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Politics Fiction Painting Poetry Press Critics T.Nazmi Elza

Report 8 Two States
Solution

Current
History,
January 2004

Is the Two-State Solution Dead?

by Gary Sussman*

A
binational Israeli-Palestinian state may come to be viewed as
preferable to a two-state arrangement or a single polity in
which winner takes all - and loser loses all... The politics
of accommodation and power sharing may prove to be the only
viable alternative to endless war or brutal domination by one
community over another.
A
growing chorus of dissenters has begun to challenge the
two-state blueprint designed to bring an end to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are calling instead for a
single binational or secular polity that would encompass both
Israel
and the occupied territories. The latest to join the ensemble,
political scientist Virginia Tilley, recently wrote in the
London Review of Books that the two-state model, which
has enjoyed uncontested hegemony as a formula for peace for
well over a decade, “is an idea, and a possibility, whose time
has passed, its death obscured (as was perhaps intended) by
daily spectacle.”

Support
for a single-state alternative, though it remains marginal
today, undoubtedly will swell in the absence of genuine
progress toward the two-state plan envisioned by the
Oslo
peace process. A recent survey found that 67 percent of
Israelis “strongly” or “moderately fear” scenarios in which
Israel
finds itself in a one-state reality. The fear itself
underscores growing awareness of the possibility.

The
call to abandon the two-state solution includes two principal,
but often confused, proposals. One is for a binational state,
premised on recognition of two groups within one political
entity. The other would involve a single democratic and
secular polity based on one man, one vote. Whereas the former
approach emphasizes constitutional recognition of collective
entitlements, the latter is based on individual rights. Those
calling for a binational state have variously spoken of
federal formulas, while supporters of a secular state take
postapartheid South
Africa
as their model. At present the two concepts are often used
interchangeably.

There is,
of course, a third alternative to the two-state outcome: a
single undemocratic
entity in which Israelis rule a Palestinian majority.
Palestinians fear
that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may also have in mind
a truncated Palestinian
state compromised of isolated minicantons (which have been
compared to
South African Bantustans or American Indian reservations)
alongside Israel. This
model would ensure maximal territorial control for Israel while
minimizing the number of Palestinians living in the expanded
Israeli state.
It represents in effect a fourth potential one-state model.
Yet some Palestinians
have begun to embrace even this idea as part of a
two-stage formula,
the ministate serving as an interim phase toward a single
state.

The
Single-State Proponents

Broadly
speaking, three groups today are calling for the rejection of
the two-state solution. The two most influential are to be
found within the international community (mainly leftist
intellectuals, including some Diaspora Jews) and among
Palestinians (especially Diaspora figures, but also,
increasingly, local leaders). An increasing number of Israelis
are also joining the fray. None of these voices is yet
mainstream, but doubts about the
Oslo
formula are spreading rapidly.

By
far the most forthright of the opponents to the two-state
solution are leftists who have a penchant for opposing
nationalism and ethnic states and who tend to view
Israel
as a pariah. Labeled by some observers as anti-Semitic, these
critics in Europe
and elsewhere see Zionism as a discriminatory ideology and
Israel
as an inequitable state. The Oslo
accords, however, drastically weakened their impact on public
discourse. Along with leftist Israelis and Palestinians, many
of these critics abandoned their opposition to a Jewish state
in the hope that the two-state model would work, and on the
assumption that both peoples desired this deal.

The
collapse of the Oslo
process has revitalized this group.
New
York
University
history professor Tony Judt captured the critics’ thinking
eloquently in the October
10, 2003,
New
York
Review of Books.
“The problem with Israel,”
he wrote, “is not - as is sometimes suggested - that it is a
European ‘enclave’ in the Arab world; but rather that it
arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically
late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that
has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers,
and international law. The very idea of a ‘Jewish state’ - a
state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive
privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded
- is rooted in another time and place.
Israel,
in short, is an anachronism.”

