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.
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Showing posts with label Two state solution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Two state solution. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN UNION: THE “1–2–7 STATES” VISION OF THE FUTURE
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN UNION: THE “1–2–7 STATES” VISION OF THE FUTURE
Israeli scholar Lev Grinberg starts from a critique of the one- and two-state solutions to suggest an alternative vision including elements of both. The proposed formula is an Israeli-Palestinian Union with different layers of state institutions: a shared administration based on parity representation located in the unified capital of Jerusalem, two separate democratic nation-states, and seven provinces (or federal states) belonging to one of the two nation-states. The author sees this “1–2–7 states” vision of the future as a way of containing the conflict in the absence of an ideal solution.
The Israeli-Palestinian Union: The "1-2-7 States" Vision of the Future, by Lev Grinberg
Thinking outside the box: Alternatives to the one- and two-state solutions
LEV GRINBERG
Emphasis is mine.
IMAGINATION IS A NECESSARY but insufficient precondition for political change. Equally crucial are the political capacity to negotiate and compromise, a relatively even balance of power, and the authority (and popular support) to implement agreements. In addition to a lack of any shared vision, all these elements were absent in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” of 1993–2000. Two charismatic leaders allegedly committed to the two-state solution, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat, failed to agree on borders, postponed negotiations, and neglected to take steps to start decolonization. Their failure, compounded by subsequent developments on the ground, critically jeopardized the two-state solution’s future chances of success. The one-state scenario on the other hand has not even reached the table. In light of the obstacles in the way of these two most commonly mentioned solutions, this essay suggests an alternative vision of how to contain the conflict in the absence of reaching a “solution.”
DEMOCRATIZATION, DECOLONIZATION, AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN
Democratic political institutions are not designed to solve conflicts but to contain them through negotiations and legitimize the compromises made by the elites representing dominant and dominated groups. In the absence of agreed political institutions, violence becomes the basic expression of the conflict and a means to achieve goals. Dominant groups use state institutions to rule unilaterally, including by stepping up military repression, and dominated groups react by using violence aimed at achieving recognition of their leadership and claims.
Democracy is a specific set of institutions that developed in Europe in the nineteenth century as a result of increasing class conflict and the formation of nation-states. The two structural preconditions of democratization were a balance of power between dominant and dominated classes and a clear demarcation of borders (physical and symbolic) defining the potential citizenry. Without these preconditions, it is difficult to establish democratic institutions capable of containing conflicts, and without such institutions conflicts easily deteriorate into violence: civil wars, authoritarian regimes, or both. But while European states tended toward internal democracy, their expansion was at the same time based on disproportionate economic and military power relative to other regions of the world, and they used this power to impose nondemocratic institutions on these regions to rule them unilaterally. The struggle of the peoples dominated by Europe to gain recognition and inclusion in the polity could not be contained by these state institutions because they were imposed unilaterally by external colonial and imperial power.
With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the basic factors preventing its success were the power imbalance between the two parties and the inability to determine borders between the mutually influenced and penetrated Israeli and Palestinian political arenas. With regard to the latter, Israel’s own contradiction between democracy and colonialism—which it attempted to mask by way of a “dual democratic-military regime”—stands as a major obstacle. This dual regime, comprising a formal democracy within the 1949–67 borders and a military regime in the West Bank and Gaza, involves two separate struggles: a democratic struggle for equal rights within the sovereign and recognized borders of Israel and a struggle to end the occupation in the Palestinian territories.
In addition to the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas, there is also a third arena of interrelations—an Israeli-Palestinian political arena—that includes individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions of both communities. Indeed, the peace process itself was really an attempt to coordinate and synchronize the opening of these three political spaces. A key impediment to achieving this goal was the agreement under Oslo to start democratization (via Palestinian elections) combined with the decision to postpone the decolonization of the occupied territories (i.e., dismantle Jewish settlements, grant economic sovereignty to the Palestinians, and end military rule). A broader reason for the failure to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, then, was the complex interaction among the three political arenas, and this complexity will continue to be a crucial factor in the future. Two conclusions flow from this: Israeli power needs to be balanced by international intervention, and political institutions should be put in place that are able to contain conflicts by opening space for representation and mediation in these three political arenas.
