13.2.2014

One land, Two States

I found these three pendants on e-bay. The one in the middle, with the funky Hebrew

writing, costs almost double the one at the top, with the colours of the Palestinian flag.

But they show the same geographical unit: the borders of mandate Palestine. On

ebay, and in their respective national discourses, the aspirations of Jews and

Palestinians pertain to the same land: Eretz Israel / Palestine.

These borders are not only part of national discourse. They are also a political reality.

Since drawn by British colonial officers almost a century ago, the territory they

demarcate has been unified almost continuously; under the British between 1917 and

1948, and then from 1967 until today. The short hiatus of 19 years between 1948 and

1967, when the West Bank was controlled by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt, was an

exception rather than the rule.

The demographics also attest to the unity of the land, as can be seen from the numbers

below, relating to the voting rights at time of 2012 Israeli elections.

Within the Green Line

5,463,071 Israeli Jews (citizens): have voting rights.

1,361,800 Palestinians (citizens): have voting rights.

318,200 non-Arab Christians and others (citizens): have voting rights.

East Jerusalem

186,929 Jews (citizens): have voting rights

255,000 Palestinians (residents): no voting rights for Knesset elections; can vote in

Jerusalem municipal elections.

West Bank

325,500 Jews (citizens): have voting rights

1,855,115 Palestinians living in areas: no voting rights

Gaza

1,710,257 Palestinians: no voting rights.

Total

7,659,000 people living in Israeli territory have voting rights, while 3,820,372 people

(all Palestinians) have no voting rights.

From 972+ (http://972mag.com/), based on Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics

and the CIA Factbook

What do these numbers tell us? First, that this is one land, with mixed

population everywhere except Gaza. The closer you get to the heart of the conflict, to

Jerusalem, the more mixed the population. If one includes mainly Jewish West

Jerusalem, the ratio is about 70% Jewish, 30% Palestinian.

Second, voting rights for all Palestinians who live under Israeli sovereignty

would end Jewish political monopoly. It is a statement of fact, not an opinion, that

Israel, as a Jewish state committed to the return of Jews to Eretz Israel, retains Jewish

majority by privileging Jews and excluding Palestinians from access to land and

power.

Unlike ‘apartheid’, this is not mainly about economic exploitation – it is about

exclusion of non-Jews from power and land within a defined territorial unit. And

there is direct relationship between the level of exclusion and degree of violence. The

more Palestinian communities are excluded, the more they resort to violence. The

Palestinian citizens of Israel – who have political rights, even if diminished – are not

involved in violence.

Now, some of you may be expecting me at this stage to endorse the one-state

solution – granting equal political rights to end the conflict. I will not, for reasons I

will explain very shortly. Nor will I now resort to branding the entire peace process

since Oslo as a sham. It has been led by brave individuals from both sides, and we are

often too quick to dismiss past achievements.

Rather, my main argument today is that the failure of the negotiations since Oslo is a

direct result of neglecting the unity of the land; of ‘Solomon’s Judgment’ partitions

which do not take account of the mixed demographics on the ground, or the way both

Jews and Palestinians yearn for the land as a whole.

We are currently at the climax of one of the most persistent efforts ever made to bring

a resolution to the conflict. Kerry’s formula, to be published over the next few weeks,

will map areas of agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaderships, primarily

regarding the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

But, I will try to show, Kerry can succeed only if he avoids a model of strict

separation and ethnic purity, if he does not seek to re-draw borders or transfer

populations, but instead articulates a vision of a land divided into two states, but

united by history, geography and memory.

First: why two states, not one? Recognizing the unity of the land should not obscure

us to the reality of two very distinct national movements, who share neither religion

nor language (unlike whites and blacks in South Africa). Both Jews and Palestinians

seek their legitimate right of self-determination. Currently, the Palestinians, who do

not have their own state, appear more willing to forfeit self-determination; the Jews,

who do have one, will not give it up without a fight.

