Finally, A New Idea: The Marriage of a One-State and a Two-State Solution   

Tikkun Magazine, July/August 2009

by Russell Nieli

 

This article was adapted from the second half of a talk on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that Russell Nieli gave to a Princeton University student group, the "Tigers for Israel," in the spring of 2008. At the beginning of the talk, which is published in full on the Tikkun website, Nieli discussed the early Brit Shalom call for a unified Jewish/Arab binational state, the more recent and related "one-state" proposals, the now standard "two-state" solution, the Kahanist and parallel Arab versions of "ethnic cleansing," and the recent calls for something like a return to the 1949-1967 period when Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. Click here to read Nieli's argument for why those proposals are doomed to frustration and failure.

 

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.

Key Elements of the Two-State Condominial Proposal

At the beginning of this article, I traced the basic outline of a potential two-state condominial arrangement. More elaborately, the proposal would involve the following developments:

1)      Israeli Jews would adopt a formal constitution that defines the state of Israel in the clearest of ethnicity-restrictive terms as a Jewish state-a state of the Jewish people. The constitution would make clear that Jews and only Jews could become citizens and voting rights members of the state of Israel. Exceptions to the Jewish-only citizenship and Jewish-only voting rights rule, whether for individuals (such as Arab volunteers in the Israeli military), or groups (Christians, Druze, etc.) would be made only by special act of the Israeli Parliament at its own absolute discretion.

2)      Palestinian Arabs would establish an ethno-national state of their own ("Palestine"), encompassing all the territory of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as these territories existed in the period between the 1949 armistice lines and the Six-Day War of June 1967. The constitution of the Palestinian state would make clear that Palestinian Arabs and only Palestinian Arabs could become citizens and voting members of the Palestinian state. Exceptions to this rule, whether for individuals or groups, would be made only by special act of the Palestinian Arab parliament. The Palestinian ethno-national state would thus closely parallel in structure the Jewish ethno-national state. In addition, just as the Israeli state would have the absolute right to determine who is a Jew, so the Palestinian state would have the absolute right to determine who is a Palestinian Arab and thus eligible for state citizenship.

3)      All Israeli Arabs would be required to transfer their citizenship and national voting rights-but not their residence-to the Palestinian state. Thus all Palestinian Arabs would be citizens of the Palestinian state, and all Jews would be citizens of the state of Israel, except in those (relatively few) cases where exceptions have been made by the parliaments of the respective states. As citizens of the Palestinian state, Israeli Arabs would retain all the benefits they currently receive under the Israeli welfare state (or would perhaps instead receive adequate compensation for losing them, via a "political severance" package, so that there would not be two classes of Palestinians living in the new condominial state on an ongoing basis).

4)      The combined land areas of Israel and the Palestinian state would be designated a unified Condominial Territory and Binational Homeland for all citizens of the two states. All citizens of both Israel and the Palestinian state would have the right to move to and settle anywhere within the entire Condominial Territory, which would serve as a binational homeland and the joint settlement venue for all Palestinian Arabs and Jews. The ensuing structure would bear this template: "Two states and two flags for two peoples within one binational settlement community."

5)      While each state would have the right to determine its own immigration and naturalization policies, both states would have an obligation to their diaspora ethnic communities to provide a place of refuge and a "right of return" consistent with their economic and material capacity to fulfill such an obligation. Diaspora Palestinians would stand in the same relation to the Palestinian ethno-national state as diaspora Jews currently stand in relation to the Jewish ethno-national state. Israel would be Der Judenstaat (Herzl's "The State of the Jews"), Palestine would be Der Palaestinenserstaat ("The State of the Palestinian Arabs"), and the Condominial Territory would be Das binationale Gemeinschaftsland ("The Binational-Condominial Land of Settlement").

6)      Except for those specific exceptions stipulated in advance and agreed to by both parties, all land used for residential, commercial, or agricultural purposes within the Condominial Territory, along with such legal instruments as building permits, variances, commercial licenses, etc., which are used to regulate or facilitate the use of such land, would be open for acquisition to all Israeli and Palestinian citizens on the strictest (and most strictly enforced) non-discriminatory basis. The implementation of this principle would require the dismantling or radical modification in the mission of all agencies and organizations-such as the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Lands Authority-that currently prioritize Jews or discriminate against Palestinian Arabs in the acquisition and development of land and other real property. The final arbiter in all disputes over discrimination in these areas would be entrusted to a special international court, whether under UN auspices or otherwise, whose authority is formally recognized through treaty obligation by both the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

7)      The regulation of all water resources in the Condominial Territory would be entrusted to a special commission of the United Nations set up specifically for that purpose. Its membership would include equal parts of Palestinians, Israelis, and third-party nationals from countries without significant Muslim or Jewish populations.

