Bi-nationalism

...Will Two States Work...

...People who regard Israel's existence as illicit or are embarrassed by it now embrace the rhetoric of bi-nationalism as a strategy for rendering palatable a program whose objective is the removal of any form of Jewish political independence in the Middle East...

...Second, bi-nationalists argue that thirtyseven years of Israeli occupation and settlement in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have irrevocably changed the infrastructure and demography of these territories in such a way as to render a partition effectively impossible...

...Its charter accorded civil and religious rights to Jews who were in Palestine prior to the "Zionist invasion," dated from the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and called for the deportation of those who entered the country afterward...

...In order for a bi-national state to succeed, its two constituent peoples must be committed to living in a unified political framework in which they share the instruments of sovereignty equitably between them...

...On closer inspection it becomes clear that this idyllic vision rests upon unsustainable assumptions...

...These events revealed the depth of the conflict of national interests and produced a militant reaction in much of the Yishuv...

...It should be POLITICS ABROAD clear, however, that the framework described in the agreements offers a far more realistic and credible prospect for arriving at a workable solution than bi-nationalism...

...The traditional zero-sum game in which one side realizes its national objectives only by expelling or subordinating the other is avoided...

...SHALOM LAPPIN is a professor in the Computer Science Department at King's College, London, and a long-time supporter of Peace Now and Meretz in Israel...

...The system fell apart in 1958 and was put back together...

...In light of the desperate need of Israelis and Palestinians for an end to the violence that they are inflicting upon each other, abandoning the only program that offers any chance of achieving peace is not simply misguided...

...For many years no census was taken in Lebanon in order to maintain the illusion that the original demographic division continued to hold long after the size of the Christian population had significantly declined relative to the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities and the Druse...

...Unfortunately their efforts foundered on implacable Arab rejectionism...

...It is important to note the distinction in Israeli public perception of pre-1967 Israel on one hand and of the West Bank, Gaza, and East 16 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 Jerusalem on the other...

...Given the nature of the competition between them, this cannot be achieved within a single state...

...The large-scale influx of Palestinian guerrillas and their families from Jordan following the clash between King Hussein of Jordan and the PLO in September 1970 again seriously disrupted the demographic balance and the political arrangements that depended upon it...

...The second factor is far less innocent...

...Significant proportions of the Israeli and Palestinian populations support this plan even though the Sharon government and Palestinian rejectionist organizations strongly oppose it, and Yasir Arafat has not endorsed it...

...This is, of course, not bi-nationalism at all, but the exploitation of bi-national terminology in the service of a program that denies the legitimacy of Jews in general and Israeli Jews in particular as a nation...

...This event played a central role in creating the conditions that led to the fifteen-year civil war that destroyed the country...

...Its national character will be determined not by discriminatory legislation or coercive practice, but by the fact that its culture and its primary language are those of its majority population...

...The occupation ends, but the settlements remain...

...This view was first presented in the mid-1980s by Meron DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 13 POLITICS ABROAD Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who conducted extensive research on the effect of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank and East Jerusalem...

...There are serious questions concerning the willingness and the ability of both sides to implement a plan of this sort...

...Apartheid enforced the oppressive dominance of a white European elite through segregation along purely racial lines...

...The bi-national program was entertained as a possibility by substantial sections of the Zionist left in the early 1920s, but attitudes changed drastically after the Arab riots of 1929...

...Antony's College, Oxford, and a long time proponent of two states, published "A OneState Solution" (The Guardian, September 29, 2003) in which he anticipated many of Judt's arguments...

...These communities had preceded apartheid in the country, and most people from all groups were prepared to embrace the vision of a multicultural society that formed the basis of the African National Congress's liberation struggle...

...Before I take up these arguments let me set the current discussion in the context of the generally forgotten history of the bi-national idea for Israel/Palestine...

...They see the inability or unwillingness of external players, particularly the United States, to exert the sort of pressure required to produce a change in either side...

