emunim and other Jewish settlement movements.


Its rationale then too was that annexation would foster intermarriage.

It all boils down to the likelihood that the prospective election will give Netanyahu a chance to implement domestic reforms, especially in the economic and social spheres.

These should include a more equitable distribution of private income so as to reduce or (preferably) eliminate the phenomenon of so-called “tycoons” lording it over the rest of the economy, and reduction of the cost of new or suitable housing so that young couples will be able to afford it and the deterioration of overcrowded neighborhoods can be stopped.

The winner (presumably Netanyahu) also might be in a better position to rehabilitate the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally in the past five years, by integrating as many of them as possible and facilitating the emigration or deportation of those who cannot adjust to Israeli society to alternative destinations elsewhere in the world. These steps certainly are preferable to letting them converge on neglected urban areas, especially south Tel Aviv, and turning them into crime-infested slums.

The writer is a veteran foreign correspondent.