8)      Within the territory of their condominial partner state, the governments of both Israel and Palestine would have the right-as well as the moral responsibility-to set up a dense network of support facilities such as schools, hospitals, recreational facilities, housing bureaus, old age homes, cultural centers, orphanages, substance abuse clinics, employment offices, homeless shelters, etc., to care for the welfare and other needs of their citizen population living in the neighboring territory. The welfare needs of all Jews living in Palestine and of all Palestinian Arabs residing in Israel (current Arab Israelis excepted) would be the responsibility of their citizenship state not their state of residence. The basic principle would be: "Jews and Arabs take care of their own."

9)      In those Israeli towns and villages where Palestinian citizens are in the great majority, and in Palestinian villages where Israeli citizens are in the great majority, the expatriate communities under such circumstances would be accorded a de facto form of local autonomy over such municipal concerns as zoning, traffic regulation, road construction, garbage collection, local policing, etc. Local, non-citizen advisory boards would be elected, and their decisions would be generally confirmed ("rubber-stamped") and officially authorized by the government of the respective nation-state in which the town or village lies (i.e., Israel or Palestine), thus providing de facto local autonomy in the civic sphere without compromising national sovereignty or granting formal political rights either to Palestinians living in Israel or to Israelis living within the state of Palestine. Helpful suggestions for this kind of arrangement might be drawn from the history of the pre-World War I millet system under Ottoman rule in which local ethno-religious minorities were granted substantial degrees of self-governing autonomy without compromising the political authority of the central state. Other helpful suggestions might be provided by the Jewish Agency's role in providing for the welfare and organizational needs of the Jewish communities in Palestine when it was under British Mandate rule.

10)  There would be free movement of peoples and goods across state boundaries between the two condominial partner states. A common labor, common trading, and common investment market would be formed much like that which exists within the European Union today. The issue of fair taxation and use of taxes paid may seem problematic but is not-we have all sorts of different tax arrangements around the world to achieve fairness for people who live in one state and work in another. 

11)  The state of Palestine would have almost all the features of a conventional nation state, including political control over its territory, a state flag and a national anthem, a national legislature and national court system, the right to send and receive ambassadors, the right to seek a seat in the UN, a national army and national police force, a national currency and national passport, the right to tax its citizens, a right to fix immigration and naturalization policy, state control over its educational system, a right to determine its official national language, etc. In one crucial area, however, the Palestinian state would differ from most other nation states. Similar to the special arrangements in Finland and Austria instituted after World War II, the Palestinian state would be restricted by treaty obligation in terms of the size and capabilities of its armed forces so that it does not pose a serious military threat to the state of Israel. While it would be permitted to maintain a military of sufficient strength to put down domestic insurrection and terrorism, its armed forces would be restricted in terms of numbers and the kinds of weapons systems it could possess (e.g. advanced fighter jets, modern battle tanks, nuclear weapons) so as not to pose any serious offensive threat to the state of Israel. To further these ends, the Palestinian state would also be prohibited from entering into any military alliance with any other state without the explicit permission of the state of Israel, and must agree to grant to the Israeli government such reasonable military security measures that Israel deems necessary to its national survival. The latter might include a right to set up observation posts near the Jordan River to provide early warning of sudden invasion from hostile forces to the east, overflight privileges within Palestinian airspace for Israeli military aircraft to conduct air-reconnaissance and training operations, and a sharing of intelligence regarding domestic and foreign terrorism. This is the one imbalance in the proposal, but a) Israeli agreement is inconceivable without it, b) the Palestinian state would get the same economic benefit as Finland and Austria received (see point 20 below), c) Israel would have no incentive to re-conquer the Palestinian lands since that would just recreate the present impasse and d) after a generation or more of peace, we could expect other arrangements to become more possible.  

