Written evidence from Anglo Israel Association (MEP0008)
(I) The Obstacles to the Achievement of a Two-State Solution
Asher Susser
In outlining the obstacles to the achievement of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians the following could be listed as the most prominent:
The Unbridgeable Narratives and their Political Impact
The intensity and duration of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have created a profound sense of hostility and mistrust on both sides, exacerbated further by perceptions of historical victimhood and righteousness that both Israelis and Palestinians believe with great passion.
An unbridgeable abyss separates the Arab Palestinian and Zionist historical narratives. Zionism, in the widely held Jewish perspective, is a heroic project of national revival and restored dignity and self-respect. Jewish national liberation, statehood and sovereignty are the epitome of defiance and self-defense against the horrific historical fate of the Jewish people. Israel’s foundation in 1948, therefore, was an achievement of historical justice for the most oppressed of all peoples. The Jewish people, in their greatest victory in 2000 years, had literally risen from the ashes of horrendous destruction to victory and political independence within just three years, as described in the Israeli narrative as the revolutionary transition “from Shoah to revival” (in Hebrew: mi-Shoah le-tequma).
For the Palestinians the complete opposite is true. The narratives do not just differ. They are absolutely and irreconcilably opposed to one another. Zionism, in the Palestinian view, is not about self-defense or justice. It is all about net aggression from the first Jewish settlement in Palestine, but especially as of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate established after World War I, against the wishes of the local Arab population. The memory of the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Israelis in 1948, the loss of their homeland, their dispersal and refugeedom are at the core of the Palestinian collective identity and their self-perception of victimhood. This is the Palestinian formative collective experience and the very essence of Palestinian-ness. Aptly put by the American-Palestinian historian, Beshara Doumani: The "shared memories of the traumatic uprooting of their society and the experiences of being dispossessed, displaced, and stateless" were to "come to define 'Palestinian-ness.'"
Palestinian-ness carries within it a profound sense of historical injustice into which the Palestinian people were born. For the Palestinians, therefore, the independence of Israelis their disaster, in Arabic:“yawm istiqlaliqum yawm nakbatina.”The Palestinians yearn to turn the clock of history back and reverse the consequences of Israel’s creation in 1948 and its expansion in 1967. Israelis, therefore, live in a world of perpetual uncertainty concerning long term Arab objectives. Do the Arabs intend to put an end to Israel’s occupation of Arab territories in the war of 1967, or do they still really aspire to put an end to Israel?
Israelis are not sure of Arab intensions and are forever preoccupied with security, checkpoints, fences, “iron domes” and occupation and even a nuclear option. For the Arabs this only means more Israeli aggressive hegemonic design that provokes Arab distrust of Israeli intentions and discourages any serious thought or discussion of genuine reconciliation or normalization. The Palestinians argue that Israeli security requirements in the West Bank are actually part of an inbred occupation mentality of the Israelis, rather than a real defensive need. The Arab unwillingness to normalize with Israel, in turn, only serves to reinforce Israeli insecurity, and thus the security/hegemony vicious circle of mistrust is perpetually set in place.
The Divergent Contours of the Arab-Israeli and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflicts
The conflicts between Israel and the Arab states and between Israel and the Palestinians differ in their fundamentals. In the conflict with the Arab states the issues on the table relate to the conquests made by Israel in 1967. On the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967 the Arab states that had lost territory in the war with Israel - Egypt, Syria and Jordan - were entitled to retrieve their territory in exchange for peace with Israel, that is, the “land for peace” formula. Indeed, Egypt and Jordan (after the kingdom disengaged from the West Bank in 1988) made their peace with Israel on that basis and Israel and Syria were very close to doing the same in the mid-1990s. Both in theory and in practice the Arab states that border on Israel, ever since 1967, have made demands on Israel that relate solely to the “1967 file”, that is, to Israel’s territorial expansion in 1967 and not to Israel’s existence, as of 1948.
The Palestinian-Israeli dimension of the conflict is very different. Here there are clearly two sets of issues: the 1967 file, which includes matters relating to the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, such as settlements, borders and Jerusalem. Then there is the 1948 file in which there are two critical questions raised by the Palestinians, both of which go beyond the 1967 occupation. Moreover, these questions relate to the very existential core of Israel’s being as the nation state of the Jewish people. One is the issue of the “right of return” of the 1948 refugees and their descendants to their original homes that are now situated in what has become Israel. The other is the rejection of Israel’s definition as the nation state of the Jewish people, which many of Israel’s Palestinian citizens strongly resent as exclusionary, denying them full equality. Both of these positions are seen by most Israeli Jews as designed to undermine their national ethos and their inherent right to self-determination in a state of their own, the raison d’etre of over a century of struggle since the beginnings of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century.