To design the institutions necessary to contain the conflicts in the Israeli-Palestinian matrix, it is necessary to understand the specific tensions involved. This is a matter of institutional design requiring a new vision of the future. Whether or not the agreed institutions can be installed and consolidated depends on the political will of the elites and the popular support they can mobilize. It is true that the one- and two-state solutions are also visions of the future, but they do not sufficiently address the complexities of history and the Israeli/Palestinian societies’ present situation, nor do they account for the need to contain conflicts through facilitating institutions. In other words, neither provides for institutions that can work as containers of expected social conflicts.
THE TWO-STATE AND ONE-STATE SOLUTIONS
Until October 2000, the most popular vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was two separate nation-states. Since then, however, the one-state solution, understood as the promotion of one binational state, has been gaining popularity among Palestinian intellectuals due to the failure of the Oslo process. Neither of these solutions, in my view, is viable in the present reality, necessitating a search for a new formula, possibly one that combines elements of both.
The two-state solution is based on the European model of nation-states, whereas the one-state solution is based on the European model of liberal democracy. But as mentioned above, neither model reflects the current economic, political, cultural, and military realities in Israel/Palestine or offers any plausible transition from the current dual military-democratic regime. Moving toward either scenario from the present reality would at best create tensions while being incapable of containing the tensions and conflicts inevitable after their implementation.
The two-state model involves a return to the pre-1967 borders (with minimal agreed territorial exchanges) and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza connected by a passage that traverses Israeli territory. This solution assumes both a recognized border separating both states and military forces capable of controlling these borders and protecting their respective citizens. But the demarcation of borders and their effective defense seem almost impossible given the mutual penetration of populations in this relatively small piece of land, not to mention other particularly intractable issues such as sovereignty over Jerusalem and the holy sites.
Democracy and security represent two additional major obstacles to the two-state model. With regard to the former, this solution assumes that Israel is the state of the Jews, yet some 18 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians unwilling to accept their inferior status whatever agreements the PLO might sign. This means that the two-state solution maintains the national conflict within the borders of the Jewish state, which will be unable to contain it by the democratic means of equal representation. Security, meanwhile, is the primordial problem in Israeli discourse. The idea of an eternal and ahistorical insecurity, while rooted in the traumatic past of the Jews in Europe and the Holocaust, as well as in ancient religious texts, has been the national myth since 2000. Even before, a clear Israeli precondition in all negotiations has always been disarmament of the Palestinian state so as to rule out the possibility of any Palestinian military force capable of confronting the Israeli military. Moreover, given the unlikelihood that a Palestinian state could ever be allowed to attain real independence and sovereignty or autonomy, the Palestinian opposition would have good reason to continue violence against its powerful neighbor. In such a situation, it is not unreasonable to assume that after withdrawal from the occupied territories a revisionist Israeli political movement could win elections on a platform calling for the military reoccupation of the Palestinian state.
The one-state solution is ideologically opposed by most Israelis and, more importantly, by the Jewish state, which can easily obstruct it. Moreover, both national communities still prefer to remain autonomous, independent, and undetermined by the other, their lingering attachment to the two-state solution being based on the illusion that it will allow each to be rid of the other. Indeed, Palestinian advocates of the one-state solution sometimes seem to press the issue mainly to emphasize the antidemocratic nature of the Israeli military occupation and the Jewish state rather than with the aim of designing political institutions able to contain the conflict in the future.
The idea of one democratic liberal state can be very attractive in principle, but without conditions of deep mutual recognition between the two communities, formal democratic institutions cannot guarantee political stability. Instead of opening political space to new agendas in civil society common to Jews and Palestinians, the one-state solution, if implemented, could institutionalize their national mobilization against each other and neutralize potential space for shared interests. Indeed, in the charged mutual hostility characterizing Israeli-Palestinian relations, democracy itself could be a source of conflict, exacerbating the demographic race, strengthening mutual fears, and encouraging disputes over migration (the Palestinian right of return and the Jewish Law of Return). A democratic state without additional political institutions could only enhance the politicization of religion and the polarization of extremist ethno-national trends.