 

The Condominial Advantage: Two States within the Boundaries of a Shared Homeland

I know it takes a good deal of rethinking on a whole host of issues to imagine the arrangement I have just described, but I believe that only such a radical restructuring of the political and jurisdictional landscape of the former Mandate Territory has any possibility of bringing about a genuine transformation in the mindsets of the two warring sides.

In my judgment, the two-state condominial arrangement that I have just described, if put into place, would offer all of the following advantages:

1)      It would enable both Palestinians and Jews to gain most of what they want the most: security in a state of their own, international recognition and legitimacy, and the right of both Jews and Palestinians to settle anywhere within the joint Condominial Territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Diasporic Palestinians and diasporic Jews would both equally enjoy the right of return and a right to settle anywhere within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine.

2)      It is the only proposed solution that could accommodate powerful ethno-national feelings and identities-rather than suppressing or thwarting them-without all the problems connected with traditional nation-states whose state activities are restricted to their own territorial boundaries and whose populations include large irredentist or stateless minorities.

3)      It would undermine the extremist agendas (e.g. ethnic cleansing) of radicals on both sides of the ethnic divide and provide the underpinning of a win-win situation in which a genuine reconciliation between former enemies can take place.

4)      It would cause minimal disruption to current populations and eliminate the need for any forced settlement evacuations, population exchanges, or land swaps, and will do so in conformity with the state boundaries internationally recognized since the end of the 1967 war.

5)      It would provide the opportunity for both peoples to participate in a democratic political process within a polity of their own-one with whose people, history, language, culture, and national flag they can positively identify.

6)      It would enable the current scale of entanglement between the two peoples-economic, geographic, and infrastructural-to remain intact and, indeed, to be expanded, while each of the two peoples would be assured of a safe and secure territorial state of their own.

7)      In addition to granting the right of return to both diasporic Palestinians and diasporic Jews, it would give to the vast majority of people within the two diasporas who choose to remain in countries outside the Condominial Territory the symbolic significance of a special relationship to a nation among nations of the earth that is distinct to their people, their culture, and their history. Even though surveys show that only about one in ten Palestinians who are descendants of 1948 refugees would choose to return to Israel, the symbolic significance of that right to them can hardly be underestimated (in surveys most say they want the option), just as the right to immigrate to Israel is symbolically important for the many diasporic Jews who choose not to exercise it.

8)      It could potentially put an end to the deep-seated sense of historical grievance that almost all Palestinians hold toward the creation of the state of Israel and its underlying Zionist ideology.

9)      It would unite in a creative synthesis the core tenets of the seemingly contradictory principles of democracy and ethnic nationalism for both Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

10)  It is the only solution in which the absolute numbers and proportions of Jews and Arabs living in either state would not be perceived as a political threat to either ethnic group. It was the question of numbers that tore apart Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and again immediately after World War II, with Arabs insisting that Jewish immigration be ended and Jews insisting that it continue and accommodate the thousands of European Jews fleeing Nazi oppression and its consequences. Similarly, today it is the "demographic threat" of a growing Arab Israeli population that is perceived as so threatening to Israel's Jews. Under the two-state condominial arrangement, such destructive political disputes cannot arise.

11)  It is the only solution under which diverging levels of economic development between the two peoples within the Condominial Territory would not be able to serve as the basis for ethno-class warfare of the kind that has wreaked such havoc in ethnically divided nation-states around the world. Each ethno-national polity would be responsible for the welfare of its own people: Jews taking care of Jews, Palestinians of Palestinians.

12)  It is the only solution with the possibility of bringing about a reconciliation between the liberal-humanitarian and the ethno-nationalist (and national-religious) strains in Zionism, which are increasingly at loggerheads among both Israeli and diasporic Jews.

13)  It is the only solution, other than a Kahanist-style ethnic cleansing, that would provide for a long-term solution to the problem presented by a growing Israeli Arab population that is increasingly hostile to the Jewish state and its ethnically exclusive Zionist symbols and mission. The dark forebodings of Israeli Jews about a growing "fifth column" demographic threat would be done away with without violence, coercion, or forced population transfers of any kind.

14)  It is the only solution that would pay due respect to each group's love of, and desire to settle in, all of historical Palestine, while at the same time accommodating both peoples' equally strong desire to be part of an ethnically defined polity based upon common historical memories, blood ties, and a shared sense of collective peoplehood.

