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One-state solution

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The binational solution, also known as the One-State Solution, is a proposed resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Proponents of a binational solution to the conflict advocate a common state in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The West Bank and Gaza Strip would be annexed to Israel, with their Palestinian Arab inhabitants given citizenship and an equal status to the Arab and Jewish citizens of present-day Israel.

Islamist opponents of a binational solution argue that it would run contrary to the goal of an Islamic State ruled under Islamic or sharia law. Arabist opponents criticize it for going against the idea of Pan-Arabism.

Israeli Jewish opponents of a binational solution argue that it would run contrary to the goal of a safe Jewish homeland. They cite both the pre-1948 history of Jews being rioted against by Arabs, and the unwillingness of Palestinians to live at peace with Jews today as reasons why a binational solution would not work.

The idea of a binational solution is immensely controversial. It has been around for decades with relatively little impact, but in 2003 the demographic challenge, that is, the potential for a near-term majority Arab population and a minority population of Jews west of the Jordan river brought the binational proposition back to centre stage.[1]

Background

Arabs and Jews originally lived together under the British mandate. This was essentially a binational arrangement without a state. During this period the 1920 Palestine riots, initiated by Arabs resulted in the murder of 5 Jews and 4 Arabs, with 216 Jews wounded (18 critically) and 23 Arabs wounded (1 critically).

The Jaffa riots resulted from a sectarian fight among Jews, but the Arabs eventually joined them, falsely thinking they were under attack by Jews. The Jaffa Riots resulted in 45 Jews dead and 48 Arabs dead. 146 Jews were wounded, and 73 Arabs were wounded. (As noted by the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, most of the Arab casualties were the result of the "intervention" by the British military to end the riots.)

During the 1929 Palestine riots, tensions developed between the Jews and Muslim Arabs for religious reasons. The violence began when Arabs killed a Jew in the Bukharan Quarter. Fighting began between both sides, and Arab mobs committed the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1929 Safed massacre, in which dozens of Jews were killed, wounded and raped. Sir Walter Shaw, in a summarizing report for the British, wrote that: "The outbreak in Jerusalem on the 23rd of August was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews for which no excuse in the form of earlier murders by Jews has been established."

In the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Arabs killed hundreds of Jews in an attempt to prevent continued Jewish immigration. The British killed thousands of Arabs before the revolt was over.

Historic development

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1948 to 1973

With the establishment of Israel in May 1948, a binational solution became largely moot when much of Israel's native Arab population was displaced in the ensuing conflict. Some aspects of the binational ideal - such as equal political rights for the remaining Arabs - were granted in principle, but this was limited by the Israeli leadership's determination that the country would have a Jewish majority and political leadership. Successive Israeli governments have pursued a policy of encouraging Jewish immigration to Israel, known as aliyah, which guaranteed the Jewish majority.

On the Arab side, the idea of a binational solution was generally rejected by the Arab national movement, which saw little to gain from it; the Arab leadership were opposed to their people becoming a minority in what they saw as their own country. From their point of view, the huge influx of Jews from Europe and the Middle East represented a gigantic colonisation project, which many saw as being a recreation of the medieval Crusader kingdoms. The Crusades were (and still are) an event seared on Arab collective memory, as was their outcome - the defeat of the Crusaders by Saladin and the subsequent expulsion of the European settlers. A binational solution was not, in other words, something that had any precedent in the Arab history of Palestine.

The binational ideal did not disappear altogether during this period, despite its lack of support, and was given a boost following Israel capturing the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War of 1967. Israel's victory over its neighbours was greeted by euphoria within Israel, but some critical Israeli and foreign observers quickly recognised the new territories had potential to pose a major long-term problem.

In the aftermath of the war, there was considerable debate about what to do next. Should the territories be annexed to Israel? In which case, what would be done with the Palestinians? Should they be given citizenship, although that would significantly dilute Israel's Jewish majority? Could they be expelled en masse, although that would come at a terrible cost to Israel's reputation? Should the territories be returned to Arab rule? In which case, how would Israel's security be guaranteed? In the event, the Israel government fudged the question by implementing the controversial policy of Jewish settlements in the territories, establishing "facts on the ground" while keeping open the question of the Palestinians' long-term fate.

The dilemma prompted some foreign supporters of Israel, such as the crusading American journalist I.F. Stone, to revive the idea of a binational state. This found little favour in Israel or elsewhere and the binational solution tended to be presented not so much as a potential resolution of the conflict as a disastrous outcome risked by Israeli government policies. As early as 1973, the prospect of a binational state was being used by prominent figures on the Israel left to warn against holding on to the territories. Histadrut Secretary General I. Ben-Aharon, for instance, warned in a March 1973 article for The Jerusalem Post that Israel could not have any real control over a binational state and that Israelis should be satisfied with a state already containing a sizable Arab minority — that is, Israel proper.

