Palestine/Israel: final outcomes

I’m back. Here’s a link to my CSM piece of Oct. 9th. In it I argue that if Israelis are unwilling to provide the Palestinians with the territorial/jurisdictional basis for a viable independent state alongside Israel, then perhaps the only acceptable outcome would be to have a unitary, one-person-one-vote system in the whole area of Mandate-era Palestine.
I’ve received some interesting reactions to this suggestion. It is not, of course, original, having already been articulated in recent times by Sari Nusseibeh, Meron Benvenisti, and many others. (Including, in the New York Review of Books by Tony Judt.)
Another wrinkle on this is that just after my piece appeared came the news of Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin’s success at shepherding their “citizens’ diplomacy” venture of describing a framework for a final outcome in a two-state context that could win support from the people in both national comunities.
I think theirs is an a wonderful approach! The idea of having substantial citizen groups on both suides of the lines working together on this– and each, then, going back to its home community to win support for their vision– is great.
And if, moreover, they succeed in changing the dynamics in both communities from one of hopelessness, dread, and fear to one of hope and a sense of possibility and reasonableness– then that is exactly what needs to happen!!
In the Ha’Aretz piece on the Beilin-Abed-Rabbo project, Beilin is quoted as saying of the project’s many critics on the Israeli right– including, of course, from an infuriated Israeli government– that: “I know that they’ll say this is a bad agreement, that we caved in and gave away everything. But one thing they won’t be able to say: that there is no partner [for an agreement].”
That is certainly the case. Yasser Abed Rabbo is a very well-connected former (and present?) PA minister who still has very good relations with Yasser Arafat, who has given the venture his approval. YAR has won significant support for the project from other significant figures in the Palestinian movement, including some leaders of the hardline, Fateh-linked “Tanzim” organization. (Actually, “tanzim” means “organization.”)
On the Israeli side, meanwhile, Beilin is also a former government minister. His role in this project has the support of a number of Labor MKs including Amram Mitzna, Avraham Burg, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Yuli Tamir; a number of Meretz MKs including Haim Oron (Meretz); former MK Nehama Ronen; Brigadier General (reserve) Giora Inbar, and author Amos Oz.
It’s worth noting, too, that the Swiss government seems to be ready to host the final announcing/publication of what is already being called the “Geneva Accord”, and that the project received financial backing from a number of governments around the world but NOT, notably, the US government.
What is different about this venture as opposed to the ill-fated “Oslo Accords” of september 1993? Mainly–and here’s the source for hope in it–that it delineates what the the final outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiation would look like– whereas Oslo only defined an set of interim phases and, at the Israeli side’s insistence, still left the final outcome undefined.
Over the ten years since the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, all of Israel’s governments have continued to alter the facts on the ground, implanting hundreds of thousands of additional israeli settlers into East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. So continuing to chase after ever smaller-scale and ever more elusive “interim” arrangements, as the moribund “Roadmap” does just continues to postpone the final day of reaching peace while allowing Israel’s territorial maximalists to continue with their settlement-building project…
As for the ‘one-state’ outcome, I am not personally wedded to either it or the two-state outcome. Indeed, I think that is totally not a decision for outsiders to make. But I don’t think we should ignore the idea of the one-state outcome. In Israel/Palestine– as in South Africa– it could be an exciting possibility.