15)  It is the only solution that could guarantee the continuation of the Jewish character of the Jewish state, as well as the right of diasporic Jews to "return" to Israel and become its citizens, in a manner that does not inflame worldwide Arab and Muslim sensibilities. Ethnic rights and privileges of an exact parallel kind would be extended to all Palestinians-both those in the diaspora and those currently residing in the former Mandate territory.

16)  It would give to Israeli Arab leaders, who currently exercise no real political power in Israel, the possibility of becoming parliamentary leaders in a Palestinian parliament where they could exercise real power and leadership, both in the Palestinian state and in its extra-territorial reach into Israel. Up until 2007, not a single Arab Israeli was ever permitted to hold a cabinet post in the Israeli government (the Labor party appointed Israel's first and only Arab cabinet minister in that year) because of the need to discuss sensitive state secrets at cabinet meetings and the (very realistic) Jewish concern over Arab loyalty. A transfer of Arab voting rights to the Palestinian parliament, and the granting to that Parliament of important extra-territorial rights and obligations within Israeli territory, would fundamentally change this situation and greatly empower politically the Arabs living in Israel-both politicians and the general Arab electorate.

17)  Since it is just as unreasonable to ask Arab Israelis to sing the Hatikva and pledge loyalty to the Star of David flag as it is to ask Israeli Jews to renounce these same cherished symbols of their national identity in order to accommodate Arab sensibilities, the two-state condominial arrangement (envisioning a transfer of Palestinian Arab national identity and national citizenship to the Palestinian state) would solve the dilemma posed by this clash of symbolic loyalties.

18)  Since two-state condominialism would enable Palestinian Arabs to attain most of what they most want-i.e., an internationally recognized state within all of its pre-1967 borders, a right of return and to settle anywhere within Mandate Palestine, East Jerusalem as Palestine's capital, the free movement of people and goods across Israeli/Palestinian borders, etc.-the settlement would create a powerful incentive for ordinary Palestinians to police their ranks against terrorists and extremists who would jeopardize the condominial agreement and all its benefits by continued violence and hostilities directed against the state of Israel and its Jews.

19)  With the establishment of the Condominial Territory as a unified settlement community, and the free movement of both Palestinian and Israeli citizens across state boundaries, the Jewish concern with maintaining a "united Jerusalem" and access to sacred Jewish shrines in Palestinian territory (e.g. the Cave of the Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb, the Western Wall, etc.) would disappear. Citizens of both states would be allowed to live in and visit the territory, cities, and holy places throughout historical Palestine without fear of ethnic exclusion.

20)  Since the Palestinian state, by treaty obligation, would have a restricted military, and would implicitly be protected by the state of Israel from invasion from hostile outside powers, the new Palestinian state would be free to devote most of its resources to domestic projects and the educational and social welfare needs of its people, rather than to huge military budgets.

21)  As a win-win situation, two-state condominialism would transform Israel's image in the Mideast region, dramatically altering its pariah status among its Islamic neighbors. It would also reduce Israel's need for enormous military expenditures and for huge military aid from the United States. It would provide the basis for both Israel and the Palestinian state to play an important public role in the economic and cultural life of the surrounding region.

22)  For those-like the post-Zionist Jews-who are hostile on principle to ethno-nationalisms of any stripe and who yearn for a single, multiethnic state based on civic democracy and equal citizenship rights, regardless of group identities, two-state condominialism offers the long-term prospect of a gradual reduction in ethno-nationalism itself, and of the emergence of political institutions that transcend nationalism. Once Arabs and Jews have lived in peace with each other for a sufficient length of time in a shared settlement community as members of two ethnically secure nation states, and once they have become even more interdependent economically and come to see each other more as joint cooperators than murderous rivals or genocidal enemies, a more unified, civic-democratic set of arrangements could emerge. A two-state condominial arrangement would almost certainly further the possibility of attaining such a long-term goal better than a two-state separationist arrangement, in which Jewish Israel would feel perpetually threatened by the demographics of its growing Arab-citizen population, and irredentist Palestinians would feel cheated out of their basic human right to return to the land from which they and their forbears were so tragically expelled in the 1948 and 1967 wars. With both peoples secure, politically and psychologically, in their own separate nation-states, and each free to move about as workers or settlers in the territory of their former rivals, a wider circle of empathy and identity could develop, with ethno-national consciousness correspondingly receding in importance.

