Can One State Safeguard Two Peoples?

[In the midst of the intense struggle of hundreds of thousands of Israelis to redefine, renew, and reawaken the democratic commitment of the State of Israel, The Shalom Center has begun sharing a wide range of varied views of how that could be done. We are sharing views that we think would be helpful to discuss, and we would be glad to hear your responses — and with your permission, to share them.

[We published a sermon by Rabbi Sharon Brous, and today we are publishing an essay by Jonathan Kuttab. He is a human rights attorney, a co-founder of Al-Haq (a key Palestinian human rights organization), and of Nonviolence International. He is currently Executive Director of Friends of Sabeel, North America (FOSNA), an organization dedicated to peace, justice, and Palestinian Liberation Theology. – AW, ed.]

by Jonathan Kuttab

The conflict between Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism that has been going on for about a century is an existential zero-sum conflict. Underneath all the slogans, and pretenses, each group views the other as totally illegitimate and an existential threat to its own group. Every gain by one side (whether in population or land ownership) is a loss to the other, and vice versa.

The Israeli victory in the June War of 1967 might have provided an opportunity for a historic compromise, along the lines of a two-state solution, whereby Israel would release its recently conquered territories to a Palestinian state in 22% of historic Palestine, in return for Palestinians relinquishing their claims to the rest of the land.

Without discussing the historic claims of each party, and without laying any blame on either side, and without implying any symmetry between them, one can see that such a historic compromise, for all its faults, could have served as the outline for a realistic pragmatic compromise that both sides, and the rest of the world, could live with. I myself strongly advocated and worked for such a compromise.

Yet this compromise was systematically undermined by all the successive Israeli governments since that time. A settlement movement continued to pursue Zionist claims within the 22% that was to be allocated to a Palestinian state, established there facts on the ground and in the hearts and minds of Israelis.

During this process, the continued use of violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinian civilians and the use of violence against Israeli civilians by Palestinians both reinforced on both sides an “Us or Them,” “All or Nothing” mindset. Even if the mindset could have been eased, the “facts on the ground” made a two-state compromise no longer possible.

Over 800,000 Jewish settlers now live within that 22%, and have established for themselves an entire infrastructure of separate residences, roads, legal and administrative structures, a health, educational, and social welfare system, that fully integrate their lives there into the state of Israel, and prohibit a return to the ‘67 borders forcing us to face again the existential antagonism between these two movements.

For if you consider your goal to be a Jewish state as Jewish as France is French, or an Arab state (Falasteen Arabiyyeh) free of the recent settler colonialists who have conquered it, then there is no room for either compromise, or coexistence.

My approach is to reject both ideologies (or to adjust them) by removing the requirement of exclusivity inherent in both views, and to see if a hybrid entity can indeed address and provide for the minimal needs of both communities within a new structure governing all of the Land which welcomes and allows for the flourishing of both communities but which requires each community to accept and even embrace the other as legitimate equal citizens of the new country. It requires each side, however, to abandon the exclusivity of its claim and to adjust its ideology to accommodate the presence and even the claims of the other community.

Under such an entity, Jews as well as Palestinian Arabs can live anywhere in the whole land, and have a “Right of Return” to it wherever they are living now. Jews can still exercise a Right of Return, and Palestinian Refugees can return home, but no one will be removed from their residence (even if it belonged to a member of the other group) and those who lost residences and lands will be compensated, or obtain alternative lands and housing from the “public” land which will belong to all. Each group can enjoy an even richer and more fulfilling revival of its traditional life and culture, but will not be able to deny or exclude the Other.

Iron-clad constitutional and legal structures will ensure that the main elements of this new entity will be respected and will continue to provide its protections and rights to all well into the future regardless of the changing demographics and the whims of voting majorities. As a healthy pluralistic democracy, it will provide for majority rule, but will constrain that rule with constitutional protections for the individual and the minority.

Civil courts will administer secular provisions for marriage, divorce, inheritance and personal status matters in parallel with the religious courts of the various communities which will continue to operate for those who wish to use them, without imposing legal restrictions on those who are secular, or of mixed marriages, or of unrecognized religious denominations, or who choose not to be bound (any more) by the strictures of the religious communities they were born into. This will provide all with a measure of religious freedom not currently available in Israel, the Palestinian territories, or elsewhere in the Middle East.

Those who choose to follow strictly their religious denominations’ beliefs in personal status matters are free to do so, and the courts will respect that, but will not have the power to impose religious strictures on anyone against their will.

Legal provisions will be installed to deal with the “demographic demon” by ensuring that the provisions providing for equality, and safeguarding national and religious rights of individuals and groups are not at risk due to shifting demographics or fickle political majorities after each election. 51% of the electorate will not be allowed to crush or oppress the 49%.

The deep-seated fears and insecurities resulting from the painful histories of both groups are addressed creatively. The Defense Minister, as well as the head of the Army, Navy, Airforce, and Nuclear Arsenal, will always be a Jew, with an Arab deputy, while all other positions in the armed services are based on merit. Those not wishing to fight can do alternative national service.

At the same time, the Head of the Police and Internal Security, will always be a Palestinian Arab, with a Jewish deputy. That addresses the painful past and realistic fears of both communities. In addition, 10% of the Defense budget will always go to activities aimed at mutual understanding, joint projects, psychological healing, and addressing the true issues that give rise to feelings of injustice, intolerance, and hatred which currently provide the source of greatest threat and insecurity to citizens.

The provisions of this vision, which I outline in my book Beyond the Two State Solution, (available online for free in English, Arabic and Hebrew) are not easy for Palestinians or Israelis to accept. They are painful derogations from their strongly held beliefs and narratives. For many, they also seem to be idealistic and utopian. Those who insist on their exclusivist ideologies doom their people to perpetual conflict as I do not see how either community can fully vanquish and eliminate the other, as it must, if it is to prevail. Those who are willing to see a different future for themselves and their children must begin to see the other as equal, and to consider a joint future together. It is possible. As Theodore Hertzel once said “Im Tirtsu Ain Zu Agada” — If you wish it, it is not a fable.