Judt’s
article reportedly prompted more than 30,000 letters to the
editor. The scale of the response would appear to confirm
Daniel Lazare’s assessment in The Nation on November 3
that a “longstanding taboo has finally begun to fall.” That
taboo, in an American context, is a debate over the very
legitimacy of a Jewish state.
In
recent months this group of critics has been buttressed by
individuals who do not ideologically oppose a Jewish state but
who believe that a two-state model may have become
impracticable. Among these are diplomats engaged in peace
efforts who increasingly raise doubts about the
Oslo
process, despite the vast resources invested in it by the
international community. They include Terje Roed-Larsen, the
special envoy to the Middle
East
for the UN secretary general, who recently questioned whether
Israelis and Palestinians are “nearing the death of the
two-state solution, the bedrock for all our peacemaking
efforts.”

Palestinian
and Israeli Voices

Advocacy
for a “secular Palestine”
was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s traditional
position, but Israelis viewed support for the idea as tactical
rather than ideological. Diaspora Palestinian intellectuals,
who have tended to envision a secular and liberal rather than
a power-sharing state, have traditionally dominated
Palestinian opposition to the
Oslo
process. They feel vindicated by the current state of
affairs.  Increasingly,
the internal leadership of the various PLO factions is also
finding a two-state solution less attractive. Marwan
Barghouti, who led Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction in the West
Bank and was arrested in 2002 by Israeli authorities for
directing terrorist attacks, said at the close of his trial
that “I hope the Israelis have learned that the Palestinian
people cannot be brought to yield with force. If an occupation
does not end unilaterally or through negotiations then there
is only one solution: one state for two people.” Even more
brazen is Ali Jerbawi, a political scientist at
Bir
Zeit
University
in the West
Bank.
He argues that the Palestinians should deliver an ultimatum to
Israel
demanding that it agree to a Palestinian state within six
months, after which the Palestinians will insist that their
territories be annexed. Although
the Palestinian Authority leadership, based in Ramallah, still
supports a two-state formula, the growing dissonance between
the street and the PA elite is perhaps best underscored by
this very issue. PA officials, it has been suggested, have
little choice but to hold on to the two-state solution: it
underlies not only their negotiating strategy but also their
political legitimacy. Acknowledgment that the dream of a
Palestinian state is dying would imply the PA’s irrelevance.
Yet Palestinian officials are not blind to recent trends. PA
Finance Minister Salam Fayyad warned in a memo to the Bush
administration in October 2002 that Israeli settlement
expansion was undermining the possibility of a two-state deal.
Some advisers to the Palestinian negotiating team now argue
that the Palestinian cause would be better served,
strategically, by a demand for civil rights rather than a
separate state.

Support for
a binational state, though marginal, has a longstanding
tradition among Israeli
Jews, which goes back at least to Martin Buber and Judah
Magnes. After Israel won independence,
a few small groups retained their ideas, but after the
1993 Oslo accords
most embraced the two-state solution. The most notable
proponent of a binational
polity since Oslo has been
Azmi Bishara, founder of the Balad movement. Bishara has
argued that Israelis
support a Palestinian state to “keep the Jewish purity of the
Jewish State”
and views a truncated Palestinian state as a means to
indirectly control the
Palestinians. The past two years have seen support for a
binational solution reemerge
within the non-Zionist Israeli left. More important, elements
of the Zionist
left have felt compelled to ponder coping with a
binational reality

On the
other end of the political spectrum, members of Israel’s ideological
right and the settler movement are actively pursuing a single
state. Whereas
leftist one-staters (like their international counterparts)
generally advocate
democracy and civil rights, these groups are quite prepared to
support ethnic
cleansing - they call it “transfer” - or some form of Israeli
apartheid to
maintain Jewish hegemony west of the River Jordan. As
the Hebron settler
leader Noam Arnon has argued, “if there is a contradiction
between this [Jewish]
essence and the character of the government, it is clear that
the essence
takes precedence, and that steps are taken to prevent damage
or changes to
this Jewish essence. Democracy cannot be exploited to destroy
the Jewish State.” The leader
of the National Religious party and a minister in the
current Sharon government,
Efi Eitam, recently set out his vision for a one-state Jewish
entity between
the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.