This is why the one state formula means different things for different people. For the

Israeli right, it is about keeping Israel as it is, with its Jewish Law of Return and

Jewish sovereignty, but with a more substantial Palestinian minority. For the

Palestinian left, it is an anti-Zionist project which denies the existence of a Jewish

nation, a project in which the return of Palestinian Refugees is both justification and

the immediate result. These contrasting visions of one democratic state are in reality

extensions of national agendas, denying the other’s right of self-determination.

In fact, the rights of both Jews and Palestinians to self-determination – for a state of

their own - has been recognized by the international community. Every single UN

resolution on the conflict assumed, or actively supported, the co-existence of a Jewish

state and an Arab state in the shared land. Given this background, the international

pressure and guidance required to secure one state cannot be forthcoming. Replacing

the state of Israel with a new state is not a viable political alternative, not is it

necessarily just or stable one.

So we need to work with the two states formula. But this formula, in its current form,

is based on an implausible ideal of separation. According to this approach, Israelis

and Palestinians should be separated from each other in order to create equality and

stability. The various peace initiatives – beginning with the Clinton Formula, through

the Geneva Initiative, the Roadmap and so forth – differ from each other only in the

manner in which the desired separation will be achieved.

We do not know yet the details of the Kerry Plan. It is likely not to fidder

substantially Clinton formula the Geneva Initiative, the principles of which are:

Partition of Eretz Israel/Palestine into two states on the basis of the 1967

borders, with land swaps;

‘Settlement blocs’ to be part of Israel; evacuation of West Bank settlements

outside these blocs;

Division of Jerusalem into Jewish neighbourhoods which will belong to Israel

and Arab neighbourhoods that will belong to Palestine;

Some special status to the ‘Holy Basin’ of the Old City and its environs;

Security arrangement that would preserve Israeli military superiority, and

deployment of international forces along the Jordan River;

No right of return for Palestinian refugees.

I want to briefly pick this plan on settlers, refugees and Jerusalem:

First, settlers: According to the Geneva Initiative – an agreement between moderates

on both sides - Israel is to annex several settlement blocs, totalling 2-3% of the West

Bank. Calculations made by those associated with the plan at the time- a decade ago -

show that 100,000 settlers will find themselves outside the blocs and would have to be

resettled. The numbers today are much higher number. We are contemplating here

the removal of more than 100,000, perhaps close to 200,000 people from their homes,

in close to 100 different communities.

The maps below show the borders suggested by the Geneva Initiative, and the

area of Jewish settlement in the West Bank as a whole.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/settlements_checkpoints.stm

One does not have to agree with the ideology of the Settlement movement in

order to see that removing 100,000 or more from their homes is morally questionable.

All the more so, given that some of the settlements to be evacuated are home to a third

generation of settlers. Moreover, many are in localities, such as Hebron and Bethel,

that embody Jewish attachment to the land much more than Tel Aviv or Netanya.

Evacuating these places of Jews does question the Zionist narrative as a whole.

Israel did evacuate settlers before, as it did in Gaza in 2005. But that had involved a

far smaller number, only 7,000. Not only the numbers in the West Bank are so much

higher, but the Gaza experiment does not bode well for those who want to repeat it on

a mass scale. For Israelis, the evacuation of the settlers in Gaza did not bring security

or peace; for the Palestinians in Gaza, it meant imprisonment, and brought neither

sovereignty nor prosperity.

The Gaza experiment is a warning sign: A Jewish-free West Bank, surrounded by

walls and security along the Jordan River, sounds a lot like Gaza cast large,

impoverished and shut off from the world.

On another level, re-drawing the 1967 boundaries in order to accommodate the

settlement blocs is an anachronistic and dangerous path. The aftermath of the Second

World War was the last time borders were re-drawn on the basis of ethnic fissure lines

between communities. Since then new states always emerged within pre-defined

regional and administrative boundaries. There is a good reason for this: the possibility

of drawing borders on the basis of ethnicity opens the door to population transfers, as

Israel had done in the West Bank. The mere notion of settlement blocs gives Israel a

major incentive to expand the settlements, as well as to postpone resolution so as to

put more facts on the ground.

