Agha, Malley, and some other ideas

Hussein Agha and Rob Malley have continued the slightly bizarre “madcap chase” around the arena of Israeli-Arab peacemaking that they launched with this recent essay in the NYRB, by publishing an op-ed in today’s NYT that is titled, quite misleadingly, The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything.
Headline writers can be so obtuse…
A decent read of the Agha-Malley piece reveals that their argument really boils down to explaining why The Two-State Solution Doesn’t (immediately) Solve Everything.
Which of course is a pretty banal conclusion to come to. Far less sexy for a headline writer to trumpet.
Basically, the guys are writing that, though he gives grudging support to the idea of some highly constrained form of Palestinian “state”, what Israeli PM Netanyahu really wants from the Arabs is their recognition of Israel as Jewish state… while on the Palestinian side, though Hamas now proclaims its support for the two-state outcome, they also seek the return to their original homes inside present-day Israel of all those expelled from them during the fighting of 1948, and their descendants…
And that each of these respective positions– which we can describe as “1948-related issues”– commands large support within the two competing nations.
So what else is new?
Honestly, I find their arguments quite banal. Everyone always knew that you can’t resolve the issues of 1967 without also finding a workable resolution to the issues of 1948. (Though that attempt was made in such go-nowhere projects as Taba, the Geneva Initiative, etc.)
Here’s the good news: the issues of 1948 are, actually, far from intractable.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Israel as a Jewish state? Hullo! With a name like “the State of Israel”, does anyone expect it to be made up of Finlanders?
In the 1947 Partition Plan, which is the joint birth certificate that both Israel and the future Palestinian state have in international law, it was determined that there should be established a Jewish State and an Arab State in Palestine.
No biggie!
Of course, the rubber does hit the road when you ask “What does it mean for Israel to be a ‘Jewish’ state?” Does this mean a state guided by Jewish values– and if so, which set of Jewish values?
Does it mean that Israel should continue on the path it’s been on for 61 years now, and position itself as “the state of the Jewish people everywhere”– regardless of the fact that this positioning has always involved the systematic imposition of discrimination against that 20% of Israeli citizens who are not Jewish, but rather, ethnic-Palestinian indigenes?
Or would we hope that Israel is a state that can be both Jewish (in the sense of, informed by the best in Jewish values; and, a continuing haven for the Hebrew language…)– as well as democratic?
Clearly, that’s something that all the state’s citizens need to figure out among themselves. But outsiders who claim to uphold democratic values should certainly not support the continuation of those provisions of Israeli law that systematically discriminate against non-Jews.
But for outsiders to “recognize” Israel as a Jewish state– or even to be to required to do so? I don’t see it as a big problem. Actually, I think the whole question is a real diversion. After all, when all the scores of governments around the world that have recognized the State of Israel in the past took that step, none of them was “required” to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Big diversion.
And then, the issue of outcomes for that large number– probably a majority– of Palestinians who happen to be refugees from the land that became Israel in 1948, or their descendants… Why should this be thought of as an intractable problem?
Clearly, these people need a way to have their national, political, and individual property rights all sufficiently respected. Does that mean– as Hamas head Khaled Meshaal told me in June– that all Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to the exact village or town from which they or their forebears fled in 1948?
Not necessarily…. As in, not necessarily to live there forever. Indeed, my friend Nadim Shehadi came up with a great concept in this recent paper he did for London’s Chatham House: “the right of return– for lunch.”
Nadim noted something that, after 61 years of separation between Israel and most of its neighbors, too often gets forgotten. That is, the very small distances between all these places we’re talking about.
In the context of peace, and of the significant upgrading of regional transportation infrastructure that immediately becomes possible (or indeed, necessary) traveling from refugee camps in Beirut or Damascus to ancestral homes in the Galilee would only take an hour or two.
Palestinian families that have been forcibly split apart from each other for 2.5 generations can finally meet and hug each other in real life, just as they have already started to do in various internet forums over recent years.
Palestinian refugees from Gaza can travel to ancestral homes in southern Israel that they haven’t seen for many years now; they can visit the family graves; rehab some of the long-destroyed mosques; have picnics beside streams that the elders remember only from their distant childhood.
Palestinians from everywhere, who have kept a deep longing for the holy places of Jerusalem and Bethlehem in their hearts, can go and visit those holy places.
In the context of peace, what is so wrong with this picture?
I’m assuming that the property-compensation issues and the having-a-stable-citizenship issues will all have been satisfactorily resolved for the refugees in the context of the final peace settlement. And a number (to be negotiated) of the refugees will likely have been allowed to return to their ancestral homes to reside– either as citizens of the Palestinian state, or as law-abiding citizens of Israel; but anyway in full respect of Israeli law.
But if, as a result of the peace, the whole region becomes knitted back together with transportation webs similar to those its had under the Ottomans or the British, then Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs will all be able to move around the region in a way that most people haven’t even thought possible for many decades now.
In the context of a fair peace, Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis will be welcome to travel along the new highways and high-speed rail lines to Cairo, or Damascus– or Turkey, or Libya, or points beyond. Why not?
And even Jerusalem can become transformed from being a point of hatred, fear, and contention, into a center for world cultures and a truly global multi-culturalism.
Here’s another important point to remember: For Jewish Israelis– or for the adherents of any particular faith– to have assured access for pilgrims to places of deep religious significance doesn’t mean that the members of this religion have to control these places completely.
Rights of pilgrim-access don’t entail any right to reside or control.
You could call it the right to do a pilgrimage and have lunch. Whether we’re talking Jerusalem, Hebron, or anywhere else. Doesn’t that sound like a fair deal?
… Anyway, I’m thinking out loud here a bit. The main point of this thinking is to show that, though certainly the “issues from 1948” will need to be addressed even if there is a two-state outcome between Israelis and Palestinians, these issues are not, in fact, as completely intractable as many people have come to assume.