Discussion Question: the West Bank
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, May 29, 2011
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50 comments
Having read a number of comments on my post on the 1967 lines, as well as following the ongoing public discussion, I would like to ask the following:
1) Do you favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
2) In the context of your first response, what do you propose to do with/about/to the over two million Palestinians currently living in the West Bank (a territory that is defined by the 1967 lines).
Discuss.
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Dear Steven:
First the two sides have to agree but this is what I would favor.
1. Jerusalem should be an international city that neither would have as capital but run with both countries along with U.S. and U.N.
2. Two or maybe three states (remember East and West Pakistan?) I see the West Bank and Gaza splinting at some point.
3. Borders would have to be negotiated by the two sides and then Israel would have to build a wall. The Borders would be something greater than 1967 so that Israel had defensible borders.
4. The right of return would only be to the West Bank or Gaza.
Any specifics on that one?
Dear Steven,
See for instance
Mark
I know that our colleague John Burgess is convinced that a two-state solution coupled with a cash pay-off to abandon the “right of return” would be a durable solution.
I’m skeptical. I don’t think that any solution is possible when the most radical elements on either side have veto power.
@Mark:
Ok. So how does that differ from the notion of “based on the 1967 with land swaps”?
If the Palestine delegation excepted the new settlements then you might have the same thing. The maps and the Israel delegation begin with the changes on the ground. Where you start matters.
As an American, my instinct is to offer the example of my own country – the manifestation of a revolutionary idea, and one that I fully embrace – that all the people who live in a particular jurisdiction should do so with equal political rights, irrespective of ethnic or religious distinctions. In fact those distinctions should be explicitly ignored when it comes to writing the rules for governance. Governance is an inherently secular matter, and the government should fulfill those functions without reference to identities, and also do whatever is necessary to protect the private expression of those identities. There could be a truly vibrant country there if the land between the river and the sea were organized along the lines that America is. Why is it that in all the decades of our involvement there, no one offers our own model as an example?
But that does not seem to be an idea embraced by either side in this dispute – certainly not the Zionists whose movement is based on a completely opposite approach to the concept of nationhood.
So for that reason, I have always supported a separation into two states, although the possibilities for that seem to be evaporating by the day. In the end, some single state solution may be the only option, not that either side wants it, but because the facts on the ground make it inevitable.
I really don’t understand the thinking of the Likudniks who have worked so hard to create this new reality. Do they intend to ethnically cleanse the West Bank? Or do they intend to subjugate the population as second class citizens without a vote, in a jewish state? Or what?
@Mark: I guess I am at a loss as to how that map squares contradicts the Obama position or why it wouldn’t fall under the “turncoat” definition from the Bill Whittle video you posted to FB the other day.
@Tano:
Indeed. This is largely the point of my question, and I ask it because I don’t think most people who howl about the “1967 line” issue have really thought this issue through.
In response to the first comment. If Jerusalem is to be an “international city” and the capital of neither state, does that mean building a wall around the city, and requiring Jews and Palestinians to pass through checkpoints to visit the city? And if so, where is this wall? Do its perimeters extend all the way up to Psgat Ze’ev and down to Gilo, as well as encompassing Silwan and Issawiya, etc., etc.? If not, where do you place the walls through the city? And, of course, the entire Israeli government (except the Defense Ministry, which is in Tel Aviv) would have to be relocated.
It may sound nice to say that Jerusalem needs to be “international,” but it is unclear what that means, let alone how it would be practical. The city has been the Israeli capital for decades now, with the Knesset and most other government offices having moved to the western part of the city well before 1967, and this is a history one simply can’t wipe away. Much of the city’s population–including a significant share of its Arab population–works in state institutions. (I will refrain from any discussion of the role of Jerusalem in pre-state Jewish history…)
Similar problems, by the way, are encountered by any notion of dividing the city and making it the capital of both states. Where do you put the wall? Because without a wall, there is no effective border between the two states.
The city is highly integrated and intermixed, despite the impressions one gets in the media. It can’t simply be divided, let alone separated from the state for which it is the existing capital and most important metropolitan area.
At this point, I’ll support a single state solution, because of Israeli intransigence, they deserve that fate.
Tano, it is not accurate to say that Zionism is a movement based on conceptions of nationalism that are completely opposite to the secular, liberal vision articulated in your comment. In fact, Zionism has numerous strands, but its founding principles are secular and liberal. It largely remains so today, aside from minorities like the “religious Zionists” (who believe in a biblical mandate to hold Judea and Samaria) and the followers of Avigdor Lieberman (who actually are aggressively secular, but also ethnically exclusivist).