From the Palestinian point of view SC Resolution 242 of November 1967 was inherently deficient. The Palestinians and Palestine are not mentioned in the resolution. The resolution was intended as a basis for negotiations between Israel and the Arab states from which Israel had occupied territory in the war of June that year. The Palestinians, not yet recognized as autonomous players in the conflict, were not even referred to in the rather minimalistic reference to a just resolution of the refugee question. Indeed the resolution was designed to deal with the 1967 file as part of the interstate conflict between Israel and the neighboring Arab states, whereby the Palestinian dimension was to be dealt with in Israel’s negotiations with Jordan. Resolution 242 was not about 1948. It therefore took many years for the PLO to accept the resolution and it never really did so fully and unequivocally. The resolution was eventually accepted by the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s quasi-parliamentary body, only in 1988, and even then the acceptance had various caveats and reservations.
The Oslo Accords were based specifically on Resolution 242. What one could call “the Oslo dynamic” seemed to be narrowing the Palestinian issue down to the 1967 dimensions of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority (PA) established under the auspices of the Oslo Accords essentially inherited the PLO. The PLO continued to exist formally as the supreme Palestinian political authority, but in fact it became an empty shell. The PA had two important elected institutions, the Presidency and the Legislative Assembly. Both of these were elected solely by the people of the West Bank and Gaza, and thus, as opposed to the PLO that represented all Palestinians everywhere, in Palestine and in the diaspora, the PA only represented the people of the West Bank and Gaza. The limited representation institutionalized the process whereby the question of Palestine was being reduced to the two-state dimensions of the West Bank and Gaza, placing the issue of the diaspora and refugee return very much on the political backburner, or at least so it seemed from the Israeli perspective.
Moreover, it was on the basis of this understanding that the Israelis sought a formal trade-off to end the conflict. Israel would make what it believed were generous concessions on territory, settlements and Jerusalem, the key components of the 1967 file, in exchange for the closure of the 1948 file. This meant that the Palestinians would rescind their demand for refugee return to Israel proper, and instead would have refugees return to the future state of Palestine, or resettled in third countries. However, this trade-off never materialized. The Camp David summit convened by US President Clinton in the summer of 2000, to achieve an agreement on this basis, ended in failure.
The Failure of Camp David (2000)and its Lasting Effect
The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that began in July 2000 at Camp David and continued at various venues ended in January 2001 at Taba in Egypt. Despite the second Intifada that raged in the West Bank and Gaza from the end of September 2000 the Israelis and the Palestinians continued to negotiate, but agreement remained elusive. There was progress on some issues and profound disagreement on others. On territory Israel started with an offer to withdraw from some 80 percent of the West Bank and Gaza which was increased by the last round of the negotiations to over 90 percent, with land swaps to compensate for some of the rest.
On Jerusalem the parties agreed in principle to divide the city on an ethnic basis, which meant that Jewish residential areas, including those established after 1967, would remain part of Israel’s capital. Arab residential areas would become part of the future capital of Palestine. Deep differences remained on the issue of sovereignty over Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif. The Palestinians demanded that the area be solely under Palestinian sovereignty, a demand that Israel would not accept, considering that Temple Mount was the most important of holy sites to the Jewish people. Various formulae for sharing sovereignty were not accepted by the parties either. On the question of the Palestinian refugees’ “right of return” no real progress was made at all throughout the negotiations.
At the root of the discord were the different points of departure of the parties concerned, as clearly reflected in the divergent perceptions of the territorial issue. Israel proposed what it believed to be a generous compromise, offering more than any government had done before. The rejection of the offer by the Palestinians as insufficient was seen by the Israelis as a rigid “all or nothing approach.” But the Palestinians argued that Israel already possessed 78 percent of historical Palestine, that is, post-1948 Israel. All that was being negotiated now were the mere 22 percent that remained, and on that, the Palestinians contended, they would not and could not compromise. For the Israelis the starting part of the negotiation was in 1967, but for the Palestinians it was in 1948.
Israel’s demand for finality on the basis of the 1967 issues was fundamentally unacceptable to the Palestinians, and as apparent as this was on territorial matters it was all the more so on the refugee question. The issue of Palestinian refugee return is governed by UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948. As for the Palestinians, the resolution is interpreted as confirming the unequivocal and absolute right of the refugees to return to their original homes and properties. Israel has never interpreted the resolution as conferring such an absolute “right of return” and demands that it reserve its own sovereign right to determine who does or does not enter its territory.
Essentially Israel seeks to include or contain the refugee question and Resolution 194 within the framework of Resolution 242, that is, within the territorial limits of the West Bank and Gaza, or the 1967 file. According to Israeli logic, refugee return ought to be to the future state of Palestine and not to Israel. But for the Palestinians refugee return according to resolution 194 had to be added to resolution 242 and not contained within it, which meant refugee return to Israel proper and not to the West Bank and Gaza. After all, the Palestinians argued, the refugees did not originally come from the West Bank and Gaza but from Israel proper. The refugee question could not therefore be subsumed in the 1967 file. It belonged in the 1948 file and had to be treated accordingly.
This did not mean that the Palestinians realistically expected or demanded that millions of refugees inundate Israel. But to obtain some sense of justice, they contended, there had to be an element of refugee return to Israel proper. The number, to be agreed, also had to be large enough to allow the Palestinian refugees a real freedom of choice. The Israelis, so the Palestinians argued, were solely responsible for the creation of the refugee problem in the first place and it could not therefore be the Israelis to decide who would return. Israel had to recognize the principle of the “right of return” and accept individual free Palestinian choice on the implementation of this right. Israel never accepted that it was solely responsible for the refugee problem that resulted from a war that the Arabs had initiated, with the declared intention of destroying the newborn Jewish state. Not solely responsible for the problem, the Israelis would not accept sole responsibility for its solution either.