Shared Stewardship: A Win-Win Situation and an Inspiring Vision

Historical Palestine has been a tinderbox of violence and instability since British Mandate times. Arabs and Jews are still at each other's throats. They have made little effort to understand each other's sensibilities or perspectives, and have often hardened into fixed positions that do neither side much good.

Some will argue that good fences make good neighbors and that a clean divorce between battling groups is often the best solution. Palestinians and Jews, according to this view, will never be able to get along with each other and should be encouraged to go their separate ways. This view, in my judgment, is myopic. For, barring large-scale ethnic cleansing, the two peoples will continue to be closely intertwined with each other, certainly in Israel and most likely in any future Palestinian state, as well. Their cooperative integration, not their segregation or separation, must be the goal of any successful future policy.

It is naïve to think that Palestinians are ever going to accept gracefully-or even ungracefully-a two-state solution that gives them less than half the territory they could have had in 1947, when they rejected the UN partition plan as an outrageous injustice. Does anyone really think that after all the suffering, all the sacrifice, all the humiliation, and all the bloodshed and trauma that Palestinians have endured since the 1948 war, they are going to accept with equanimity a truncated Palestinian state on 22 percent of the land of former Mandate Palestine, without a right of return to the territory from which they were forced to flee to make room for a Jewish state?

Most Palestinians living in Gaza and the frontline refugee camps have their historical roots not in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem but in what is now the state of Israel. Human beings live by dreams. For a defeated, humiliated, impoverished people like many of the Palestinians living on Israel's borders, the prospect of returning to their former homeland, even if it is an option most never exercise, has kept their spirits alive and meant the difference between hope and despair. There are some things in life that are worth dying for; for many Palestinian refugees, a right of return to the territory that is now Israel is one of them.

One of the great advantages of the two-state condominial solution is that it pays due respect for both peoples' love of, and desire to settle in, the whole expanse of Palestine/Eretz Israel, while at the same time accommodating both groups' equally strong desire to be part of an ethnically defined political community based upon common history, common descent, and a shared sense of who they are and to whom they belong as a people. It offers what the popular management guru Stephen R. Covey calls a win-win outcome-a solution that is mutually beneficial and satisfying.

Even though the two-state separationist solution has continued to garner international support, most people (including most of its supporters) agree that it is not a very happy outcome for either side.

Let me give you some examples. The former Israeli Labor chairman and reluctant two-state supporter Benjamin Ben-Eliezer says that for there to be peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Jews, "both sides will have to make painful concessions and give up part of their historical dreams." Similarly, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for many years a member of the right-wing Likud party, has come to believe in recent times that peace can come about between Israelis and Palestinians only if Israel makes the heart-wrenching decision to relinquish control of both East Jerusalem and almost all of the West Bank. For Israeli Jews, says Olmert, such a decision "is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years." But it is a decision that must be made, he believes, if peace with the Palestinians is ever to be achieved.

The Israeli novelist Amos Oz finds similar attitudes among both Israeli and Palestinian supporters of the separationist solution. He says public opinion polls show that "a clear majority on both sides ... favors the idea of a two-state solution, Israel next to Palestine," but "everyone is unhappy about those solutions, everybody is full of suspicions and mistrust, everybody who says ‘yes' says so with clenched teeth."

Palestinian reluctance and disappointment over the prospects of a separationist solution is similarly stressed by many writers. Ghada Kharmi says that dividing the former Mandate Palestine into two states has been accepted by many of her fellow Palestinians not because of any belief that it is in itself "an ideal or even a desirable solution," but because it may be for many "the only way ... of saving what little was left of Palestine." Similarly Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian writer whose parents fled from Palestine during the 1948 war, explains how, like many Palestinians, he "swallowed hard and accepted" when the PLO in 1993 formally recognized Israel and agreed to a two-state solution. Such a separationist solution, he says, was accepted by Palestinians like himself only with great bitterness and regret.

Supporters of a one-state solution in which neither Palestinian Arabs nor Jews would have an ethnically defined state of their own are often just as conflicted and ambivalent about the solution they propose as those supporting two-state separationism. "It is not easy for me to part with my father's dream of a Jewish nation-state," writes Meron Benvenisti, the former Jerusalem deputy mayor. "For most of my life that was my dream, too," he adds, describing the great sadness and misgivings that have attended his reluctant conclusion that two-state separationism is no longer feasible and must give way to a unified state that is not officially Jewish. Similarly, Virginia Tilley says the many Israeli and Palestinian journalists and intellectuals who have come to believe in the need for a unified Jewish/Arab state have done so for the most part only "with inner pain and moral turmoil," with "anguish and sorrow," most believing that something important will have been lost.

