Israel has three basic options as it moves into the future.
The status quo
The first of these is to maintain the status quo. What is the status quo? The current situation has the state of Israel in some sense controlling all of the territory of Mandatory Palestine, along with the Golan Heights seized from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967. It retains the two Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank, including, most controversially, the eastern part of Jerusalem, formerly occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan between 1949 and 1967. The two advantages of keeping to the status quo are that (1) it preserves a more defensible territory than the smaller Israel existing between 1948 and 1967; and (2) it maintains a Jewish majority within its internationally recognized borders. Given the historic animosity of its neighbours, it would seem to make sense to have a buffer between Israel proper and the surrounding countries. And a Jewish majority guarantees its continued existence as a Jewish state and a refuge for Jews from around the world.
However, this makeshift arrangement is not sustainable over the long term. Most significantly, it entrenches systemic injustice in that it sees as many as 5 million Palestinian Arabs kept indefinitely in a subordinate position with no political rights. It is possible to overstate the comparison to South Africa under the Apartheid regime, but for those on the ground living under a government to which they have not consented and in which they have no rights of participation, the differences undoubtedly appear rather small. To its credit, Israel has acquiesced in permitting autonomy within its occupied territories, as provided for in the Oslo Accords of 1993. But implementation of the Accords faltered due to chronic political instability, ethnic conflict, and terrorism. Today no one likes the status quo, but successive Israeli governments, hampered by the factors we explored in the first three instalments, have been unable to move beyond it in a way that might effect a lasting settlement.
The one-state solution
The second option is a one-state solution, which may be the simplest of all but also the most risky. Under this scenario, Israel simply annexes the West Bank and Gaza, enfranchises its inhabitants, and gives up the claim to be a Jewish state. Prior to Israel's establishment in 1948, this was the option that political philosopher Hannah Arendt advocated. In a series of essays republished after her death, she expressed the belief that the most viable option would be to establish a bi-national state with local councils within which Jews and Arabs would collaborate for shared purposes. She believed that attempting to build an exclusively Jewish state carried risks, especially that an excluded population of Arabs ("a dangerous potential irredenta") would constitute a destablizing force for such a state. Arendt's fears were, of course, realized soon enough. But many observers think that the opportunity for a single plural state was a fleeting one and may be gone for good. Not everyone agrees, of course, and occasionally someone returns to this option as the best solution to the issue.
Two years ago, I posted a blog series on Dampening the culture wars, exploring successful and failed attempts to build political community in the face of potential civil conflict. Among other things I explored The features of power-sharing, that is, the mechanisms that enable diverse peoples to live side by side and co-operate for political purposes. I cited the examples of the Netherlands, Lebanon, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, and the United States, each of which has had widely varying degrees of success in accommodating diversity through its political institutions. I did not then include Israel and Palestine, but my analysis then is certainly relevant here. Some countries have successfully developed ways of enabling diverse communities to share power in a single state with each community retaining substantial internal autonomy for itself and a veto over policy proposals affecting the body politic as a whole. The term consociationalism was coined to cover this diversity of approaches to conciliating potentially antagonistic groups, whether ethnically, linguistically, religiously, or ideologically defined.
Unfortunately, not all divided polities are suitable candidates for such an approach. If a polity has three or more such groups, consociational arrangements are more likely to work than if a country is divided between only two groups. Why? Because the existence of two groups means that one will have majority status and the other will be a minority. In such cases, the larger group will be tempted to appeal to the principle of majority rule rather than to accept conventional or legal limits on its own power. This is why Cyprus' 1960 Constitution broke down so quickly. Greek Cypriots formed 80 percent of the island's population and felt that the veto rights of the Turkish Cypriot minority unjustly constrained the majority's right of self-determination.
Let's look at Israel again. Annexing the Occupied Territories and granting citizenship rights to all of their inhabitants looks like the right thing for Israel to do. Giving up its status as Jewish state would seem naturally to follow. If Israeli Jews are a minority, they could still share power with Israeli and Palestinian Arabs.