THE “1–2–7 STATES” ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN UNION VISION
Looking beyond the present impasse, a major effort of institutional design is required to invent political frameworks capable of containing inevitable conflicts by agreed-upon rules that produce representation and dialogue. These institutions must embody the positive aspects of both the one- and two-state solutions and overcome their obstacles. It is not my intention to enter into details about the specific institutions, which need to be worked out by research institutions and think tanks before being negotiated and implemented, but it would seem obvious that a system responding to the above criteria would involve some creative combination of consociation, confederation, and federative institutions.
The solution I propose is an Israeli-Palestinian Union (IPU), which would include one shared administration based on parity representation located in the unified capital of Jerusalem, two separate democratic nation-states, and a minimum of seven provinces (or federal states) that would be part of either nation-state and would enjoy relative autonomy. The vision of the “1–2–7” IPU is mainly based on my interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian triple matrix of relations, but it is also informed by models of the European Union (EU) and German federal institutions.
The separate governments of the two national states would administer everything that can be separated: land, education, health, police, local government, tourism, culture, religion, sports, and so on. The IPU government would administer everything that is indivisible: infrastructure, communications, water, energy, transportation, ecology, the sacred places, and Jerusalem. In contrast to the national states, where demographic changes would be democratically represented, the IPU institutions would be founded on the principles of parity and mutual veto. One of the main tasks of the IPU shared administration would be to erase the demographic fears fanned by democracy—namely, Jewish fears of the Palestinian right of return and Palestinian fears of Jewish immigration, territorial expansion, and displacement. During the early years, the IPU government would probably require the participation of an international body to mediate disagreements and foster compromise.
Two more complex issues are security and the economy: while violence would be the most likely factor to sabotage any political agreement, the second would probably be the economic gap between Israelis and Palestinians. These two areas would require the most creative efforts, supported by international institutions. With regard to security, it is highly improbable that a peaceful solution could survive without the total disarmament of all civilians, Jews and Palestinians, and the backing of a major international peace force, which would need to have a clearly defined mission, to protect Palestinians from Israeli military forces.
If the economic institutions are improperly designed and implemented, they could easily undermine political support for the agreements and ultimately derail the process. A major Israeli and Palestinian motivation in the initial peace negotiations was economic: Israelis wanted to participate in the globalized economy and Palestinians wanted stable jobs, investments, and growth. Ultimately, Israelis achieved their goals, but the Palestinians did not. Learning from earlier mistakes, all economic agreements would have to aim at closing the economic gap through state intervention and counterbalancing the power of Israeli technology, financial institutions, and industry. The dominant economic position of Israeli elites helps them benefit from “free markets,” whether these are “free trade zones” or “custom unions.” The economic arrangements of the IPU must therefore consciously work against a direct link between identity and material welfare, or an explosive situation could arise.
The economic policy must be designed to counterbalance economic gaps, mainly between Israel and Palestine, but also within each national community. This is one of the main goals of the IPU administration and the seven regional states, which would be designed according to salient economic gaps between areas of the IPU. The central administration would collect taxes and allocate them within an equalizing logic. The model I have in mind is the German federal financial system. The principle is that the IPU administration would collect progressive taxes according to the wealth of distinct areas and would later redistribute them according to the number of citizens in each state and their needs. The social security system would follow the same logic in relation to individuals and families. All these systems would have to be very well planned at the technical, professional, and administrative levels and would need the advice of international institutions.
The division of each nation-state into three or more regional states would have not only an economic equalizing goal but also a pluralistic and representative democratic logic. The various regional states could have very different cultural and religious preferences and complex community relations. The differences between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah, are examples of these internal national differences. The IPU’s division into regional states, the establishment of local parliaments, democratic deliberations in each state, and even local legislation, could be expected to open space to multicultural and multireligious communities, which might be ignored, repressed, or misrecognized within the two dominant identities.
INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION
Throughout past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israel has been consistently determined to avoid any third-party intervention (except that of the United States), believing that such involvement would support Palestinian claims. From this, I conclude that in order to reach an agreement, third-party mediation is precisely what should be done: without international intervention consciously aimed at balancing Israel’s power and reducing U.S. and EU military, economic, and political support, no fair and durable agreement can be achieved. In direct negotiations, no substantial Israeli compromise can be expected, and if Palestinian negotiators accept Israel’s conditions out of weakness and dependency, the implementation of the agreement will fail because other Palestinian actors will reject or sabotage it.