It would
draw legitimacy, he said, from the fact that the “only Jewish
state in the world
requires a minimum of territory.” Palestinians who wished to
remain in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip would be offered “enlightened residency,” as opposed to
citizenship. Those
unwilling to accept this status would have to
relocate.

Behind the
Assault on Oslo

A
variety of factors drives the resurgence of support for a
single binational or secular polity. Intellectually, growing
opposition to the notion of exclusive states must be seen
against a backdrop of bloody conflicts in the postcommunist
Balkans, deepening and widening European integration, and
disagreement with the worldview that sees only inevitable
clashes between national entities and civilizations.

It
should also be noted that Israeli violations of human
rights (closure policies in the
Palestinian territories, targeted killings of suspected
Palestinian militants) and the Israel Defense Force’s actions
in the West
Bank
and Gaza
have undermined support for
Israel
and its legitimacy. International legitimacy in ethnic
conflicts is a critical resource, and both Israelis and
Palestinians have sought to delegitimize each other.
Israel
has primarily succeeded in the
United
States,
the Palestinians in Europe
and the nonaligned world.
The
portrayal of Israel
in some quarters as a kind of apartheid state has in turn
begged the question of a South Africa-type solution. From the
relative success of the South African transition, and the
apparent failure of Oslo,
an emerging logic recommends at least consideration of
different paths to territorial self-determination, democracy,
and peace. The increasingly discredited separate-states model
is seen as actually reinforcing antagonism by pitting the
needs and rights of each group against the other’s. Some
critics also find the Oslo
formula a recipe for perpetual conflict because it allows for
the maintenance of an exclusive Jewish
state.

By
far the most important factors accounting for the tidal shift
in statehood discourse stem, however, from facts on the ground
- developments since the outbreak of the current Intifada -
and in particular the continued expansion of Israeli
settlements and the building of a separation fence between
Israel and the occupied territories. According to some
critics, the pace of settlement expansion since the signing of
the Oslo
accords has in effect created a single state’s geography. In
the past year, the Israeli government has published more than
1,600 additional housing tenders for the occupied territories.
This speaks volumes about
Israel’s
commitment to the internationally endorsed “road map” to peace
and President George W. Bush’s maligned vision of two states
for two peoples.

The
settlement land grab, according to Israeli writer Meron
Benvinisti, has nurtured a sense that the “connection between
territory and ethnic identity - which was applicable up to
about 20 years ago - cannot be implemented and any attempt to
implement it will only complicate the problem instead of
solving it.” Others simply doubt whether
Israel
is willing or able to extricate itself from the territories.
The assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, in November 1995, serves as a striking reminder that
many Israelis deny the right of a democratic government to
surrender land promised by God.
Proponents of
a single-polity solution note that it would bypass the need
both to dismantle settlements
and to deny Palestinian refugees the right of return.
Interestingly, Rabbi
Yoel Bin Nun has argued for “islands of Israeli citizenship
within the Palestinian
state and islands of Palestinian presence within the Jewish
state.”

His
suggestion points to potential support among both Israelis and
Palestinians for
a binational arrangement that would allow for territorial
unity with cultural
and communal autonomy and segmentation. The
separation fence is viewed by many as confirmation of the
“stingy” borders the prime minister has in mind for a future
Palestinian state. As such, it nourishes fears that the
Palestinian entity would prove unviable. Some proponents of
the fence argue that it will create a de facto two-state
solution, leading to the inevitable evacuation of settlements
east of the barrier. They further believe that the fence will
“correct” itself over time, removing contours that
Palestinians find intolerable. Skeptics submit that, far from
enhancing the two-state solution, the fence has been
effectively hijacked by the Sharon
government to serve its own political agenda - namely, the
creation of isolated Bantustans
on some 42 percent of the West
Bank.

