A New Take on the Israel-Palestine Situation

In light of a Human Sciences Research Council report confirming the situation in the Occupied Territories as officially an apartheid and increasing tensions in the region, Russell Nieli has an idea. I'm still thinking about the implications but it is refreshing to hear someone with a plan - a new plan - that acknowledges some basic truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I found it here on Tikkun, but apparently it is the second part of a speeech he gave. The full talk can be accessed here. The Tikkun link also gives his thought process and basic premises he was working with in formulating this plan - worth checking out. I wonder whether Obama would consider such an idea or what his real vision for peace is. Michael Lerner at Tikkun writes about how Obama may be changing the message towards Israel from Bush's blank check, but he's not doing enough. He calls for some basic actions and for Obama to pack a tougher punch. I definitely agree... Obama has a responsibility to push for real change in the region. It feels to me, time and time again, that Israel is cutting off its nose to spite its face - how do these "world powers" not think that allowing basic resources and human rights to all people - giving all people a sense of security, a sense of community - will not be the most basic foundation to peace?!

Anyway here is the Nieli idea:

None of the major proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian problem offers a way out of the continued bitterness, suspicion, violence, and ill-will between the two parties. To achieve a just and lasting settlement, we must find an outside-the-box alternative to the major peace proposals that have been considered so far.

After years of reflection, I have become certain that "two-state condominialism"-a solution involving a rigid political separation of two peoples within a unified, binational, settlement territory-offers the clearest vision of hope for both Palestinians and Jews.

I know there are immense problems and hurdles to be overcome to enable the realization of the condominial arrangement I describe here. But they are far less intractable, in my opinion, than those involved in the realization of a separationist scheme. The peoples, economies, natural resources, and infrastructures have become intimately intertwined in Palestine/Eretz Israel, so powerful irredentist feelings would inevitably emerge on both sides of any rigid territorial divide. A condominial arrangement would also be more easily realized than the increasingly popular "one-state solution," which I consider to be a complete non-starter politically for the Israelis, both now and in the foreseeable future.

The condominial formula I propose here would enable both peoples to realize simultaneously most of their respective national dreams. It is a win-win situation that gives both peoples powerful incentives to cooperate with one another to make the arrangement work.

Two States in a Single, Binational Settlement Community

The two-state condominial arrangement starts out with the creation of a democratic Palestinian state (composed of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) much like that suggested in other two-state proposals with the boundaries of the Palestinian state roughly determined by the pre-1967 Green Line. The Palestinian state ("Palestine") would have most of the features of a democratic nation-state, but from the outset it would be an ethnically defined state, a state of the Palestinian people, whereby a close parallel was maintained to the definition of Israel as a state of the Jews. As part of the fundamental agreement, all current Israeli Arabs would be required to transfer their citizenship, national identity, and national voting rights-but not their residence-to the new Palestinian state. Israeli Arabs would retain their permanent right to live in Israel and they would also retain their current benefits under the Jewish welfare state (or be adequately compensated for the loss of them by another arrangement, such as a lump sum payment), but they would become citizens of-and permanent voting members of-the Palestinian state, not Israel.

Both Palestinians and Jews under the condominial proposal would be granted the right to settle anywhere within the territory of either state. Together the two states would thus form a single, binational settlement community. Palestinians would have the right to settle anywhere within Israel, just as Jews would have the right to settle anywhere within the territory of the Palestinian state. Regardless of which of the two states they live in, all Palestinians would be citizens of the Palestinian state, and all Jews would be citizens of Israel.

The states themselves, Israel and Palestine, would have the right-and, indeed, the moral obligation-to set up a dense network of support facilities to care for the economic, cultural, religious, and welfare needs of any citizens living in the territory of the neighboring state. Each state, in other words, would have extensive extra-territorial rights and obligations vis-à-vis its citizens in the neighboring state. The arrangement would be something like that which the U.S. government routinely maintains toward many of its government employees and other citizens living in foreign countries with an extensive American military and diplomatic presence (e.g. West Germany during the Cold War). The Palestinian state would have the obligation to care for its citizen population living in Israel, just as the Jewish state would have the obligation to do the same for Israeli citizens living in the Palestinian state. In any event, Palestinians moving into Israel and Jews living within the Palestinian state would have no claim to any of the welfare and other benefits provided by the territorial state wherein they reside.