From 1992 to 2008 various U.S. administrations have supported the position of the Israeli moderates in the best case (Bill Clinton) or even converged with the most extremist Israeli government (George W. Bush). The only times when international intervention played a positive role in Israeli peace negotiations (notably by balancing Israel’s powerful position) were related not to Palestine but to the Arab states. The first time was in the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat under Jimmy Carter; the second was when George H.W. Bush forced the Israeli government to participate in the 1991 Madrid Conference. In both cases, the interventions directly influenced internal Israeli politics, empowering actors supporting peace and compromise. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, the need for intervention is even greater and obviously depends on the international context, not only local developments.
Since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in late 2008, expectations of U.S. pressure on the Israeli government to negotiate a peaceful agreement with the PLO have mounted. International pressure on Israel is indeed a necessary precondition to balance its power vis-à-vis the Palestinians. However, if the pressure is to implement the two-state solution, it will almost certainly fail and might even enhance the Israeli tendency to impose unacceptable conditions on the Palestinians and later blame them for any failure. This has been Israel’s strategy since 1947, refined during the Oslo negotiations for the two-state solution, and most dramatically following the Camp David summit in 2000.
The general goal of negotiations must not be to establish two states or one, but to abolish Jewish supremacy over all the land and build political institutions capable of containing expected tensions in the future in the three separate political arenas of Israel, Palestine, and Israel/Palestine. Obviously, such a major step cannot be made in the present violent situation of Israeli military domination, economic strangulation, and nonrecognition of the elected government in Gaza. An interim hudna (truce) must be reached to change this situation and facilitate creative and constructive negotiations. The fundamental elements of a hudna could serve as the point of entry into the occupied territories for an international peace force, which would allow freedom of movement and economic development for Palestinians and start the dismantlement of Jewish settlements. Only after a truce is signed and the Palestinians and Israelis begin to feel some relief and trust in the possibility of reconstruction can a new future be imagined. Only then can we start thinking about how to build our shared future in Israel/Palestine.
NOTES
1. For an expanded theoretical background of my interpretation of political institutions, conflict, and violence, see Lev L. Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine: Democracy versus Military Rule (London: Routledge, 2009).
2. Lev L. Grinberg, “Israel’s Dual Regime Since 1967,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (Spring 2008), pp. 59–80.
3.Dual regime is the basic concept; however, there are several specific forms of military domination in different areas. For example, conditions in East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip are very different from those in the West Bank. Each area is dominated differently.
4. For an interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian triple matrix of relations, see Lev L. Grinberg, “A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” International Review of Sociology 1 (1994), pp. 68–89.
5. Jamil Hilal, Where Now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution (London: Zed Books, 2007).
6. For a discussion of the reasons for the failure of the peace talks, see Grinberg, Politics and Violence.
7.Israel’s recognition as a Jewish state has already been raised in the negotiations, see Ian Lustick, “Abandoning the Iron Wall: Israel and ‘The Middle Eastern Muck’,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 30–56.
8.This is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main argument against Palestinian independence: we already withdrew from Gaza and the Palestinians reacted with Qassams. This is obviously a propaganda manipulation, but it is expected to work as a mobilizing nationalist argument in the future, including against Netanyahu if he signs a withdrawal agreement as a result of international pressure.
9. The number of federal states would depend on political negotiations and the criteria used by the negotiators to determine their borders. The seven I refer to are Jerusalem, Beersheba, al-Khalil/Hebron, Gaza, Haifa, Ramallah, and Yaffa-Tel Aviv, the capitals of the federal states I envisage. There could be up to fifteen federal states if the areas were further divided according to economic gaps, demographic composition, and geographic obstacles.
10. See Grinberg, Politics and Violence.
11. See Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege (London: H. Hamilton, 1999); Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Vintage, 1999); Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
12. See Sara Roy, “Decline and Disfigurement: The Palestinian Economy after Oslo” in Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (London: Verso, 2001); and Leila Farsakh, Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
13. See Lev L. Grinberg, “Economic Strangulation Ring: Three Turning Points in Forty Years of Economic-Military Control” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 30 (2008).