...Israelis would attempt to defend their situation in the country by retaining control of the army, as well as key political and economic positions...

...Any rational solution to this conflict requires that the basic needs and (at least) minimal concerns of both sides be realized...

...Such a commitment requires each to have confidence that it can trust its partner to respect its vital interests as part of a common endeavour...

...By contrast, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between two well-defined national entities in a territory that historically never supported a single nation-state...

...Hashomer Hatsair's commitment to bi-nationalism led it to oppose the UN's 1947 partition plan which divided Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states...

...The identity of each nation cuts across racial differences and focuses on language, religion, history, and territory...

...Similarly Sami Taha, a Palestinian labor leader, was killed in September 1947, for advocating the creation of a nonsectarian Palestinian state representing the interests of both Jews and Arabs (see Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1972, for a discussion of these two incidents...

...In fact, the analogy does not hold at the most essential points of comparison between the two conflicts...

...The idea is achieving increasing popularity among people on the liberal left who had previously supported a two-state solution, and it has found new endorsement among both Jews and Palestinian Arabs...

...Several weeks prior to the appearance of Judt's piece, Ahmad Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar at St...

...The first, Brit Shalom (1925-1933), and its successor, the Ihud, consisted largely of western liberal Zionists such as Judah Magnes, Haim Kalvarisky, Arthur Ruppin, Hugo Bergman, and Martin Buber...

...Uprooting the settlements is politically no longer feasible...

...There is, then, not a little historical irony POLITICS ABROAD in the contemporary presentation of bi-nationalism as a "post-Zionist" solution to the conflict...

...That implementing a two-state solution will be excruciatingly difficult is not sufficient grounds for adopting a one-state model that has virtually no chance of success...

...In characterizing the proposed single state as "non-sectarian" they conceal the fact that its political and cultural character will be determined by its majority...

...Supporters of a bi-national model frequently point to post-apartheid South Africa as a case of successful transition from an ethnic state to a multicultural democracy...

...The most effective criticism of Sharon's policy in the territories is now coming from the upper echelons of the Israeli security establishment, parts of which seem to have finally recognized the damage that the occupation is doing to the viability and well being of the country...

...Both Jews and Arabs achieve security and freedom within a single democratic country...

...The first is deep frustration at the failure of the Oslo process and a sense of hopelessness due to the unyielding cycle of terrorism and repression that has replaced it...

...English and Afrikaans South Africans are distinct national/ethnic groups, as are the diverse communities that make up the indigenous African, Asian, and "mixed" populations...

...The overwhelming majority of Israelis and Palestinians have no interest in a shared political life...

...It is a mistake to suggest that a bi-national state could be non- or postnational in character...

...If the twostate framework of the Geneva Agreements cannot succeed, then it is unclear why one would think that a bi-national state could...

...Palestinians would use both the right of return and their higher birth rate to achieve demographic dominance...

...OTH THE THUD and Hashomer Hatsair attempted to resist the current of conflict throughout the 1940s...

...There is no escape from the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian problem is a conflict between two nations, each insisting on its right to live in the same territory...

...Bi-nationalism as a Zionist Proposal The proposal for a bi-national Jewish-Arab state in Palestine has its origins in the Zionist left, where it was advanced by two main groups during the period of the British Mandate from the 1920s until 1947...

...At first glance, bi-nationalism seems to offer an attractive exit from the grinding impasse of the current conflict...

...The inevitable result of this competition would be a bloody civil war...

...Eliminating or suppressing one of the sides through expulsion or forced absorption is not a reasonable option...

...Although most Israelis realize that their own security requires the (equivalent of a) full withdrawal, they remain traumatized by the failure of the negotiations at Camp David and Taba, and the subsequent violence...

...By contrast, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was founded in 1964, insisted on a unitary Arab state in Palestine until the mid-1970s...

...Although this reaction is certainly understandable, it amounts to little more than a politics of despair...