As part of the fundamental agreement, the Palestinian state would be required to acknowledge the special Jewish character of the state of Israel, and Israel would be required to acknowledge the special Palestinian-Arab identity of the state of Palestine, with both states acknowledging the right of all Palestinians and all Israelis to reside anywhere within the joint settlement community formed by the combined territories of the two states.

This is just a rough sketch of what a condominial arrangement would entail. In the pages that follow, I lay out in more detail how such a solution could work, and address practical issues such as the settlement community's taxation structure and the sharing of water resources.

The Story Behind the Condominial Proposal

As a third-generation Italian American raised in the suburbs of New York City among many Jewish classmates, neighbors, and friends, I was deeply moved from an early age by what some call the "Jewish narrative"-like the Leon Uris/Otto Preminger version of Exodus. As a graduate student in Princeton's Politics Department in the 1970s, I began extensive readings about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Those readings were almost entirely in Jewish sources, but they nevertheless made me more understanding of, and more sympathetic toward, the Palestinian Arab viewpoint. This situation left me internally divided-torn between two seemingly irreconcilable narratives, each of which I knew to be of central importance to the peoples involved, both of whom have experienced more than their share of historical suffering and travail.

The result of my inner ferment was a series of proposals I made in print in the early 1990s that I originally called "two-state binationalism," but which I am now calling "two-state condominialism," a term which better captures their overall meaning and structure.

I encourage readers who finish this article to go to the Tikkun website and read my full talk to get a sense of the fatal weaknesses from which, in my view, the major competing peace proposals variously suffer.

Moving Beyond the Pessimism of Realpolitik

At its most basic, the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma can be stated very simply with two points:

1) As a final or end-game outcome, no solution to the conflict over historical Palestine will ever be acceptable to the Arab side if that solution denies to the Palestinians (especially to those who have suffered so long in Gaza and the refugee camps of the frontline states) a right of return to the land that is now Israel-a land which, in their view, was callously and unjustly taken from them by the convergent activities of British imperialists, Jewish settler-colonialists, reactionary Arab leaders and collaborators, and an American-supported Zionist army.

2) Within present political structures and under present conditions of politics and history, no Israeli government in its right mind would ever allow any sizable number of Zionist-hating Palestinians to re-enter Israel and become citizens of a democratic Jewish state.

This is the stark reality of the current situation. Thus stated, one can see why so many observers, and not just those on the fringes of the Kahanist right, believe the situation to be unsolvable. Several years ago, I was discussing this issue with Professor Robert Gilpin, who at the time was the chief international relations theorist in Princeton's Politics Department. After surveying with skepticism some of the more common proposals for peace in the Mideast, Bob turned to me and said, "You know, Russ, there just may not be a peaceful, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." Bob's comment at the time struck me as terribly deflating and unduly pessimistic, but also, I must say, as possibly realistic given the track record of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks over the years.

Professor Gilpin is usually identified with the school of international relations associated with the term Realpolitik-a school which stresses the dominant role in the relations between nation-states of military power, economic interests, self-promoting and self-aggrandizing behavior, and national security concerns. Those in this school see themselves as hard-headed "realists" who seek to view the world as it is, not the way they might like it to be, or the way wishful thinking might conceive it to be. Such "realists" typically view their opponents as well-meaning but fuzzy-headed "liberals" or "idealists" ignorant of how the real world works.

Upon critical examination, it's true that the major proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian problem appear doomed to failure. Saying this, however, does not mean that nothing will work. My alternative proposal requires a bit of creative thinking, but I have become ever more convinced that only a creative outside-the-box solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict offers any hope of long-range success.

Also, to read Michelle Chen at Racewire on the HSRC report on apartheid from June 11 click here.