The other big elephant in all the separation plans is the Palestinian refugees. Kerry’s

plan, like those before him, is almost certain to suggest that the establishment of the

State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza means that the refugee problem will

find its solution there.

This is a charade. Even the utmost deniers of the Nakba cannot pretend not to know

that 700,000 Palestinians ran away, were driven away or were expelled in 1948 from

sites within the current boundaries of the State of Israel: Jaffa, Haifa, Ramla and

hundreds of villages.

The publics in Israel and Palestine understand this. For sixty years the refugee

question had been at the heart of the Palestinian struggle; moreover, it had helped the

Palestinians define themselves as a people.

The Palestinian public would not be able to accept any deal that does not seriously

address the refugee problem – not just a financial compensation, not in the long run,

not as a stable solution. And the Israeli public knows that - When the Israelis are

being sold a deal in which the Palestinians would supposedly relinquish the right of

Return, they correctly feel that they are being lied to.

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was not born with the Israeli

Occupation of 1967; mere withdrawal from the territories conquered in that war will

not end this conflict. The 1948 war – with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians

expelled or driven away; their houses dispossessed or destroyed – is an open wound

which cannot be ignored. If it is, it will sow the seeds of the next conflict.

Addressing the needs of refugees – more than 5 million of them all over the world -

does not necessarily mean return to the ‘houses’; the injustice done to the Palestinians

refugees will not be corrected by driving away the Jews who now live in Jaffa or in

Haifa. But what matters is the Palestinian deep enduring bond to all parts of

Palestine. It does not matter whether they carry the individual memory of

displacement – at stake is the collective longing for historical Palestine, with its

towns, villages, culture and landscape.

Here is the essence of the unity of the land; this is where the Zionist and Palestinian

narratives parallel each other. Palestinian national life developed in Jaffa, Haifa and

Ramla – all within the 1967 borders of Israel. Jewish attachment and memory pertain

in particular to those parts of the land which will be found within the boundaries of

the Palestinian state, to Hebron and Bethel. At the heart of Zionism’s moral claim to

the land was the demand to return to the birthplace of the Jewish people, and this was

the genuine impetus for the settlement project in the West Bank.

And at the heart of the shared land is Jerusalem. Jerusalem encapsulates the

impossibility – even the absurdity - of separation. The Clinton Formula suggests

“Jewish neighbourhoods in Israel, Arab neighbourhoods in Palestine”. In practice, on

the ground, it is nearly impossible to disentangle the subtle fabric that is Jerusalem.

By way of example, the two large Jewish neighbourhoods of Pisgat Zeev and Neve

Yaacov, home to 70,000 people, are located to the east of the Palestinian

neighbourhoods of north-east Jerusalem. The same applies to the neighbourhoods of

Har Homa or Armon ha-Natsiv, planted between the Palestinian south-eastern

neighbourhoods. Any attempt to draw a border according to the ethnic character of

each neighbourhood, as was done by the Geneva Initiative, would create a city of

enclaves, fences, walls, and tunnels. It will not be a city of real human beings.

The map above shows that even the Old City, with its narrow alleys, will be subject to

division, with the Jewish Quarter under Israeli sovereignty. But no one seriously

proposes to put a border in the middle of this sacred space. In recognition of the

impossibility of separation, the Geneva initiative and other separation models offer a

vision of Israeli and Palestinian co-existence, under shared control or under

international auspices. In the narrow alleys of the Old City leading to some of the

most sensitive holy sites on the face of the Earth – the Western Wall, al-Aqsa Mosque

and the Church of Sepulchre – Israelis and Palestinians will have to get along, and to

accept an invisible border.

Even the architects of separation cannot disentangle the Old City and the Holy Basin;

and if they cannot disentangle Jerusalem – if the borders in Jerusalem will have to be

open, and sovereignty shared in some way or another – then the rest of the land will

follow. Jerusalem, its demography and geography, attests to the essential unity of the

land.

So how to square the historical, religious and demographic unity of the land

with the two-state premise? There are a few ideas put forward in recent years which

try to do so based on three fundamentals of any shared future: retaining the unity of

the land, providing equality, and recognizing the rights of the two national

communities for self-determination.