But then we must look at Lebanon to see what could happen. Lebanon, of course, has more than two religious communities, and the 1943 National Pact took this into account as it divvied up the major political offices amongst them. However, when the French occupation authorities carved Lebanon out of the former Ottoman Syria, it had a Christian majority. The last Lebanese census, held in 1932, indicated a bare majority of Christians. However, by 1975, when civil war broke out, Lebanon by then almost certainly had a Muslim majority, putting in doubt the fragile modus vivendi established under the National Pact. Recent estimates put the Muslim population of Lebanon at between 54 and 61 percent, while Christians make up not quite 38 percent of the whole. Lebanese Christians generally have a lower birthrate and a higher emigration rate than their Muslim counterparts.
Given the historic fate of Christian communities in other Middle Eastern countries, the long-term survival of a Lebanese Christian community is in doubt. Israeli Jews could point to the gradual decline of these communities as a justification for maintaining Israel as a Jewish state and limiting the participatory rights of Palestinian Arabs. If an organization like Hamas can come to power in Gaza, might it not come to exercise disproportionate power in a single Israel-Palestine? Might Israeli Jews no longer be safe in a shared homeland? These are the factors that make a one-state solution unlikely.
The two-state solution
That leaves a third option, a two-state solution, which many observers think to be the most realistic. In its most straightforward version, Israel gives up any claim to the Occupied Territories, and a sovereign state of Arab Palestine is established in the West Bank and Gaza. Thus the territory of Mandatory Palestine would be the home of two states presumably co-existing side by side. However, this option is not without its drawbacks.
First, a sovereign Palestinian state would exist in two noncontiguous lands separated by Israel. These lands are already so small that it is difficult to imagine that it would be a viable state in such truncated form. Arab Palestine would almost certainly be dependent on aid from without to survive against such long odds.
Second, a smaller Israel would once again become militarily vulnerable as it was during its first two decades of existence. If Israel's neighbours were willing to live at peace with it, this might not be as significant as it has become. True, Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel, but Iran certainly has not, and Iran's influence in the region has increased in recent years. The fact that Hamas effectively controls Gaza and regularly lobs missiles into Israel proper is enough to keep Israel from completely giving up the Occupied Territories.
Third, because the smaller, more extreme Israeli political parties wield a disproportionate influence in the multiparty coalition governments ruling the country, successive governments have acquiesced in the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, thereby continually whittling away at the territory that could become a Palestinian state. In so acting, not only does Israel diminish the possibility of coming to terms with Palestinian Arabs, but it also antagonizes much of the international community, including its closest allies in the west on which it depends for support. In so doing, Israel has pursued a policy that leaves it internationally isolated, but it seems compelled to do so by its own fragile political institutions.
Fourth and finally, the disputed status of Jerusalem stands in the way of a two-state solution. In 1948 Jerusalem was de facto partitioned between Israel and Jordan, with Jordan occupying the historic Old City sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This partition ended when Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967, uniting the city under its own rule. Since then Jerusalem's status has been a bone of contention between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, both of whom claim it as their historic capital city. Any workable settlement of this protracted conflict would have to determine the fate of Jerusalem. No one wants to see it divided again, yet each party sees it playing an important role in its own national aspirations. Had the UN's original plan to make Jerusalem an international city worked out, the issue of ownership might have been avoided. But three-quarters of a century later, such status is almost certainly off the table.
Scylla and Charybdis
Sad to say, all of these factors combine to make the Israeli-Palestinian issue almost perfectly intractable, providing a particularly vivid example of a Scylla and Charybdis situation. For this reason, I believe that professing either an unqualified pro-Israeli or a pro-Palestinian stance will not do. I will admit that, as someone whose relatives became refugees in Cyprus half a century ago, I have an instinctive sympathy for Palestinians who fled their homeland during the 1948 war and after. Nevertheless, the Israeli Jewish presence in the land is a reality on the ground with which Israel's neighbours would do well to make peace.
As for Israel itself, it is in dire need of basic political reforms, but especially these two: (1) adopt a new constitutional document that will regularize the place of its political institutions, including the courts, and guarantee the rights of its citizens; and (2) raise the threshold for partisan representation in the Knesset, thereby lessening the smaller extremist parties' ability to derail government efforts to enhance political stability and to make peace with its neighbours. I will not pretend that by themselves these will produce a solution to the conflict, but I do believe that they are necessary first steps in that direction, whichever of the three options Israel decides to pursue.
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