For the original Zionists, the notion of a Jewish state with non-Jewish minorities was no more an oxymoron than the notion of states for Hungarians or Czechs or Poles (likewise stateless peoples at the time Zionism was born) with minorities within their borders. And, in fact, Arabs and others within the pre-1967 extent of the State of Israel have full political rights.
It should be clear that the original conception of Zionism requires territorial compromise, which is why the pre-state leaders accepted a two-states/two-peoples formulation in 1947. The other side still has not explicitly done so and still includes prominent strains that explicitly reject it.
Conditioned on the fact that I have no foreign policy experience or political training of any kind, this is what I would do:
1) Form a single, federated nation composed of 4 member states, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel (in the north) and Judah (in the south). Jerusalem would become a federal city like DC, the undivided national capital, not belonging to any member state or under the control of any outside country or organization (no US/UN).
2) The immigration policy would be national and apply equally to Palestinian as well as Jewish immigrants. Those currently residing inside the borders (temporary travel not withstanding) would be automatic citizens, all others must apply as immigrants to the newly formed nation.
3) Jewish settlers in the Palestinian states would become residents of those states, pay taxes to those states, elect local and federal representatives for those states. Likewise Palestinians living in Israeli states. Freedom of movement to be guaranteed by the national government, as well as protection of property rights.
4) Israel, as a condition of joining this union, would pay to the Palestinian states a one-time fixed amount as payment for the land now occupied by Jewish settlements.
5) Palestinian militias, as a condition of joining this union, will either disband or enlist into a national defense force, which will necessarily be formed from and consist of the current Israeli defense forces, and be responsible for protecting the new nation from external threats only.
6) A national constitution to define a weak central government (along the lines of the original United States), with a bill of rights guaranteeing, among other things, the freedom of religion and preventing the establishment or enforcement thereof, and equal civil and legal rights among all citizens.
7) Also along the lines of the US constitution, predicate the formation of the new nation on the acceptance of at least 3 of the proposed member states, with provisions for accepting new member states in the future.
There’s more I’ve thought about in the past, but can’t currently remember, specifically around the form of a federal judiciary, federal executive and local law enforcement.
Because then the “Jewish” state ceases to exist…
This is the heart of the problem…for both sides, so much is about the history that cannot be wiped away…
Yes, but do the Palestinians deserve that fate too? How is there a single-state solution that avoids apartheid-like conditions…
@An Interested Party – Because if (and it’s a big if) the Palestinians can become citizens with all due rights and responsibilities of Israel, the demographics (high birth rate) are on their side. If this is the case, Jews will become minorities in the Jewish State.
Questions which need to be answered before I can answer your questions:
1) In the absence of an agreement, what is the status of the gaza strip and west bank? Are they currently part of Israel?
2) What nation are the Palestinians living in the gaza strip and the west bank citizens of?
That is only a partial embrace of liberal secularism, and not a fundamental one. What do you do when your group is not a majority (as would be the case in an country full encompassing the land between the river and the sea)?
To define the nation as a Jewish state immediately introduces non-secularism into the heart of the matter. How can you have a Jewish state if Jews only make up 45 % of the population? If you want a Jewish state and you want to respect liberal values, then you best make sure that your minorities are small. Even then I would find it somewhat offensive – America, for example, is NOT defined as a “white” state, or Christian state, even though the proportion of Americans who fit those categories comes close to the proportion of Jews in Israel.
The Zionists may well have held many liberal (and/or socialist) ideas, but I think there is no question that a state defined at its core on ethnic/religious grounds is fundamentally different than a state (like the US) that is truly secular.
Which, of course, is why Israel will never, ever support a one-state solution…
Absent the implementation of a two-state solution, this is impossible…
Single state is a non-starter. Even Labor can’t support that, let alone Likud.
Likud has not thought this through. What they have thought through is that Likud can’t win elections without the settlers and the extremists in their government coalition. They don’t look beyond the next election. And as long as we are guaranteeing their safety, why should they?
I believe the settlers and extremists expect to conduct a rolling ethnic cleansing. They’re fanatics. And we should understand that they are such. Religious nuts living off the benevolence of a state which itself lives, to a significant extent, off the benevolence of American taxpayers.
1) Internationalize Jerusalem. That’s not, as someone above suggested, a version of ethnic cleansing. Jews and Arabs live side by side today, they can go on doing so as an “international city.” In fact both countries can keep their capitals there. So much the better, frankly, if Israelis and Palestinians have an identical interest in the stability of the city.
2) Do the necessary land swaps and go to the 1967 borders, guaranteed explicitly and openly by the US, NATO separately, and Russia.
3) Cut the settlers off from state welfare checks, army support, roads, electricity etc… and let them wither on the vine within a Palestinian state.