From the perspective of
Sharon’s
Likud party, such a state would be justified on the grounds
that Israel
requires strategic depth, including protected “security
zones,” to defend itself.  It
seems highly unlikely that Palestinians would agree to a
two-state solution along these lines. As the PA’s former chief
negotiator, Saeb Erakat, wrote in a New York Times
op-ed, “It has become clear to many Palestinians that what
Mr. Sharon and many other Israelis have in mind for the
Palestinians is a ghetto ‘state’ surrounded by Israeli
settlements, with no ability to defend itself, deprived of
water resources and arable land, with an insignificant
presence in Jerusalem and sovereign in name only. Palestinians
will never accept such a future.” By undermining the two-state
effort, Sharon’s
fence over time could drive Palestinians to demand a one-state
solution.

Also important
in explaining Palestinians’ growing skepticism regarding the
two-state model
are the PA’s failure to develop credible and transparent
institutions between
1994 and 2000 and the sense that Oslo’s failure
has proved that the nationalist goal is unattainable. Bishara,
the Balad leader,
suggested in 1998 that “When it becomes fully apparent that
an independent
and democratic state occupying every inch of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip free of Israeli settlements is not realizable, it will
be time for Palestinians
to re-examine the entire strategy. We will then begin to
discuss a binational
state solution.” History and Israeli actions may yet
vindicate Bishara’s prediction.

The
Sands of Time

Israelis
and Palestinians may be engaged in a strategic waiting game.
Israel
under Sharon
waits for opportunities, such as the departure of Arafat. Some
Palestinians pursue the same game, believing that time and
demographic advantage are on their side. They know that the
Palestinian population, growing at a much faster rate, will
soon constitute a majority in the land area combining
Israel
with the occupied territories. Whether one endorses the
deliberate or unwitting accounts for Israeli dithering, there
seems little to suggest that time is on
Israel’s
side.  The
single-state debate does not yet pose a critical threat to the
two-state solution, and powerful arguments and currents remain
in favor of separation. As University of Pennsylvania
political scientist Ian Lustick has noted in the Boston
Review, “The secret power of the separate state solution
is that it uses what each side strongly wants (the desire to
be rid of the other) to achieve the territory, resources,
recognition and immigration opportunities each side needs.”

Still,
the longer the diplomatic stalemate continues, and the further
the settlements expand unabated, the more disillusioned
Israelis and Palestinians will become with the separation
formula.  Palestinians
and, to a lesser extent, some on the Israeli left, view the
shift in discourse toward contemplating a single state as a
tactical resource to shock Israelis into compromise.
Palestinian proponents of the one-state formula also hold that
it will be easier for Palestinians to mobilize support -
especially in the United
States
- for a civil rights rather than an anti-colonial struggle.
Restricted access to the Israeli economy provides compelling
utilitarian grounds for favoring a single polity over a
truncated Palestinian state comprised of isolated
enclaves.  The
two-state solution could also be discredited by its
longstanding association with the Palestinian ruling class,
which is widely viewed as corrupt and inept. It is not
inconceivable that challengers to the authority of the PA
elites, within Fatah and from other factions, may view the
demand for a one-state solution as a potential tool. Another
possible scenario is that the PA leadership will eventually
hand over all responsibilities for the Palestinian territories
to the Israeli government. Already there are calls for the PA
to stop providing a “fig leaf” for de facto Israeli
occupation.

