The One-and-a-Half-State Solution

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will not be achieved with the proposed compromise between the one- and two-state solutions.

It will take nothing short of a miracle for the current U.S.-spearheaded peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, ambitiously aimed at the “final status,” to achieve any meaningful outcome. Resolving all the main issues requires major concessions from both sides, and the negotiating parties need the unwavering support of the majority of their respective constituencies, something they don’t have.

Benjamin Netanyahu represents a coalition that, aside from the weakened Labour, includes such far-right hawks as Yisrael Beitenu, the ultra-orthodox Shas, United Torah Judaism, and religious Zionists of HaBayit ha Yehudi which, in comparison, make the right-wing Likud and Netanyahu himself look like doves. Even if we naively assume that Netanyahu is ready for major compromises, his coalition is dead against such moves.

The Palestinian side is divided and in disarray. Mahmoud Abbas, whose five-year term as the elected president ended in 2009, can only claim partial representation of Palestinians. If the results of the last legislative elections in 2006 are any indication, only 41 percent voted for his party, while Hamas got 44 percent, and the rest of the population voted for different left-wing organizations and independent candidates. American mediators are aware of the problems on both sides. President Obama, who had promised to work towards a “just” peace, realized soon after taking office that he could not force Israel to give major concessions. He used one factor, external to the Israel-Palestine conflict, to convince Netanyahu to join a new round of peace negotiations: the promise of containing the Islamic regime in Iran, whose big-mouth bellicose President does not miss any opportunity to be so outrageous as to allow Israel to claim Iran to be an “existential threat.”

The basic tenets of all the previous peace talks were around a “two-state solution,” an idea sharply opposed and criticized by radical proponents of the “one-state solution” on both sides. In all these years, while the advocates of one- and two-state solutions endlessly debated with each other, a third solution which can be called a “one-and-a-half-state solution” was (directly or indirectly) consistently pushed forward by the U.S. and Israel with the implicit consent of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In two decades since the beginning of peace negotiations, Israel became stronger and Palestinians weaker and more divided. In the early years of the 1993 Oslo accord, there were about 110,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank; they have now almost tripled to over 300,000, not to mention about 50,000 added to the Jewish population of East Jerusalem. The failure of the peace talks, along with the disastrous second Intifada, the strengthening of the Palestinian religious radical fundamentalists (Hamas and Jihad), as well as the return of the Israeli hawks and neo-cons in the U.S. to power, ended the efforts for a real two-state solution. Sharon built a wall on the arbitrarily drawn border of Israel and expanded more settlements in the West Bank. He also unilaterally withdrew the settlements from Gaza outside any negotiated deal with the Palestinians. The success of Hamas in the 2006 elections and its eventual takeover of Gaza in 2007 ended the idea of finding a solution acceptable to all Palestinians. Salam Fayyad, a pragmatic and less idealistic Palestinian bureaucrat and a World Bank economist trusted by the Americans, who was earlier parachuted in to become Finance Minister, was appointed as Prime Minister.

The strategy seems to be two-pronged: to gain the support or consent of more Palestinians for a partial deal with Israel, and at the same time get prepared to contain and suppress dissent. An integral part of the strategy is to assure Israel of its secure borders in order to convince it to withdraw from much of the West Bank. It also involves the complete isolation of Hamas from the process. Gaza will remain outside the plan in the hopes that one day it will be back under the control of the PA. The implicit perception behind the agreement is that in return for providing security for Israel in the West Bank, the PA, backed by the section of the Palestinian middle class who supports it, will have a semi-sovereign state in much of the West Bank.

The PA can count on most of its 150,000 or so employees plus other Palestinian salariats working for the private sector and NGOs. The livelihood of these people depends on the PA and its relations with Israel and its funding allies. The NGOs, which mushroomed by the thousands after the Oslo accord with the help of European and North American donors, have played an important role in the expansion of Palestinian civil society, yet, they have had an implicit function in class formation. More and more educated Palestinians were attracted to these NGOs with relatively well-paid and secure salaries. In a matter of a few years Ramallah and some other Palestinian cities were filled with expensive houses and four-star hotels and restaurants to serve this new middle class and the foreign investors. Rich American Palestinians started building their summer residences and mansions in their villages of origin.

On the security side, it is estimated that over 25,000 (some estimate as high as 60,000) Palestinian personnel are engaged in border security, intelligence, and police activities, forming in relative terms, one of the largest security and police forces in the world. The top priority has been maintaining law and order, hunting down Hamas supporters inside the West Bank, and protecting security along the wall. The U.S. Security mission (USSC) has been training the Palestinian Security Force (PASF), and the National Security Force (NSF) under the direction of an American general in Jordan. Palestinian NSF is now in direct contact with their Israeli counterparts The British and Canadian forces are also engaged in training. In fact, the Canadian Conservative government recently cut its funding of the UNRWA, the UN organization that assists Palestinian refugees, and redirected part of the money to the Palestinian Authority for security purposes.

Despite current problems around the lifting of the settlements freeze, reaching some sort of agreement between the present hawkish government of Israel and the PA is possible. The PA has of course the option of threatening to dissolve itself and force Israel to take over the administration of the West Bank and face the ensuing anarchy. But given the high stakes, it’s unlikely the PA will resort to such a drastic measure.

If an agreement were to be reached it would likely include some land swaps, the removal of some settlements, and the creation of a semi-“state” for Palestinians. This state, with its unique features, cannot possibly be a full-fledged sovereign state. Territorially, apart from Gaza and its maritime borders over which the PA currently has no jurisdiction, the new Palestinian state may not even share much border with the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, areas Israel is trying to keep under its control. Israel has lots of agricultural and industrial interests in the very fertile Jordan valley and will try to hold on to them as much as it can. The Palestinians may not even have control over the underground water of the West Bank.

There are three aquifer basins in the West Bank, all of which are mainly controlled and used by Israel. They provide 35 per cent of Israel’s water supply. The new Palestinian state would not have a military – although it would have a very strong police force and internal and border security and intelligence services. The new state would have limitations in its foreign relations and its ability to establish foreign embassies in the West Bank.

Considering that only a section of Palestinian middle classes support the PA, and given the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the new state, inheriting much discontent and unfulfilled promises, would have no other choice but to rule by force and suppression of dissent, hence the creation of yet another dictatorship in the Middle East. To appease the religious zealots, already the draft constitution has declared Islamic Shari’a “the main source of legislation” (Article 4), and has given religious courts the authority on “personal status” matters based on Shari'a. So much for the dreams of an independent, secular, and democratic Palestinian state.

Obviously, the one-and-a-half-state solution will not resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Real peace will only be achieved when a pro-peace Israeli government, with the support of progressive Israelis, is ready to help create a real and viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders (with minor land swaps); when Jerusalem is declared an open city and the capital of both states; and when the rights of the Palestinian refugees are recognized and their status resolved on the basis of international conventions and UN Resolutions. Palestinians, for their part, need to resolve their differences and make peace with Israel, while working toward establishing a secular and democratic Palestinian state. Only then can the basis for a final peace be laid.

A shorter version of this commentary was published in Open Democracy, October 26, 2010.

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