[R-G] Has the two-state ship sailed?

[Sid Shniad]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/has-the-two-state-ship-sailed/article1170673/ 

Globe and Mail June 6, 2009 

Has the two-state ship sailed? 

Some still see alternatives to the consensus plan for peace – including one that’s already in play 

Patrick Martin 

JERUSALEM — Barack Obama insists on it. So does Mahmoud Abbas, Tony Blair, the European Union, the United Nations and seemingly just about every moderate-thinking citizen of the planet. It is the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taken as a given even by most Israelis and Palestinians. 

But Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still doesn’t agree, and an impressive gathering of right-wing politicians met in Jerusalem recently to back him up, outlining several reasons why the two-state solution is a failed option, no matter what Barack Obama says, and proposing several alternatives. 

Ironically, these Israelis have only expressed what many Palestinian thinkers have been arguing for some time: The two-state ship has sailed and it’s not coming back. Not even Mr. Obama can turn it around. 

Are there alternatives to a two-state solution? Sure there are. 

But a lot of people aren’t going to like what they are. 

TWO STATES FOR TWO PEOPLES 

Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, said a few days ago that the idea of “two states for two peoples” was a “political slogan” conceived in the backrooms of the formerly governing Kadima Party, led by Tzipi Livni, and need not be taken as given. 

This one-time prime minister has a short memory. 

While Kadima did use it as a slogan, the concept of partitioning Palestine into two states was first publicly expressed in the late 1930s by the British Peel Commission. At that time, the Jews under the British Mandate accepted the idea and the Arab community vehemently rejected it. 

It surfaced again in 1947 in UN Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with a special international regime ruling Jerusalem. 

Again, the Jewish community accepted it, relying on it for its 1948 declaration of independence. Again the Arab community rejected it and Arab states fought to repel it. They lost. 

In the 19 years that followed, from 1948 to 1967, the two communities were effectively partitioned between Israel on the one hand, and Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank (and Egypt’s occupation of Gaza) on the other. 

And, in the two decades after that, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian resistance, came to accept the idea of two states – at first tentatively, as in Yasser Arafat’s 1974 olive-branch speech to the UN, and then, explicitly, in its 1988 two-states declaration. 

By 1991, the two-state solution had become a dogma, and was the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords and several other peace initiatives culminating in the 2007 Annapolis conference, when both Israelis and Palestinians committed themselves to a two-state conclusion. 

The trouble was, this acceptance and worldwide support came only after Israeli settlers had created substantial “facts on the ground” in the occupied territories. More than that, in many cases, such as in the Israeli communities built in occupied parts of Jerusalem, and in the large settlement blocs near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israelis overall began to believe those areas were inexorably part of Israel. 

Members of Israel’s right now argue that the two-state formula has been tried and failed. They cite the violence that came after the Oslo Accords, and the collapse of Gaza into a “Hamas-stan” after Israeli forces and settlers were unilaterally withdrawn. 

“You see,” they say, “Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.” 

Many of them add that Palestinians don’t even want two states. The fact that the Palestinian leadership won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state, says Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s Vice-Prime Minister, shows “they want Israel to disappear.” 

“That’s not true,” says Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian who lives in Ramallah and has served as an adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. “Most Palestinians want two states … but many of them think it’s no longer feasible.” Israel has grabbed too much of the West Bank, leaving little to be given back. 

“The maximum Israel would be prepared to offer isn’t even close to the minimum Palestinians could accept,” she says. 

The fact is, most Israelis don’t want Palestinians to have a real state at all. Even the dwindling peace camp, and certainly Ms. Livni’s Kadima Party, when they say they support a two-state solution, they really mean a Palestinian state that would have severe limits on its military capacity, its foreign policy and its borders. It’s not much different from the self-governing “entity” Mr. Netanyahu speaks of. 

ONE STATE FOR ALL ITS PEOPLE 

When Uri Elitzur, a former chief of staff for Mr. Netanyahu, took the podium at that recent right-wing conference, he shocked the group by saying that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the creation of a single state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, a state that would include the Palestinians as citizens. 

“Have you lost your mind?” one man shouted from the audience. “You’re crazy,” another agreed, and the jeering became so intense that Mr. Elitzur quickly concluded his remarks. 