Ironically,
erosion of support for a two-state solution among the secular
nationalist Palestinian factions could make the militant
fundamentalists of Hamas
Israel’s
unlikely but preferred negotiating partner. For its part,
Hamas has the most to lose in a secular or binational state.
In a reality where the ascendant Hamas enjoys growing popular
support, Fatah may have no choice but to embrace a secular
alternative to Hamas’s proposed Islamic state.
Meanwhile,
the increasing use of the demographic argument in Israeli
discourse could encourage more Palestinians to view the demand
for a vote as an attractive strategy. The Israeli demographic
debate highlights the fact that this is
Israel’s
greatest weakness, and, therefore, the Palestinians’ greatest
advantage in the conflict.
Israel’s
current government appears bent on weakening the Palestinians
in order to create negotiating conditions that favor the
strong. But the process may convince Palestinians that the
single-state demand is the ultimate resource and revenge of
the weak. In time, this scenario, combined with continued
Israeli dithering, could see Israelis and Palestinians sliding
into a situation where a two-state accommodation is either
unattainable or wanted by only one
party.

The
Debate in Israel

The
idea of a binational state remains for now unacceptable to
most Jews. Leon
Wieseltier, writing in the October 27 New Republic,
echoed the prevailing sentiment: “For what reasons do the
Israelis have to depend for security and decency upon the
talents of the Palestinians?” Certainly one of the many
challenges facing any binational effort is for the
Palestinians to show they are capable of peaceful, nonviolent
mass action. Even so, debate over the two-state formula has
reawakened within Israel,
driven by diplomatic impasse and the demographic concerns
increasingly raised by the Zionist left.

Sharon
dismisses these concerns, arguing that Jewish migration to
Israel
will redeem the country. But he overlooks two important facts.
One is the growing exodus of Israelis and a stampede for
European passports. The other is European Jews’ increasing
reluctance to come to
Israel.
East European Jews are voting with their feet and choosing
Germany,
and it seems unlikely that many French Jews will leave
France,
despite rising anti-Semitism there, as long as the security
and economic situation remains worse in
Israel.

Despite
Sharon’s
dismissal of the demographic challenge, prominent right-wing
intellectuals and politicians are clearly mindful of the
issue. In a dialectical fashion, this demographic discourse,
along with continued terrorist violence, could serve to
heighten an Israeli sense that the country must move quickly
and decisively to extract itself from the quagmire.
Israel
might be provoked to downsize, unilaterally or in a two-state
agreement.

But
this is far from certain, and other radical solutions might
also be considered. Although the left may well win the
demographic argument, it is not obvious that the Israeli
public will adopt its prognosis, as has been demonstrated by
the debate over the security fence. The Israeli right, which
initially opposed the fence, embraced the idea as a result of
public pressure, but applied its own political contours to
maximize Israeli territorial control. The hazard of the
demographic and indeed the binational argument is that
scenarios depicting an endangered Zionist enterprise could
frighten and radicalize Israelis and increase support for
ethnic cleansing (transfer) or institutionalized
discrimination.  Given
the Jews’ history of suffering and genocide, all means may be
justified to secure Jewish survival and sovereignty. At the
very least, a switch in Palestinian demands will convince more
Israelis that the Palestinians were always disingenuous
maximalists, and that their support for a two-state solution
was tactical. At worst, Israelis will embrace extreme measures
to oppose a binational state, currently understood as a recipe
for a “Greater Palestine.” The impact of a Palestinian switch
to a demand for rights rather than territory, or a de facto
slide into a binational reality, could also prove potentially
debilitating for Diaspora Jews. Divisions might arise between
those who support Israel
at all costs and those who place liberal values before narrow
(tribal) loyalties. Whereas it is common in
Israel
to talk in anti-liberal, anti-democratic terms, most countries
with large Jewish populations have adopted liberal political
systems and values. These disparities could widen.