...Given that many bi- and multinational states have failed to accommodate distinct national groups under far more auspicious circumstances (as illustrated in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the bloody collapse of the Yugoslav federation), it is important to examine carefully the current arguments for a binational framework...

...Fawzi was assassinated several days later by a rival faction of the al-Husseini family, which branded him a traitor to the Arab cause...

...In his determination to prevent Jewish immigration and political independence in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, became pro-Axis and spent most of the war years in Berlin as a supporter of the Third Reich...

...The contemporary proponents of bi-nationalism have no obvious answer to the well-grounded fears of both sides except an appeal to good faith, which begs the main questions of the dispute...

...It consists in the promotion of bi-nationalism as a device for eliminating a Jewish polity of any kind...

...They regard each other as the main threat to their respective national existences...

...The two populations have been mixed to the point that they can no longer be pulled apart...

...For its part, the Arab leadership, specifically, the al-Husseini family, which dominated Palestinian politics, rejected bi-nationalism out of hand as a Zionist project intended to secure Arab recognition of Jewish immigration and political rights...

...They rely on the fact that should a one-state solution be imposed, demography will generate an Arab country in which Israeli Jews constitute a politically contained minority with certain "cultural rights...

...By contrast, most people, including the settlers, their political allies, and young people born after 1967, recognize the reality of the fact that even after thirty-seven years of occupation the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have not been absorbed into Israel proper and remain foreign territory...

...The only viable alternative to the continued occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians is, therefore, a single egalitarian state that accords the same rights to Jews and Arabs alike...

...Order was eventually restored through a Syrian military occupation, which continues to the present day...

...On November 11, 1946, the Ihud signed an agreement with Fawzi Darwish alHusseini's Young Palestine group for common political action in support of a bi-national state...

...To the extent that either of these states is democratic, it will accord equal rights to all of its residents...

...The settlers, now 230,000 in number (closer to 400,000 if one includes the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem), have effectively dictated Israeli policy in the territories despite the fact that opinion polls over the years have consistently indicated that the majority of Israelis do not support the settlement enterprise...

...In no sense does it offer a constructive, realistic response to the facts of the situation...

...The Green Line continues to be a genuine border in the political psychology of most Israelis, including those committed to erasing it...

...First, they claim that it provides a democratic alternative to a sectarian Jewish state organized along lines of ethnic privilege...

...DISSENT / Winter 2004 •I7...

...Ariel Sharon has successfully exploited this trauma to pursue his longstanding annexationist agenda, but there is little genuine support for this program...

...Political and military power is distributed on the basis of this relation, with the positions of president, prime minister, speaker of the parliament, defense minister, and foreign minister reserved for members of designated communities...

...The mainstream Zionist leadership, particularly Chaim Weizmann, followed with interest and skeptical encouragement the attempts of the Ihud to negotiate agreements with Palestinian Arab leaders...

...The relentless expansion of settlements and their attendant infrastructure in the occupied territories under successive Israeli governments has created a major obstacle to the partition required for a two-state solution...

...There is, then, good reason to believe that forcing bi-nationalism on Israelis and Palestinians in the foreseeable future would produce something akin to Bosnia or Cyprus, rather than a Middle Eastern Belgium or Canada (both of which, it should be noted, suffer constant separatist tensions...

...The groups on both (more accurately, all) sides of its divide were nationally and culturally heterogeneous...

...The current intifada has shown the impossibility of sustaining the occupation...

...Both Israelis and Palestinians receive charter to the entire country and so avoid a searing partition of their common homeland...

...However Benvenisti's conclusion, embraced by many proponents of bi-nationalism, that withdrawal to the (equivalent of the) 1967 borders is no longer possible does not follow...

...He has been active in social democratic organizations in Israel, Canada, and Britain...

...In fact, the majority of settlers has indicated a willingness to move back behind the Green Line in exchange for suitable compensation...

...It is deeply irresponsible...