What are the prospects for lasting peace when such painful concessions have to be made? A solution that contradicts "natural instincts," that is "terrible," that evokes great "bitterness," that must be accepted with "clenched teeth," that is embraced only with "inner pain and moral turmoil," with great "anguish and sorrow"-what are the prospects of such a solution leading to an outcome with which anyone is happy and has a long-term prospect of reconciling former foes? The short answer is: not very good!

It is the kind of solution that leads to an India-Pakistan type of outcome where ongoing enmity on both sides produces festering sores, mutual recriminations, periodic riots, terrorist raids, and continuing arms races (including nowadays one with nuclear weapons). The reality of the situation should remind us of how important a win-win kind of solution is-one that rejects the polarized, zero-sum kind of thinking inherent in the separationist logic that has been dominant in the Mideast since Mandate times.

The social psychologist Michael E. McCullough writes, "People will become more motivated to put their histories of bloody conflict behind them and try to forgive their former enemies when the benefits of cooperation are undeniably superior to the unforgiving, zero-sum status quo." McCullough has looked at many historical instances of former foes who have come together and found genuine reconciliation, and he believes that human beings, far from being exclusively warlike and aggressive creatures, have a built-in faculty for forgiveness and reconciliation under the right circumstances. He places this faculty within a framework of evolutionary psychology. The key factor to reconciliation, says McCullough, is the emergence of a positive-sum solution in which both parties feel they have arrived at an agreement that is both just and pragmatically better than the existing state of affairs. "When we design societies so that people's rights are protected, so that they experience justice, and so that they have incentives for cooperating with their former enemies," McCullough says, "then forgiveness arises as a natural consequence of how our minds evolved to operate." This fact needs to be placed at the center of all attempts to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Truth and Reconciliation

There is a final element that I haven't mentioned-an element that McCullough describes as "forgiveness requiring a strong dose of truth." Surveying some of the literature on how civil wars in South Africa and a number of Third World countries were brought to a peaceful conclusion, McCullough found that successful peace processes often involve "a process of truth telling through which the warring factions can reach consensus about how to understand the injustices they've suffered and the harms they've perpetrated upon each other." A number of Jews prominent in the Israeli and American peace movements have made similar claims that a genuine reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews will ultimately require some kind of honest reckoning of what each group has done to the other in order to establish a new kind of relationship. Only then can the evils of the past be transcended without being either forgotten or denied.

The Tikkun Community has been particularly active in the call for an honest reckoning and reconciliation between the antagonistic parties. Believing as they do that "social change and inner change go hand in hand," Rabbi Michael Lerner and his group have been in the forefront of the call for both Palestinians and Jews to acknowledge the wrongs that both sides have done to the other. This call for an honest accounting is done with the understanding that it is the only way to clear the historical ledgers and unburden both sides from the guilt, distortions, and psychic burdens of the past that now stand in the way of genuine reconciliation and mutual forgiveness. In a full-page ad in the New York Times co-sponsored by the Network of Spiritual Progressives, the Tikkun Community said real justice and reconciliation in the Mideast ultimately requires "repentance and atonement for the long history of insensitivity and cruelty each side has shown toward the other side." It is only through such honest reckoning, the ad said, that a genuine change in consciousness can take place that would enable the two peoples to fundamentally alter the kinds of relationships they have had with one another in the past.

Similar views have been expressed in Israel by Uri Avnery's Gush Shalom peace group. Avnery, who as a teenager fought in the 1948 war, has been calling for a number of years for a South Africa-style joint commission for truth and reconciliation in which Palestinian, Israeli, and outside scholars produce an honest historical accounting of what really happened in the 1948 and 1967 wars, and what wrongs were done by each group to the other. Avnery believes that such truth-telling by both parties could contribute to an overcoming of the deep distrust that both peoples have of the other, which has been a roadblock to peace.