1973 to 2002

The outcome of the 1973 Yom Kippur War prompted a fundamental political rethink among the Palestinian leadership. It was realised that Israel's military strength and, crucially, its alliance with the United States made it unlikely that it could be defeated militarily. In December 1974, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then regarded as a terrorist group by the Israeli government, declared that a binational state was the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The change in policy was met with considerable confusion, as it was official PLO policy to replace Israel with a secular and democratic state with a full right of return for all displaced Palestinians, including the Jews who were living in Palestine before 1948. This would effectively have ended Israel's Jewish majority and, by secularising the state, would have weakened its exclusive Jewish character. In short, a binational state on the PLO's terms would mean a different kind of Israel. This prospect is strongly opposed by various sides in Israeli politics. These dates regarding the PLO's adoption of one-state solution differ from the account in Khalidi's The Iron Cage. To Summarize the account there: After the Israeli occupation of the west Bank and Gaza in 1967 the Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine as well as Fateh, under Arafat, proposed “a single, secular, democratic state in Palestine, in which all faiths would be equal” (Khalidi 191-2). Starting in 1974, both parties then began to support a two-state solution.

Despite this, opposition to binationalism was not absolute. Some of those on the Israel right associated with the settler movement were willing to contemplate a binational state as long as it was established on Zionist terms. Members of Menachem Begin's Likud government in the late 1970s were willing to support the idea if it would ensure formal Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza. Begin's chief of staff, Eliahu Ben-Elissar, told the Washington Post in November 1979 that "we can live with them and they can live with us. I would prefer they were Israeli citizens, but I am not afraid of a binational state. In any case, it will always be a Jewish state with a large Arab minority."

In the mean time, there were considerable internal dissent in adopting the one state solution on the Palestinian side. The Oslo Accords in 1993 raised the hope for a two-state solution, even though the Accords are rejected by various factions on the Palestinian side, including the Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Oslo Accords were never fully adopted and implemented by both sides. After the Second Intifada in 2000, many believe that the two-state solution is increasingly losing its appeal.

Friedlander-Goldscheider demographics study

In 1980, Hebrew University professors Dov Friedlander and Calvin Goldscheider published a highly influential study entitled "The Population of Israel," which concluded that - even allowing for a big increase in Jewish immigration - the high birth rate among Arabs would erode the Jewish majority within a few decades. The two demographers predicted that the total population of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip would be 6.7 million by 1990, and some 10 million by the year 2010. By that time, the Jewish population could be only 45% of the total. Friedlander and Goldscheider warned that maintaining Israeli rule in the territories would ultimately endanger the Jewish majority in Israel. Ariel Sharon, then Agriculture Minister in Begin's government, rejected this conclusion; he claimed that Jews would make up 64% of the population in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip by the year 2000 if Jewish immigration remained at the rate of about 30,000 a year, although he did not cite any sources for this estimate.

The conclusions of the Friedlander-Goldscheider study soon became a hot political issue between Israel's two main parties, Likud and Labour, in the June 1981 parliamentary elections. Both parties opposed withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders or setting up a Palestinian state, and both supported building more Jewish settlements in the territories and maintaining exclusive Israeli control over Jerusalem. However, Labour argued for building settlements only in areas Israel intended to keep, while handing the rest back to Jordan. Likud was strongly critical of this proposal, claiming that the result would be a binational state spelling "the end of the Zionist endeavour." Many on the left of Israeli politics were already warning that without a clean separation from the Palestinians, the outcome would be either a binational state by default (thus ending Israel's Jewish character) or a South African-style "Bantustan" with a Jewish minority forcibly ruling a disenfranchised Arab majority (thus ending Israel's claims to be a democracy).

In the event, Begin won the election and announced (in May 1982) a formal policy of "extending state sovereignty ... over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip" accompanied by a major expansion of Jewish settlement and the granting of "full autonomy" to the Palestinians.

On the Palestinian side, the Israeli opposition to a binational state led to another change of position which evolved gradually from the late 1970s onwards. The PLO retained its original option of a single secular binational state west of Jordan, but began to take the position that it was prepared to accept a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in land from which Israel had withdrawn under Security Council Resolution 242. Settlements would need to be dismantled and Palestinian refugees allowed to return (to Israel as well as the new Palestine). This new position, formally adopted in December 1988, was overwhelmingly rejected by Israeli public opinion and the main political parties but was subsequently used as the basis of peace discussions in the 1990s.

2003 to present

Since 2003, there have been renewed interest on binationalism. For example, in 2003, New York University scholar Tony Judt wrote an article titled "Israel: The Alternative" in the New York Review of Books. In the article, Judt deemed the two-state solution as fundamentally doomed and unworkable.

Other leftist journalists from Israel, such as Haim Hanegbi and Daniel Gavron, are also calling the public to face the facts (as they see them) and accept the binational solution. This article has engendered a frenzy media blitz in the UK and US. The New York Review of Books received more than one thousand letters per week on the essay. On the Palestinian side, similar voices are raised. In 1999, the Palestinian activist Edward Said wrote:

“…after 50 years of Israeli history, classic Zionism has provided no solution to the Palestinian presence. I therefore see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way with equal rights for all citizens.”[2]

Several high-level Fatah Palestinian Authority officials have voiced similar opinions, including Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, Hani Al-Masri. “Time is running out for a two-state solution,” Britain’s The Guardian newspaper quoted Yasser Arafat as saying in an interview from his West Bank headquarters in 2004. Many political analysts, including Omar Barghouti, believe that the death of Arafat harbingers the bankruptcy of the Oslo Accords and the Two-State Solution.