Lessons
from South
Africa

If
increasing numbers of Palestinian Diaspora figures and
intellectuals abandon the two-state model, it will undermine
the solution in a more fundamental manner. Internal Israeli
legitimacy, though necessary, is not sufficient to make a
two-state deal work. Without the support of Palestinian
opinion leaders, Fatah, and the international community, the
two-state solution will be viewed as an Israeli-imposed model
- a Bantustan.
This will significantly undermine the legitimacy of separation
as the formula for resolving the conflict.
Israel
may simply run out of credible partners for a two-state
deal.  South
Africa
offers a sobering lesson in this regard. In his book, The
Africaaners: Biography of a People, Hermann
Giliomee argues that, in seeking a deal that would provide
whites with tangible minority rights in the 1990s, the
Nationalist party leadership under President F. W. de Klerk
was attempting to “purchase a political bargain at yesterday’s
price - a bargain that was available to white South Africa...
in the mid-1970s, perhaps even in the negotiations with Nelson
Mandela, who had by then served 10 years in prison, and other
leaders, but no longer in the 1990s.”  It
is not clear when, or why, a deal that promised minority
guarantees for whites became irreparably discredited. But a
critical lesson for
Israel
is that seemingly marginal and isolated pleas to abandon what
appears to be the logical and attainable outcome may suddenly
reach a critical mass. As a result, the existing “deal” is
swept aside. A similar fate for the two-state model cannot be
ruled out.

Another
lesson from South
Africa’s
experience, which might inform thinking about a single-state
model, stems from differences between
Israel
and South
Africa.
When the latter underwent its transition to a one-man,
one-vote state, the majority of its citizens shared a common
faith (Christianity), and many of its churches were nonracial.
Even more important, everyone - white and black - “imagined”
themselves to be South Africans. The same cannot be said of
Israelis and Palestinians. Bishara, for one, argues that a
single polity without power-sharing arrangements and
collective entitlements is not feasible: “We already have two
developed national identities, and it is too late to dream
about merging them into one nation.”

A
Detailed Democratic Alternative

For
now, the one-state discussion lacks a detailed formulation of
how the proposed polity would function. Indeed, the inability
of one-state proponents to define their alternative has become
a key argument of their critics. “What would Judt’s binational
state look like?” asks The New Republic’s Wieseltier.
“He is not very forthcoming about its particulars. His
imagination does not keep pace with his indignation.” It is,
however, only a matter of time before a detailed blueprint is
developed. Such a guide would add new momentum to the
debate.

A
second claim deployed by Wieseltier to question the viability
of a binational outcome is to argue that Palestinians are not
democrats. This argument is flimsy on two counts. First, the
assumption that Palestinian cultural and religious traditions
are ill-disposed to democracy is questionable, if not racist.
Cultures are neither set in stone nor incapable of
accommodating to democracy. The active participation of
Palestinian Israelis in an Israeli democracy - which some
would suggest has limits for them - offers a cogent example.
It also could be argued that a Palestinian struggle against
occupation or exclusive Jewish hegemony, in the name of
democracy, would encourage Palestinians to internalize
democratic values.

No
less important, a binational reality may leave no other
choice. Faced with this reality, the challenge will be to
adopt constitutional designs that allow for democracy yet
provide each community with specified constitutional
guarantees and communal, cultural, and religious rights.
Power-sharing arrangements, practiced with varying success in
countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, India,
Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland
(after the Good Friday agreements of 1998), provide one
possible exit from a polity in which one group dominates the
other. Secular Israelis and Palestinians may view such a model
as the most effective insurance against rabbis and mullahs who
seek to impose theocracy.  Certainly
Virginia Tilley is right to warn that a “formally ‘binational’
state, recognizing and reifying both Jewish and Palestinian
ethno-nationalisms, could simply set up the bipolar rivalry.”
But such a model may come to be viewed as preferable to a
two-state arrangement or a single polity in which winner takes
all - and loser loses all. In a perilous slide away from the
two-state solution, the politics of accommodation and power
sharing may prove to be the only viable alternative to endless
war or brutal domination by one community over another.

__________________

*Gary
Sussman is carrying out postdoctoral research in the school of
government and policy at
Tel
Aviv
University.

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