At the very least what is needed in the former territory of the British Mandate is an acknowledgment by each side of the salient truths contained in each other's respective national narrative. From the Jewish side, this would require acknowledgment that the Balfour Declaration-a unilateral decree about the future of Palestine issued by a European imperialist power without the slightest consultation with the native inhabitants of Palestine itself-involved a fundamental injustice to the indigenous Palestinian Arabs, many of whom had ancestral roots in the territory going back centuries. Equally important, it would require acknowledgment that the Arabs who fled Israel during the 1948 war did so mainly because of legitimate fears for their physical safety at the hands of the Zionist army (Haganah) and Jewish terrorist groups (Irgun, Stern), and that, whatever the reasons for their flight, Israel's subsequent refusal to allow them to return to their homes and villages after the fighting had stopped was nothing less than an act of "ethnic cleansing" (to use the contemporary term), leading to untold suffering and hardship for the people involved.

What is needed from the side of the Palestinian Arabs is a formal acknowledgment of the deep spiritual and historical bond that has connected the Jewish people to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) throughout many centuries of exile, as well as an acknowledgment of the extreme situation in which so many Jews found themselves in the face of the murderous anti-Semitism that arose in late nineteenth-century Europe and the subsequent ascent to power of the Nazis in Germany. In addition, there should be a public acknowledgment of the great injustices that were done to Mideastern and North African Jews by various Arab governments following the creation of the Jewish state. These Jews must be acknowledged as victims of local Arab versions of ethnic cleansing just as cruel as that suffered by Palestinian Arabs at the hands of Israeli Jews in the Great Catastrophe of 1948. Israel's willingness to take in these desperate refugees in such huge numbers should be acknowledged as the great act of generosity and humanitarian national sacrifice that it was.

Such public truth telling is needed on both sides to clear the historical air and cut through the pattern of denials and evasions that typically characterize discussion of these issues when adversarial positions are assumed. An acknowledgment by both parties that the enmity and hostility that has existed for generations between them is more a product of history and of fate than of any intrinsic hatred of one people for the other would go a long way toward achieving the reconciliation and psychological transformation that a lasting peace requires. This means that Zionism must be understood by the Arab side as a form of historically rooted Jewish nationalism, not a form of racism, just as the anti-Zionism of Palestinian Arabs must be understood by Jews not as a form of anti-Semitism but as a product of a rival Arab nationalism-a nationalism that is just as historically grounded and valid as Jewish nationalism and not based on any intrinsic, anti-Semitic hatred of Jews. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict must be acknowledged by both sides for what it has always been-a tragic confrontation of two peoples, both with powerful claims to the territory of a very small land, who, for a variety of historical and cultural reasons, have done a very poor job of creatively reconciling their differences and getting along with one another.

The fact that in the past they have done such a poor job of reconciliation does not, however, remove either the possibility or the moral imperative to get it right in the future. What the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Sholem, said many decades ago is just as true today as when it was first uttered in the period between the two world wars (indeed, in a world of proliferating nuclear weapons, it is even more true): "The Land of Israel"-i.e., historical Palestine-"belongs to two peoples, and these peoples need to find a way to live together ... and to work for a common future." An acknowledgment by both peoples of what is legitimate in the other side's claims and perspectives would go a long way toward reducing the poisonous enmity that exists between them. The enormous outpouring of Jewish goodwill on the occasion of Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November of 1977 showed just how responsive Israeli Jews can be to any Arab who makes the least effort to understand their situation.

While the sympathy and goodwill of Jews such as Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, who tried as best they could to understand the Palestinian narrative, was not reciprocated by Arabs in the 1940s, the prospects today for Arab reciprocity are much greater than in the chaos-strewn years of the 1940s. A rebirth of a Brith Shalom-type spirit of generosity and understanding-if carried out within the context of a final settlement that accords to Palestinians both the state they seek within pre-1967 borders and the right of return to the territory that is now the state of Israel-would almost certainly alter Arab attitudes and beliefs. Israelis would discover that there are a lot more Anwar Sadat types out there than they now suppose. If each party reaches out to the other in generosity and understanding, and if each gets materially much of what its national movement so ardently desires, the change in the psychology of the two peoples will prove more electrifying and transformative than anyone can now imagine. Swords will be beaten into plowshares and the two peoples will know war no more. At some very deep level of their psyche, I believe, all but the most fanatical and zealous Palestinians and Jews yearn for some kind of just and lasting peace. The challenge for the next generation will be to tap into that yearning and make its fulfillment a reality.