Today, the prominent proponents for the one-state solution include Palestinian author Ali Abunimah *, Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarazi *, Jeff Halper *, Israeli writer Dan Gavron *, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, and American academic Virginia Tilley. They cite the expansion of the Israeli Settler movement, especially in the West Bank, as a compelling rationale for binationalism and the increased unfeasibility of the two-state alternative. They advocate a secular and democratic state while still maintaining a Jewish presence and culture in the region. They concede that this alternative will erode the dream of Jewish supremacy in terms of governance in the long run.

Criticisms

The one state solution has been criticized by both Israeli and Palestinian publicists. Many Israeli critics argue this solution does not answer adequately the nationalist aspirations of the Jewish people. Uri Avnery, former Member of Knesset and leader of Gush Shalom, has objected to this solution becasue essentially it calls for the dismantling of the State of Israel, and a negation of the nation-building that has has been carried out by five generations.[3] Although Avnery believes this idea is unrealistic and dangerous for the peace camp in Israel, he does not rule out the possibility that it can be realized in the distant future, after an independent Palestinian state is established. He personally believes that the two states will move gradually, with mutual consent, towards a confederation or federation.[3]


Other criticisms, coming from religious circles, note that the binational solution would cause a separation of "church and state", i.e. it would render Israel a democratic secular country, probhiting the state from enforcing Jewish religious laws on its citizens, such as the laws mandating marriage and divorce in religious courts.[4] Another fear cited by the critics is that due to the high birth rates among Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza, the one-state solution would effectively result in a single state with a majority of Palestinians.[5] Furthermore, the idea that the Muslims and the Israelis could live side by side as equals is a problematic one due to the large economic gap between the two peoples and the history of violent conflict. In such a state, the Israelis will be dominant. Avnery points out they have a complete superiority in practically all spheres - quality of life, military power, technological capabilities. The average per annum income of an Israeli is 25 times higher than that of an average Palestinian. Thus, Avnery predicts that the Israelis will see to it that the Palestinians will be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for a long, long time.[3] As examples of failed binational states, critics often cite the ethnic/religious conflicts in the binational states of Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia (Dershowitz, 28).

Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of the non-arab population in Israel view the one-state solution with abhorrence, and as a conspiracy by the extreme left to destroy Israel and its Jewish population.

Certain Palestinians groups object to this solution. After the 2006 elections to the Palestinian parliament, Hamas claimed the majority of the parliamentary seats. It seems that Hamas rejects the one-secular-state solution in principle. In its Charter from 1988, the Hamas movement claimed "Palestine is an Islamic Waqf," and "it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security...only under the wing of Islam."[6] However, this view is not shared by the majority of Palestinians.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ For a comprehensive list of articles on this subject, see The One State Solution
  2. ^ Edward Said, ”Truth and Reconciliation,” Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 January 1999
  3. ^ a b c Uri Avnery, One State: Solution or Utopia, Remarks in a Public Debate between Ilan Pappe and Uri Avenry, retrieved October 19, 2007.
  4. ^ No Civil Marriage in Israel, The Forum for Civil Marriage in Israel, retrieved October 19, 2007.
  5. ^ Yossi Klein Halevi, 'Only the Naive or the Malicious Would Urge a Binational Israel', Los Angeles Times, October 10,2003.
  6. ^ "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)", MidEast Web, August 18, 1988; "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement", The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, retrieved April 22, 2006.
  7. ^ Angus Reid Global Monitor, Gaza Residents Want Peace With Israel, retrieved October 19, 2007.
  • [1] Haaretz Special Report "Is the two-state solution in danger?" 2004
  • [2] onedemocraticstate.org - a comprehensive collection of past and current articles on the subject, and related matters
  • [3] Articles and essays on the One State Solution in Israel / Palestine, Zionism, the Israel Lobby, the Middle East, Pax Americana, and Related Matters.
  • [4] ONE-STATE.org - a web campaign for one-state in Israel/Palestine, Temporarily Unavailable on June 2006
  • Putting the Pieces Together? a Forum on Binationalism in The Boston Review December 2001/January 2002
  • Alternative Palestinian Agenda. "Proposal for an Alternative Configuration in Palestine-Israel". Alternative Palestinian Agenda. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  • [5] The New York Review of Books: Israel: The Alternative by Tony Judt, October 23, 2003
  • [6] The London Review of Books: The One-State Solution by Virginia Tilley, November 2003
  • [7] The Nation. The One-State Solution by Daniel Lazare, November 3, 2003
  • [8] Ha'aretz. No more two-state solution? by Ari Shavit, August 28, 2003
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