But the man may not be far off the mark. 

Many on Israel’s right would, indeed, like to see Israeli sovereignty over all of Palestine, but they’d like it to come without the Palestinians. 

To that end, many have proposed, over the years, what they call the “Jordanian option.” Since more than half the population of Jordan are Palestinians, they argue, this is the homeland in which all Palestinians should live. Some extremists have advocated the forcible “transfer” of Palestinians, both outside and inside Israel’s borders, to Jordan. 

It is not unlike the vision many on the extreme side of Hamas and in Islamic Jihad have in their dreams: one state, an Islamic state that stretches from the sea to the Jordan. 

But if those wild dreams are not going to be realized, then what will? 

For their part, Palestinians, at the time of the British mandate and in Israel’s early days, proposed a single state with equal rights for every citizen. That was the position of the PLO when it was formed, and of many of the more left-wing Zionist movements. It’s the view several Palestinians are again espousing. 

Israel has largely rejected that idea, knowing that such a state would have an Arab majority and that the Jewishness of the state would be lost. 

The single state envisioned by many Israelis would limit the rights of Palestinians. That was the idea of Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s 1977 “autonomy plan” for the Palestinians. Another plan long advocated by Israeli settlers calls for the Palestinians to remain in the West Bank and Gaza, under Israeli sovereignty, but to be citizens of Jordan or Egypt and to have voting rights there. That was pretty much the situation in the early years of Israel’s occupation after the 1967 war. 

(In response to such suggestions, Jordan’s Foreign Minister called Israel’s ambassador onto the carpet last week and informed him that Israelis should mind their own affairs.) 

There is a third option, however, put forward by people such as Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, to fashion a single state structured in such a way as to allow two distinct peoples to coexist. A “consociational democracy” (as in Bosnia and Northern Ireland) involving power-sharing and the division of the territory into federated cantons would allow for “soft borders” and a “blurring” when dealing with symbolic issues such as Jerusalem, he says. 

Diana Buttu agrees: “I’ve come to believe that the aspirations of both people would best be served by a state like this.” 

CONFEDERATION 

Many of the views expressed by the Israeli right propose linkages to Jordan, Egypt or both. 

Adi Mintz, a former director of the Council of Judea and Samaria, argues that Jordan should extend its sovereignty over the 38 per cent of the West Bank where Palestinians actually live, and that Egypt should agree to take over Gaza and use the under-populated Sinai peninsula to house refugees. 

Giora Eiland, a former national-security adviser, agrees and says that Israel can compensate Egypt by giving it some land in the southern Negev. 

But neither Jordan nor Egypt is keen to take part in such schemes. 

The dream of a full confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan is still harboured by some. It was advocated by Jordanians several years ago, and still forms part of the thinking of people such as Israel’s President, Shimon Peres. But it will remain a dream for the foreseeable future, as it would still require an independent Palestinian state to first be established, and the odds against that are high. 

MANAGING THE CONFLICT 

If Mr. Netanyahu decides to say no to the Obama two-state approach, we will see the solution that has the best chance of success: maintaining the status quo. 

That’s the view preferred by Mr. Yaalon: “There’s no solution to be found in the near future. We should focus on managing the conflict.” 

Efraim Inbar, a prominent Bar-Ilan University professor who once supported the Oslo two-state process, agrees: “It may be that there is no solution.” 

And that’s the view Ms. Buttu has come to hold: “I don’t see a lot forcing Israel to make any real tough decisions. I can understand why they’d opt for the status quo.” 

As for the Palestinians, she says they’re tired: “They suffered the most from the years of resistance. They’re not looking for another round.” 

If that’s true, and if Mr. Netanyahu decides not to adhere to Mr. Obama’s plan, then we can expect to see the further growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, probably accompanied by improvements in Palestinians’ daily lives – exactly the formula the Netanyahu government has proposed. 

In that event, Israel and the semi-occupied Palestinian territories will begin to look like a single state even if it wasn’t intended. 

It’s just that it will be one state for two peoples, but with two different classes of rights. 

Patrick Martin is The Globe and Mail’s Middle East bureau chief.