14.Savir, The Process.
15. Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
16. Yoram Meital, Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2005).
Israeli scholar Lev Grinberg starts from a critique of the one- and two-state solutions to suggest an alternative vision including elements of both. The proposed formula is an Israeli-Palestinian Union with different layers of state institutions: a shared administration based on parity representation located in the unified capital of Jerusalem, two separate democratic nation-states, and seven provinces (or federal states) belonging to one of the two nation-states. The author sees this “1–2–7 states” vision of the future as a way of containing the conflict in the absence of an ideal solution.
The Israeli-Palestinian Union: The "1-2-7 States" Vision of the Future, by Lev Grinberg
Thinking outside the box: Alternatives to the one- and two-state solutions
LEV GRINBERG
Emphasis is mine.
IMAGINATION IS A NECESSARY but insufficient precondition for political change. Equally crucial are the political capacity to negotiate and compromise, a relatively even balance of power, and the authority (and popular support) to implement agreements. In addition to a lack of any shared vision, all these elements were absent in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” of 1993–2000. Two charismatic leaders allegedly committed to the two-state solution, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat, failed to agree on borders, postponed negotiations, and neglected to take steps to start decolonization. Their failure, compounded by subsequent developments on the ground, critically jeopardized the two-state solution’s future chances of success. The one-state scenario on the other hand has not even reached the table. In light of the obstacles in the way of these two most commonly mentioned solutions, this essay suggests an alternative vision of how to contain the conflict in the absence of reaching a “solution.”
DEMOCRATIZATION, DECOLONIZATION, AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN
Democratic political institutions are not designed to solve conflicts but to contain them through negotiations and legitimize the compromises made by the elites representing dominant and dominated groups. In the absence of agreed political institutions, violence becomes the basic expression of the conflict and a means to achieve goals. Dominant groups use state institutions to rule unilaterally, including by stepping up military repression, and dominated groups react by using violence aimed at achieving recognition of their leadership and claims.
Democracy is a specific set of institutions that developed in Europe in the nineteenth century as a result of increasing class conflict and the formation of nation-states. The two structural preconditions of democratization were a balance of power between dominant and dominated classes and a clear demarcation of borders (physical and symbolic) defining the potential citizenry. Without these preconditions, it is difficult to establish democratic institutions capable of containing conflicts, and without such institutions conflicts easily deteriorate into violence: civil wars, authoritarian regimes, or both. But while European states tended toward internal democracy, their expansion was at the same time based on disproportionate economic and military power relative to other regions of the world, and they used this power to impose nondemocratic institutions on these regions to rule them unilaterally. The struggle of the peoples dominated by Europe to gain recognition and inclusion in the polity could not be contained by these state institutions because they were imposed unilaterally by external colonial and imperial power.
With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the basic factors preventing its success were the power imbalance between the two parties and the inability to determine borders between the mutually influenced and penetrated Israeli and Palestinian political arenas. With regard to the latter, Israel’s own contradiction between democracy and colonialism—which it attempted to mask by way of a “dual democratic-military regime”—stands as a major obstacle. This dual regime, comprising a formal democracy within the 1949–67 borders and a military regime in the West Bank and Gaza, involves two separate struggles: a democratic struggle for equal rights within the sovereign and recognized borders of Israel and a struggle to end the occupation in the Palestinian territories.
In addition to the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas, there is also a third arena of interrelations—an Israeli-Palestinian political arena—that includes individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions of both communities. Indeed, the peace process itself was really an attempt to coordinate and synchronize the opening of these three political spaces. A key impediment to achieving this goal was the agreement under Oslo to start democratization (via Palestinian elections) combined with the decision to postpone the decolonization of the occupied territories (i.e., dismantle Jewish settlements, grant economic sovereignty to the Palestinians, and end military rule). A broader reason for the failure to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, then, was the complex interaction among the three political arenas, and this complexity will continue to be a crucial factor in the future. Two conclusions flow from this: Israeli power needs to be balanced by international intervention, and political institutions should be put in place that are able to contain conflicts by opening space for representation and mediation in these three political arenas.