4) Demilitarize Palestine, with that status internationally policed.
5) Open a road between Gaza and the West Bank.
6) Reject right of return, with cash payments to the dispossessed.
7) Require full normalization of trade and diplomacy between Israel and the Arab countries.
Michael,
How do you envision achieving the political consensus within Israel to do #1 and 3?
@SD:
From Freedom House:
A few further points…
1. It is not correct that Jews make up less than half the people between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Jews will have a majority for some time to come. Whether that will always be the case I’ll leave to the demographers. In any case, I said that liberal Zionism requires a two-state solution, and most early Zionists accepted that. Nearly all of Israel’s secular and liberal population (which is to say most of it) also accepts that notion today.
2. Jews are a people, not merely a religious group. One can have a secular Jewish state in the same way one can have a secular Czech or Irish state. The original Zionists were much more concerned with the nation (the Jewish people) than the religion (Judaism). In fact, most of them were of an “enlightenment” mentality that saw religious identity as archaic. Obviously, such notions are rather quaint now, and not only in Israel, given the revival of religious identity in recent times (at least in much of the world outside of Western Europe).
3. I would still like those who want to “internationalize” Jerusalem to explain how one respects the separation between the two states for which this internationalized city is central (and the capital, in many formulations). If the city is one, it has to be in one country. If it is the capital of two states, no need to internationalize it, but then one must be ready to put a separation barrier through its heart. Perhaps when people say “internationalize Jerusalem” they mean only the Old City–which hardly solves the bigger problems. In effect, the Old City is already internationalized, anyway, with Muslim and Christian organizations (many of the latter of which actually are international) managing their own affairs. But one sovereign authority has to run the broader city, or clearly defined and separated parts of it, in order to control its security, immigration, etc.
4. The attempts to make Israel and/or Palestine fit an American mold are misplaced. That is why I referred to other European nation-states that were created in the decades following the break-up of the Eurasian empires. It is a far more fitting analogy, for that is the setting in which Zionism was conceived as a national liberation movement, and in which the Israeli, and one day Palestinian, states are rooted.
Tano:
If I knew the answer to that I’d be moving straight on to solving the problem of faster-than-light travel.
This simply isn’t true. Jerusalem can be legally international, and it can host both governments. It can hire a police force, elect a city council, do all the things a city does. There’s no rational need for a barrier, any more than there has to be a barrier between various groups in any major city.
No to the first question.
On the second question. The Palestinians where citizens of Jordan prior to 1967. They should return to Jordan. They never had there own nation before 1967, why should they have it now?
You mean the West Bank should be returned to Jordan? Or the Palestinians ethnically cleansed from the West Bank?
The Palestinians should be evicted and sent back to Jordan.
So, we are just going to forget the fact that that population has been there for generations and forcibly relocate them? Based on what argument?
I suspect that SH has once again succumbed to his constant urge to say something outlandish and trollish, just to get a rise out of people. We do him a favor when we do not take him seriously…
@Tano:
You may well be correct (and would like to think you are). However, I have heard and read enough to be more than willing to accept that that is SH’s honest position.
@Steven L. Taylory:
Ah, but Israel is a signatory to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Article I states that all stateless persons born within the territory of a signatory are granted nationality within that signatory.
So are we beginning the negotiation from the starting point that any Palestinian born in the West Bank or Gaza since 1967 is in fact an Israeli national?
OK, pick a set of numbers. I’ll go with 90/10. 90% of the Palestinians want peace with Israel and to get on with their lives. The other 10% don’t, though it may be the other way around. Anyway in Gaza the 90% have been unable to stop the 10% from launching mortars and missiles into Israel.
Looking at the map of the West Bank, everyone of the Palestinian settlements will be like an island in a sea of Jewish settlements, hence the name The West Bank Archipelago. Each of these settlements will have the potential to be a place for the 10% to launch attacks against the surrounding Jewish settlements. Since the other 90% that want peace are unwilling or unable to prevent the attacks, it will be up to Israel to stop the attacks. Israel will have to attack the Palestinian settlements or set up check points to control the flow of the 10%. Both actions would probably be in violation of the peace agreement.
It would be in the best interest of peace in the Middle East to move all Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This would make it harder for the 10% that don’t want peace to attack Israel.
Israel pulling out of Gaza did not stop the attacks. Does anyone actually think that a peace agreement will stop the attacks on Israel by that percent that doesn’t want peace?
I should point out as well that there is a percent of Israels that will be opposed to any peace agreement. They will use the close proximity of Palestine settlements to upset the peace agreement.
The best way to peace in the Middle East is to set up a natural barrier, like the Jordan River, as the boundary between those that do not want peace.