Here I will suggest a vision developed by a Palestinian – Israeli group called

Two States, One Homeland. The blueprint for our vision is found in UN resolution

181, i.e., the Partition Plan approved by the UN General Assembly in 1947. That

partition resolution foresaw not only the establishment of Jewish and Arab states, but

also the establishment of an economic-political union of the two. According to the UN

Partition resolution, that union would have been quite a close one: a joint economic

council, common currency, open borders for the movement of citizens, the right of

citizens of one state to reside in the other, and mutual commitment to respect the

rights of minorities. Greater Jerusalem was to be placed under international control;

but its Jewish residents were to be citizens of the Jewish state, and the Arabs citizens

of the Arab one.

The European Union is an obvious example that such a union is possible, and can

bring prosperity to those who take part in it. Recall: the “European Coal and Steel

Community”, the nucleus for the European Union, was established in April 1951, and

its two founding members - France and Germany - shed each other’s blood on a scale

never experienced in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

There is no need to imitate every aspect of the European Union – especially not the

bureaucracy. But the relevant point is that the European Union has managed to create

a shared territorial space where all the citizens are equal, and where freedom of

movement, residence and commerce prevails; yet where, at the same time, each state

retains its independence, its laws, and its identity.

The vision for Israel / Palestine is therefore of one land, two states. Based on the

European Union model, on the economic union foreseen in the UN Partition

Resolution, and on the subsequent international recognition of the 1967 borders the

practical implications are two sovereign states, with open borders for freedom of

movement, residence, labour and commerce. Along the model of the European

Union, one can foresee a joint High Court for Human Rights tasked with protecting

the civil, social and economic rights of the inhabitants of the shared land.

Freedom of movement and residence in the shared land can relieve the

difficult problems of the settlers and the refugees. Separation requires the removal (or

expulsion) of the settlers as a guarantee that no Palestinian refugee returns to Israel

proper. We need to turn this logic on its head.

A stable two states solution must allow Israeli citizens to live anywhere in

Palestine. Therefore, those settlers who so wish could remain in their homes. They

will live under full Palestinian sovereignty, subject to the laws of the Palestinian state

in all respects, from criminal law to planning and building laws. But they will keep

their Israeli citizenship, will be able to vote to the Israeli Knesset, and would also be

able to retain a degree of autonomy in their communities. Their status in Palestine

would be that of ‘permanent residents’. In case of infringement by the Palestinian

authorities, the Israeli citizens would be able to appeal to a joint Supreme Court.

In the same way, a stable two state solution would also allow Palestinian

citizens to live anywhere in Israel. This would include those refugees who would be

given Palestinian citizenship by the Palestinian state. They may not be able to return

to their homes, the majority of which no longer stand. Gradually, and on reciprocal

basis, Palestinians citizens, including returning refugees, would acquire the status of

‘permanent residents’ in Israel. Here again, in cases of infringement by the Israeli

authorities, the Palestinian citizens would be able to appeal to a joint Supreme Court.

I am decidedly not talking here about the million-and-a-half Palestinians who are now

Israeli citizens. They must remain so, unless they decide, out of their own free will, to

ask for citizenship in another state. They would be represented in the Knesset, and

would enjoy full civil, cultural and religious equality.

Overall, however, the model suggested here is familiar to any European. A

Frenchman who decides to move to Berlin can do so without asking for permission.

He is subject to German laws, he pays his municipal taxes in Berlin, and is even

allowed to vote in local elections; yet he remains a French citizen, and votes for the

French parliament. He may, of course, ask for German citizenship, but it is

completely up to the German authorities to decide whether to grant his request.

The European Union model – and the UK in particular – also addresses the issue of

security. The free movement of people and goods across the EU does not mean there

are no security checks at the borders, quite extensive in the case of the UK. The open

borders between Israel and Palestine would still have scrupulous checks on arms and

munition, as do the sovereign members of the EU. And both states would have the

right to expel citizens of the other state if they pose a threat to security.