Hope in the Younger Generation

In 1918, just a year after the Balfour Declaration, David Ben-Gurion set forth the core of the Jewish/Arab dispute over historical Palestine in terms whose conciseness and understanding have never been surpassed. "I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews," Ben-Gurion wrote. "We [Jews], as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs."

Despite bouts of guarded optimism in the 1920s and early 1930s, Ben-Gurion remained a pessimist throughout most of his long life, concluding that there could be no peaceful settlement to what divided Arabs and Jews in historical Palestine. To the seemingly intractable conundrum posed by Ben-Gurion, we must today ask, "Is it possible to reach a settlement in historical Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews can proclaim, ‘this land will be both ours and theirs'?"

I believe that the answer is yes, but only if the younger generation is willing to think creatively about solutions in which all parties feel they have greatly gained and to which they can energetically commit themselves. We don't want a solution in which both sides have to make painful concessions and give up most of their historical dreams-dreams for which they have sacrificed so much and which serve in various ways as the unifying bonds of their collective existence.

Young people today should not think the older generation has superior wisdom and experience on this issue. Neither the generations that came of age before World War II, nor the baby boomers that grew up in the decades after it have developed a viable solution.

Peace activist Ilan Pappe says: "Our political elites [in Israel] are incompetent in the best case and corrupt in the worst in all that pertains to finding a solution to the [Palestinian-Israeli] conflict.... The elites which accompany us in the Western World and the Arab World are just as bad." Although, for reasons given, I believe Pappe's one-state solution to be impossible, his indictment and salient challenge here is right on the mark. The older generation does not have an answer!

Jews, it is said, believe in miracles-not necessarily developments that contradict the physical laws of nature, but developments in the communal and interpersonal realm that seem so unlikely when they occur and so magnificent in their outcome that we are dumb-struck with wonder. It was a miracle in this sense that enabled the Jews, after being expelled by the Romans from Ancient Israel, to stick together as a people for almost two thousand years in a tightly knit, worshipping community, despite relentless persecution. It was a similar miracle that enabled the Jews in the twentieth century, following their widespread dispersal throughout Europe and the Mideast, to come together in the land of Biblical Israel, take in millions of fellow Jews fleeing oppression, make the desert bloom, and create a vibrant, progressive, modern democracy-one that, despite all its sins and the misery it has caused the native Palestinian population, is surely one of the more decent societies on this planet.

The time has come for a third great miracle, one that will be no less momentous than the previous two: a miracle in which Arabs and Jews join together in a cooperative union in which they not only abandon their former enmities but develop a genuine respect-maybe even a love-for one another, and their union becomes a beacon of peace and concord throughout the Mideast. Such a miracle would fulfill the Isaianic dream of Israel becoming "a light unto the nations," a model of ethnic reconciliation and goodwill that many other ethnically divided nations around the world might strive to emulate.  It would also fulfill the dream of the most high-minded of the early Zionists-men like A.D. Gordon, Herbert Samuels, Martin Buber, and Judah Magnes-who envisioned a pioneering Jewish settler community in which Jews would offer to the world an example of moral and spiritual renewal.

"Where there is no vision the people perish," according to the Book of Ecclesiastes. This ancient saying from the Biblical wisdom literature was perhaps never more applicable than in the case of our modern, now century-long, conflict between Palestinians and Jews. What is clearly needed today is a fresh vision. In speaking of "two-state condominialism," I offer an example of such a vision.  There may be others-or significant modifications of what I have suggested-that are much better. By all means they should be pursued. We need to harness all our creativity, wise judgment, common sense, and sense of justice to develop a visionary plan. But the end goal of such a plan must always be this: a political structure and cooperative arrangement that will enable both Jews and Arabs in the former territory of the British Mandate to realize collectively most of their respective national dreams. Anything less-any arrangement that is not a win-win situation offering better prospects for both peoples than the present status quo-is doomed to failure and will foster continued enmity between the contending parties. Here is the challenge of our time. I believe that the younger generation of Jews, cut from the cloth of a people who have brought to the modern world such enormous innovation and creativity, are fully up to the task.  And despite a century of conflict, I believe younger Palestinians will be found who are fully up to the task too.

 

Russell Nieli earned his Ph.D. at Princeton, where he studied political philosophy and the works of the great German émigré scholars who came to America during the Hitler era. He is currently a lecturer in Princeton's Politics Department.