...In response to the continuing intercommunal violence and the near universal opposition of the Palestinian Arab leadership to Jewish immigration, 14 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 many leaders of the Yishuv, Ben-Gurion foremost among them, came to see the problem as intractable, and they adopted an increasingly adversarial attitude toward the Arab population...

...Although racial factors can play no role in defining the institutions of a democratic state, national, linguistic, and cultural properDISSENT / Winter 2004 n 15 POLITICS ABROAD ties of the sort that separate Israelis and Palestinians are very much the elements from which most countries, including democratic ones, are shaped in one way or another...

...Lebanon provides an instructive instance of this problem...

...Mapam (United Workers Party), the parliamentary arm created by Hashomer Hatsair and two other left-Zionist groups, was the second largest party in the Knesset, after Ben-Gurion's Mapai (Israel Workers Party), in the first years of independence...

...They saw a liberal bi-national model as the best framework for reconciling competing Jewish and Arab political aspirations...

...To expect two nations that have been engaged in mortal combat for a century to undertake such a venture is to situate oneself at an acutely unsafe distance from the facts...

...Is Bi•nationalism Workable...

...As a result, these observers have taken refuge in the utopian reverie of bi-nationalism as a radical retreat from the appalling realities of the clash...

...SINCE THE START of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000 there has been a resurgence of interest in a onestate bi-national model for solving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians...

...Apartheid was imposed on an already existing nation-state made up of a variety of cultural communities...

...Its political system encodes the assumption of a finely tuned demographic relation among its major ethnicreligious groups...

...By granting equal rights to Israelis and Palestinians it becomes the state of all its residents rather than an instrument for preserving the dominance of one group at the expense of the other...

...Instead of providing a solution to the conflict the advocates of bi-nationalism are, in fact, suggesting a recipe for perpetuating it...

...There is near universal consensus among Israelis (Jews and Arabs alike) that the area within the Green Line is legitimately part of the country, although a not insignificant part of this land was added to the borders specified in the original 1947 partition plan as a result of the 1948 war...

...Supporters of the new bi-nationalism invoke two main arguments to motivate their case...

...Even after it had abandoned this view following the creation of Israel, it continued to work for Jewish-Arab equality and cooperation within the new state...

...The second, Hashomer Hatsair (Young Guard), was a socialist Zionist Kibbutz movement that was committed to constructing a bi-national JewishArab workers state on radically egalitarian principles...

...Prominent non-government Israeli and Palestinian politicians signed the Geneva Agreements this past fall, which specify a detailed version of the Clinton proposals from December 2000 (the text and maps of the agreements are posted on the Peace Now Web site at www.peacenow.org.il...

...The rise of fascism in Europe reinforced this...

...Tony Judt's advocacy of bi-nationalism in "Israel: The Alternative" (New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003) generated intense controversy in Jewish and Israeli circles...

...It is also worth considering why they are being pressed so vigorously at this time...

...It is odd that Khalidi and Judt have chosen a point in this long and brutal conflict when the violence and mutual bitterness are particularly intense to promote a framework that requires the two sides to share sovereignty...

...This move expresses a desire to be rid, finally, of a brutal dispute that appears to defy rational resolution...

...There is, then, no viable alternative to providing two states to two peoples...

...In order to accommodate both sides, a binational state in Israel/Palestine would have to adopt the right of return for Palestinian refugees while retaining the Law of Return for Jews...

...Popularity of the Bi-national Model It is possible to discern two distinct factors driving the revival of interest in bi-nationalism...

...Well-meaning observers watch how the Israeli and Palestinian leaders use this violence to sustain themselves in power at the expense of the suffering of their respective peoples...

...Fear of losing a demographic balance between the constituent peoples in a bi- (multi) national country is one of the primary sources of its instability...

...Although these groups represented a minority view within the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and the Zionist movement generally, they were not without influence...

...To be viable as a democratic venture it would need to express the national identities of the two peoples that make up its population...