Jerusalem/al-Quds should be one urban unit, and movement within it would be

completely free, while access to and from it would be controlled. It would be

administered by one municipality, elected by all the resident citizens, Palestinians and

Israelis. The outlying neighbourhoods (such as Neve Yaacov and Jabal Muakabbar,

for example) and towns (such as Maale Edumim and Ar-Ram) will have wide-ranging

autonomy in local affairs. Here some form of co-sovereignty would have to apply.

And let us not forget Gaza. The separation model had ruined Gaza. It

deprived its inhabitants of access to the Israeli and West Bank markets; it denied its

majority refugee population of the right to even visit their places of origin. In

practical terms, for the two million Palestinians in Gaza, open borders are the only

hope of prosperity, and only hope of reconciliation. What other future, what other

chance of prosperity, do Gazans have?

Given the essential unity of the land, and given the pre-dominance of the two-state

formula and the 1967 in international law, any serious attempt to make progress –

Kerry’s one is definitely the most serious in decades – would lead to adoption of some

of these principles.

The most striking development is the statement coming from Netanhyahu’s

office regarding the future of the settlements: The statement, dated 27/1/2014, was

‘that the premier believes settlers who want to remain in their homes under

Palestinian sovereignty should be allowed to do so… Netanyahu sees no reason why

final status arrangements could not allow for a Jewish minority in the Palestinian

state, just as there is an Arab minority in the Jewish state” [Haaretz & Reuters]

Netnayahu’s statement is a logical outcome of the tension in Zionist ideology between

the two-state model and the unity of the land. Netanyahu later retracted, but once this

cat is out of the bag, the possibility of separating sovereignty and residence will loom

ever larger in Zionist discourse. For an Israeli Prime Minister to entertain the

possibility of Jewish presence without sovereignty is a milestone in the history of the

conflict and the history of Zionism. And, in practical terms, if this can be done for

some settlements – for 100,000 people, at least - it could and in fact should be offered

for all 500,000: there is no need for settlement blocs and for squabbling over

territorial swaps.

Netanyahu compared the Jewish settlers who will remain in Palestine to the

Palestinian citizens of Israel. But this is not the full comparison. Netanyahu, possibly

the most ideological Prime minister of Israel, believes that every Jew should be able

to live anywhere in Eretz Israel, moreover in the places that are central to the biblical

narrative. But the same right should also be given to every Palestinian, including

refugees. All Palestinians should the right to visit, move and eventually take up

residence in all parts of the land. The rights of both peoples do not have to negate

each other.

Before we adjourn, I would like to counter the most common objection: it is tempting

to dismiss this idea by saying that we need separation first, that we need to draw

borders first; that in current conditions there is too much hatred and too much distrust

for this model of open borders and shared land to work. Such a view ignores both

history and demographic realities. Over the past 20 years, the Oslo process with its

emphasis on separation and segregation has increased hostilities, not reduced them;

mutual distrust has become worse when the borders were closed. Settlements in the

West Bank doubled in size, from 280,000 in 1993 (time of Oslo agreements) to

540,000 today. This expansion was a result of the Israeli assumption that ever larger

settlement blocs would be annexed as part of any future agreement. Striving towards

impossible, immoral, infeasible separation and segregation produces economic

desperation (see Gaza), and political despair.

And yet, the reality is that millions of Jews and Palestinians work and live together –

in hospitals, factories, offices, mixed neighbourhoods all around the country – and it

is obvious that they would continue to do so in the future. The question is how to

create a political framework that would allow them to do so in equality, security and

peace.

This is one land – historically, demographically, religiously, and in the national

consciousness of both national communities. On the other hand, the two state formula

is the only one that is grounded in international law and respects the will of both

peoples for self-determination. The logical outcome is a model that promises open

borders, free movement of people and goods, while also maintaining security and

sovereignty. We should not draw new borders, or evacuate families from their homes,

but rather recognize both peoples’ national and religions aspirations to the land as a

whole. Eretz Israel/Palestine is one.