To design the institutions necessary to contain the conflicts in the Israeli-Palestinian matrix, it is necessary to understand the specific tensions involved. This is a matter of institutional design requiring a new vision of the future. Whether or not the agreed institutions can be installed and consolidated depends on the political will of the elites and the popular support they can mobilize. It is true that the one- and two-state solutions are also visions of the future, but they do not sufficiently address the complexities of history and the Israeli/Palestinian societies’ present situation, nor do they account for the need to contain conflicts through facilitating institutions. In other words, neither provides for institutions that can work as containers of expected social conflicts.
THE TWO-STATE AND ONE-STATE SOLUTIONS
Until October 2000, the most popular vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was two separate nation-states. Since then, however, the one-state solution, understood as the promotion of one binational state, has been gaining popularity among Palestinian intellectuals due to the failure of the Oslo process. Neither of these solutions, in my view, is viable in the present reality, necessitating a search for a new formula, possibly one that combines elements of both.
The two-state solution is based on the European model of nation-states, whereas the one-state solution is based on the European model of liberal democracy. But as mentioned above, neither model reflects the current economic, political, cultural, and military realities in Israel/Palestine or offers any plausible transition from the current dual military-democratic regime. Moving toward either scenario from the present reality would at best create tensions while being incapable of containing the tensions and conflicts inevitable after their implementation.
The two-state model involves a return to the pre-1967 borders (with minimal agreed territorial exchanges) and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza connected by a passage that traverses Israeli territory. This solution assumes both a recognized border separating both states and military forces capable of controlling these borders and protecting their respective citizens. But the demarcation of borders and their effective defense seem almost impossible given the mutual penetration of populations in this relatively small piece of land, not to mention other particularly intractable issues such as sovereignty over Jerusalem and the holy sites.
Democracy and security represent two additional major obstacles to the two-state model. With regard to the former, this solution assumes that Israel is the state of the Jews, yet some 18 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians unwilling to accept their inferior status whatever agreements the PLO might sign. This means that the two-state solution maintains the national conflict within the borders of the Jewish state, which will be unable to contain it by the democratic means of equal representation. Security, meanwhile, is the primordial problem in Israeli discourse. The idea of an eternal and ahistorical insecurity, while rooted in the traumatic past of the Jews in Europe and the Holocaust, as well as in ancient religious texts, has been the national myth since 2000. Even before, a clear Israeli precondition in all negotiations has always been disarmament of the Palestinian state so as to rule out the possibility of any Palestinian military force capable of confronting the Israeli military. Moreover, given the unlikelihood that a Palestinian state could ever be allowed to attain real independence and sovereignty or autonomy, the Palestinian opposition would have good reason to continue violence against its powerful neighbor. In such a situation, it is not unreasonable to assume that after withdrawal from the occupied territories a revisionist Israeli political movement could win elections on a platform calling for the military reoccupation of the Palestinian state.
The one-state solution is ideologically opposed by most Israelis and, more importantly, by the Jewish state, which can easily obstruct it. Moreover, both national communities still prefer to remain autonomous, independent, and undetermined by the other, their lingering attachment to the two-state solution being based on the illusion that it will allow each to be rid of the other. Indeed, Palestinian advocates of the one-state solution sometimes seem to press the issue mainly to emphasize the antidemocratic nature of the Israeli military occupation and the Jewish state rather than with the aim of designing political institutions able to contain the conflict in the future.
The idea of one democratic liberal state can be very attractive in principle, but without conditions of deep mutual recognition between the two communities, formal democratic institutions cannot guarantee political stability. Instead of opening political space to new agendas in civil society common to Jews and Palestinians, the one-state solution, if implemented, could institutionalize their national mobilization against each other and neutralize potential space for shared interests. Indeed, in the charged mutual hostility characterizing Israeli-Palestinian relations, democracy itself could be a source of conflict, exacerbating the demographic race, strengthening mutual fears, and encouraging disputes over migration (the Palestinian right of return and the Jewish Law of Return). A democratic state without additional political institutions could only enhance the politicization of religion and the polarization of extremist ethno-national trends.
