foreign policy
Is there a path forward for Israel and Palestine?
Arab Gulf States Institute
Shalom Hartman Institute
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Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
June 10th, 2021
In its details, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endlessly complex. But the essential reality is simple. There are equal numbers, approximately 8 million, of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Muslims and Christians between the river and sea in Mandatory Palestine a.k.a. Eretz Israel. Except between 1948 and 1967, it has been politically unified since the end of the First World War.
Here the 8 million Jews enjoy full and equal citizenship while the 8 million Palestinians endure a bewildering array of legal and political statuses. Almost 2 million are citizens of Israel, but subject to significant legal discrimination. The other 6 million Palestinians are not citizens of any state and face a range of restrictions, from the Palestinian residents, but not citizens, of occupied East Jerusalem, to the 2 million crammed into a virtual open-air prison of Gaza.
Here are two peoples with distinctive national identities, narratives, and agendas in the same land. One enjoys the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and self-determination in a UN member state. The other doesn’t.
The impulse on both sides is to see themselves as legitimate inhabitants and the others as usurpers. But neither is going away. And neither is going to agree to be willingly and perpetually subordinate to the other. Understanding this, there were several initiatives to create two states. But, for complex historical reasons, that never happened.
The 1993 Oslo agreements suggested an outcome in which that would have been the logical conclusion. But they failed. Both sides made numerous proposals the other side rejected. And the terrible violence of the second intifada convinced most people on both sides that the other party basically didn't want peaceful coexistence. Ultimately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the most Palestinians could aspire to is a "state minus," and the momentum in Israel is towards annexation.
Given the power asymmetry between the two parties and the apparent determination of the right-wing Israeli majority to prevent a genuinely independent, viable Palestinian state, that path appears foreclosed. Yearning for a fully-integrated, equal and democratic state is a pipe dream. Most Israelis would reject this as denying them their own Jewish self-determination.
So, it's now unclear what the solution could look like. Some form of confederation may provide the answer, but it will be difficult enough to conceptualize that framework, let alone develop it in practice. For now, there is, practically speaking, no real pressure on Israeli leaders to compromise at all. And the democratic system among Jewish Israelis renders such compromises, without any real national imperative to make them, virtually impossible to commit to, let alone implement.
Attention is now shifting to the content of an outcome rather than its formal modalities. Whatever it looks like, it's going to have to provide both peoples with genuine self-determination and all the basic rights and responsibilities of modern citizenship. Any idea that does not promise to deliver that is not a "solution" at all. It is at best a placeholder, and at worst an excuse for continuing the conflict.
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