It is hardly surprising that Grand Dragon Southern Hoosier is an advocate of ethnic cleansing…I wonder if he ever advocated that policy when he posted at Stormfront…
Ethnic cleansing is such a nasty term. Why don’t we use the more PC terms like gentrification or urban renewal like we do here in America.
As I said, a troll….
Seems like we will suffer the same fate of that the Jews would in a single state.
Here’s another racist story for you
I answered the question and gave my reasons, Since you disagreed with me you gave the typical liberal response of name calling.
@SH:
Actually, he is trying to kind by calling you a troll rather than treating your responses as serious.
My response was serious. I don’t believe that the Israels and the Palestinians can peacefully coexist, especially with land divided along the lines of that convoluted map. Hezbollah may openly sign a peace treaty with Israel, but they will secretly be supporting the terrorist that are firing rockets and mortars into Israel. Did Israel’s withdraw from Gaza stop the attacks? No. And you actually think that an Israeli withdraw from the West Banks will stop the attacks on Israel? And if the attacks don’t stop, then what is the point of a peace settlement?. What is the old saying “Treaties are made to be broken?”
@SH:
When you advocate the removal of Palestinians (millions of them) from the West Bank you advocate ethnic cleansing. Specifically you are advocating the forcible removal of persons from their homes and businesses because they are the “wrong” religion/ethnicity. Further, you advocate this while acting as if they live where they live for illegitimate reasons when, in all likelihood, they can trace their linkages to the area in which they live far, far longer into the past than you can your Hoosier roots.
You then double-down and compare ethnic cleansing to gentrification.
You are also demonstrate likely white-supremacist sentiments by basically asserting that the US is a white nation just like Israel is a Jewish state (with all the commensurate implications that go along with such a statement).
All things considered, I’d rather be called a troll, but to each his own.
@ Steven L. Taylor
The question was 1) Do you favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? and I said no and gave my reasons.
Not because they are the “wrong” religion/ethnicity, but because they refuse to acknowledge the right of another nation to exists. If your neighbor keeps attacking you and saying you don’t have a right to live in your house, who are the police going to remove? And I doubt if it will matter much to the police how long your neighbor has lived there.
I agree, I am well aware of the history of the Middle East. The Palestinians have been there a thousand years or more. And they will not rest until ALL Jews are driven out of their land. A two state solution will not work. The only way to “peace” in the Middle East is a single state solution. The only question is, will that single state be Jewish or Palestinian.
Let me make one thing clear, ethnic cleansing is wrong, but that is the only way there will be any type of peace in the Middle East is to get rid of one side or the other. And again the question is, which side to you get rid of?
So you’re not advocating the extermination of Palestinians, you’re advocating the extermination of all Muslims in the middle east. Either that or you’re too stupid to anticipate the obvious long-term implications of your position.
With Grand Dragon Southern Hoosier, it could very well be both…
And people call me a troll. Why would you want to exterminate all the Muslims in the Middle East? Israel has been at peace with its neighbors for the past 44 years, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are not the problem. Hamas and Hezbollah are the problems.
Are you saying that if Israel pushed all Palestinians out of theWest Bank that the Arab world would go to war with Israel? Do you really think the Arab world cares about the Palestinians? The Palestinian leadership, don’t even care about their own people. If they did they wouldn’t set up mortars and rockets near schools and hospitals. Arafat no more cared for his people than Saddam did, they were just tools to be used.
http://goo.gl/ymkcm
Stupid it is then.
Do you think that Hamas and Hezbollah will stop fighting Israel once they’ve been pushed into Jordan, Syria and Egypt? According to your stated philosophy, once those implacable 10% start firing rockets from those countries, the entire populations of those countries should be driven off their land.
They’ve never cared about the Palestinian people. What they do care about is Palestinian refugees being forced across their borders. You better believe that Israel’s neighbors would resort to military action to keep the Palestinians out.
Of course not, But it will make it harder. Most of the majors Israel cities will be out of range. Also Jordan, Syria and Egypt are not going to put up with their territory being used as a launching pad for attacks against Israel and risk being pulled into a major war with Israel.
I am sure the United States and Europe could come up with enough resettlement money to make the Arab states accept them, if it ever come to that. Who know Comrade Obama, might agree to take in a few million of them.
That’s highly unlikely, Grand Dragon Southern Hoosier, because, unlike you, the president would never endorse ethnic cleansing…
And these are the people you want to turn the West Bank over to.
http://goo.gl/9SeBO
“Resistance Axis” Iran, Syria Hamas, and Hezbollah
http://goo.gl/ue0Wf
Now tell me again why so many of you support a 2 state solution.