THE “1–2–7 STATES” ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN UNION VISION
Looking beyond the present impasse, a major effort of institutional design is required to invent political frameworks capable of containing inevitable conflicts by agreed-upon rules that produce representation and dialogue. These institutions must embody the positive aspects of both the one- and two-state solutions and overcome their obstacles. It is not my intention to enter into details about the specific institutions, which need to be worked out by research institutions and think tanks before being negotiated and implemented, but it would seem obvious that a system responding to the above criteria would involve some creative combination of consociation, confederation, and federative institutions.
The solution I propose is an Israeli-Palestinian Union (IPU), which would include one shared administration based on parity representation located in the unified capital of Jerusalem, two separate democratic nation-states, and a minimum of seven provinces (or federal states) that would be part of either nation-state and would enjoy relative autonomy. The vision of the “1–2–7” IPU is mainly based on my interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian triple matrix of relations, but it is also informed by models of the European Union (EU) and German federal institutions.
The separate governments of the two national states would administer everything that can be separated: land, education, health, police, local government, tourism, culture, religion, sports, and so on. The IPU government would administer everything that is indivisible: infrastructure, communications, water, energy, transportation, ecology, the sacred places, and Jerusalem. In contrast to the national states, where demographic changes would be democratically represented, the IPU institutions would be founded on the principles of parity and mutual veto. One of the main tasks of the IPU shared administration would be to erase the demographic fears fanned by democracy—namely, Jewish fears of the Palestinian right of return and Palestinian fears of Jewish immigration, territorial expansion, and displacement. During the early years, the IPU government would probably require the participation of an international body to mediate disagreements and foster compromise.
Two more complex issues are security and the economy: while violence would be the most likely factor to sabotage any political agreement, the second would probably be the economic gap between Israelis and Palestinians. These two areas would require the most creative efforts, supported by international institutions. With regard to security, it is highly improbable that a peaceful solution could survive without the total disarmament of all civilians, Jews and Palestinians, and the backing of a major international peace force, which would need to have a clearly defined mission, to protect Palestinians from Israeli military forces.
If the economic institutions are improperly designed and implemented, they could easily undermine political support for the agreements and ultimately derail the process. A major Israeli and Palestinian motivation in the initial peace negotiations was economic: Israelis wanted to participate in the globalized economy and Palestinians wanted stable jobs, investments, and growth. Ultimately, Israelis achieved their goals, but the Palestinians did not. Learning from earlier mistakes, all economic agreements would have to aim at closing the economic gap through state intervention and counterbalancing the power of Israeli technology, financial institutions, and industry. The dominant economic position of Israeli elites helps them benefit from “free markets,” whether these are “free trade zones” or “custom unions.” The economic arrangements of the IPU must therefore consciously work against a direct link between identity and material welfare, or an explosive situation could arise.
The economic policy must be designed to counterbalance economic gaps, mainly between Israel and Palestine, but also within each national community. This is one of the main goals of the IPU administration and the seven regional states, which would be designed according to salient economic gaps between areas of the IPU. The central administration would collect taxes and allocate them within an equalizing logic. The model I have in mind is the German federal financial system. The principle is that the IPU administration would collect progressive taxes according to the wealth of distinct areas and would later redistribute them according to the number of citizens in each state and their needs. The social security system would follow the same logic in relation to individuals and families. All these systems would have to be very well planned at the technical, professional, and administrative levels and would need the advice of international institutions.
The division of each nation-state into three or more regional states would have not only an economic equalizing goal but also a pluralistic and representative democratic logic. The various regional states could have very different cultural and religious preferences and complex community relations. The differences between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah, are examples of these internal national differences. The IPU’s division into regional states, the establishment of local parliaments, democratic deliberations in each state, and even local legislation, could be expected to open space to multicultural and multireligious communities, which might be ignored, repressed, or misrecognized within the two dominant identities.
INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION
Throughout past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israel has been consistently determined to avoid any third-party intervention (except that of the United States), believing that such involvement would support Palestinian claims. From this, I conclude that in order to reach an agreement, third-party mediation is precisely what should be done: without international intervention consciously aimed at balancing Israel’s power and reducing U.S. and EU military, economic, and political support, no fair and durable agreement can be achieved. In direct negotiations, no substantial Israeli compromise can be expected, and if Palestinian negotiators accept Israel’s conditions out of weakness and dependency, the implementation of the agreement will fail because other Palestinian actors will reject or sabotage it.
From 1992 to 2008 various U.S. administrations have supported the position of the Israeli moderates in the best case (Bill Clinton) or even converged with the most extremist Israeli government (George W. Bush). The only times when international intervention played a positive role in Israeli peace negotiations (notably by balancing Israel’s powerful position) were related not to Palestine but to the Arab states. The first time was in the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat under Jimmy Carter; the second was when George H.W. Bush forced the Israeli government to participate in the 1991 Madrid Conference. In both cases, the interventions directly influenced internal Israeli politics, empowering actors supporting peace and compromise. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, the need for intervention is even greater and obviously depends on the international context, not only local developments.
Since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in late 2008, expectations of U.S. pressure on the Israeli government to negotiate a peaceful agreement with the PLO have mounted. International pressure on Israel is indeed a necessary precondition to balance its power vis-à-vis the Palestinians. However, if the pressure is to implement the two-state solution, it will almost certainly fail and might even enhance the Israeli tendency to impose unacceptable conditions on the Palestinians and later blame them for any failure. This has been Israel’s strategy since 1947, refined during the Oslo negotiations for the two-state solution, and most dramatically following the Camp David summit in 2000.
The general goal of negotiations must not be to establish two states or one, but to abolish Jewish supremacy over all the land and build political institutions capable of containing expected tensions in the future in the three separate political arenas of Israel, Palestine, and Israel/Palestine. Obviously, such a major step cannot be made in the present violent situation of Israeli military domination, economic strangulation, and nonrecognition of the elected government in Gaza. An interim hudna (truce) must be reached to change this situation and facilitate creative and constructive negotiations. The fundamental elements of a hudna could serve as the point of entry into the occupied territories for an international peace force, which would allow freedom of movement and economic development for Palestinians and start the dismantlement of Jewish settlements. Only after a truce is signed and the Palestinians and Israelis begin to feel some relief and trust in the possibility of reconstruction can a new future be imagined. Only then can we start thinking about how to build our shared future in Israel/Palestine.
NOTES
1. For an expanded theoretical background of my interpretation of political institutions, conflict, and violence, see Lev L. Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine: Democracy versus Military Rule (London: Routledge, 2009).
2. Lev L. Grinberg, “Israel’s Dual Regime Since 1967,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (Spring 2008), pp. 59–80.
3.Dual regime is the basic concept; however, there are several specific forms of military domination in different areas. For example, conditions in East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip are very different from those in the West Bank. Each area is dominated differently.
4. For an interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian triple matrix of relations, see Lev L. Grinberg, “A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” International Review of Sociology 1 (1994), pp. 68–89.
5. Jamil Hilal, Where Now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution (London: Zed Books, 2007).
6. For a discussion of the reasons for the failure of the peace talks, see Grinberg, Politics and Violence.
7.Israel’s recognition as a Jewish state has already been raised in the negotiations, see Ian Lustick, “Abandoning the Iron Wall: Israel and ‘The Middle Eastern Muck’,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 30–56.
8.This is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main argument against Palestinian independence: we already withdrew from Gaza and the Palestinians reacted with Qassams. This is obviously a propaganda manipulation, but it is expected to work as a mobilizing nationalist argument in the future, including against Netanyahu if he signs a withdrawal agreement as a result of international pressure.
9. The number of federal states would depend on political negotiations and the criteria used by the negotiators to determine their borders. The seven I refer to are Jerusalem, Beersheba, al-Khalil/Hebron, Gaza, Haifa, Ramallah, and Yaffa-Tel Aviv, the capitals of the federal states I envisage. There could be up to fifteen federal states if the areas were further divided according to economic gaps, demographic composition, and geographic obstacles.
10. See Grinberg, Politics and Violence.
11. See Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege (London: H. Hamilton, 1999); Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Vintage, 1999); Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
12. See Sara Roy, “Decline and Disfigurement: The Palestinian Economy after Oslo” in Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (London: Verso, 2001); and Leila Farsakh, Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
13. See Lev L. Grinberg, “Economic Strangulation Ring: Three Turning Points in Forty Years of Economic-Military Control” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 30 (2008).
14.Savir, The Process.
15. Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
16. Yoram Meital, Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2005).
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