In the “Clinton parameters” of December 2000, in which the US president summed up his understanding of the contours of a possible settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, his proposal on the refugees demonstrated a clear preference for refugee return to the future state of Palestine rather than to Israel proper. It was that part of the parameters that was most scathingly criticized by the Palestinian leadership, focusing their complaint especially on the denial of Palestinian freedom of choice in this regard.
For the Israelis the right of refugee return was seen as a form of subversion of the very raison d’etre of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. As relations between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel deteriorated, especially following the unprecedented riots in various parts of the country in solidarity with the Second Intifada in October 2000, the idea of anything more than a symbolic return of refugees became ever more unacceptable to the great majority of Israelis.
The Refugee Conundrum
Israel, as already noted, sought finality or “end of conflict” on the basis of a solution to the 1967 questions. But by demanding a formal “end of conflict” the Israel’s had contributed inadvertently to the resurfacing of the 1948 questions and to the introduction of the core historical narratives of the parties into the heart of the negotiating process. One could hardly negotiate “the end of conflict” without finding a satisfactory solution for its beginning, and for the Palestinians that could not mean anything other than 1948, the Nakba, displacement and return. The Israelis finally understood that that there was no simple trade-off of 1948 for 1967. Finality would have to mean satisfaction for the Palestinians not only on the 1967 questions, but also on some significant element of 1948.
Indeed 1948 and refugee return was very much on the Palestinian agenda, as a matter of principle. If it appeared initially that the Oslo dynamic was shifting the 1948 questions onto the diplomatic backburner, after the collapse of Camp David that was no longer true. The Oslo dynamic was gradually but consistently being reversed as 1948 regained increasing prominence in the Palestinian national discourse. This was evident in various key Palestinian documents that have been formulated and published in recent years.
In the summer of 2006, leading Palestinian figures, who were imprisoned at the time in Israeli jails, representing Fatah, Hamas and other key factions drew up the “Document of National Reconciliation” (in Arabic: wathiqat al-wifaq al-watani), commonly known as “The Prisoners Document.”It reiterated the inalienable “right of return” as enshrined in Resolution 194 and urged the international community to implement the resolution that called for refugee “return and compensation.” It is important to note the emphasis not on return or compensation but on return and compensation, even though Resolution 194 specifically speaks of compensation only for “those choosing not to return.”
The Political Program of the Hamas-led National Unity Government established in March 2007 similarly emphasized the centrality of the “right of return” of the refugees “to their land and property that they had left [that is, to nowhere except Israel proper] and for their [receipt of] compensation.” The statement also made a reference to the need for any agreement reached by the PLO with Israel to be brought before the entire Palestinian people “inside and outside [of Palestine]” for approval, thereby further reasserting the centrality of the Diaspora constituency, in contrast to the earlier Oslo dynamic that focused on the West Bank and Gaza.
The above documents were resolutions based on intra-Palestinian agreement that included Hamas. But even Fatah, when left on its own was no different on this matter. In August 2009 Fatah held its sixth conference and the political program of the conference was similarly emphatic about “return and compensation” and the rejection of resettlement (in Arabic: tawtin) as a possible alternative to return. Moreover, the program stressed the need to maintain the ties of the national movement with the Diaspora and the Palestinians in “the lands of 1948” [that is, Israel], thereby presenting a nationalist vision that went far beyond the West Bank and Gaza.
Even the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of March 2002, as reaffirmed by the Arab League Summit in March 2007, had a problematic reference to the refugee question from the Israeli point of view. The Summit reaffirmed its commitment to comprehensive peace with Israel based on a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, as well as its commitment to “a just and agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.” This was to be “in accordance with UN Resolution 194 of 1948, while rejecting all forms of resettlement (tawtin)…” On the one hand, the suggestion of an “agreed solution” was conciliatory towards Israel, but on the other, the rejection of “all forms of resettlement” left return to Israel proper as the only option, and that could hardly be the basis for an agreement with Israel.
There can be no question as to the salience and preeminence of the “right of return” in the Palestinian national narrative and current discourse. The consequent difficulty for the Palestinian leadership to formally concede on this issue is seemingly insurmountable. At the same time, however, serious scholarly research also shows that there is a perceptible gap between positions of principle and how the refugees actually relate to the matter in practical terms.
Amongst the refugees there is a discernible conflict of interest between “nationalist orthodoxies” and “local material concerns.”While there is a genuine rhetorical, emotional and ideological commitment to the “right of return” by Palestinians generally speaking and by the refugees in particular, the passage of time, the passing of the Nakba generation and the simple exigencies of daily life have all taken their toll on ideological commitments. Some scholarly work has shown that the“extremity of circumstances” forces the refugees “to adjust their aspirations and renounce certain closely held beliefs.”Many other scholars have tended to avoid the question of what it meant for the generations born in exile “to return to a place they never left.”In reality there was a “growing gap between the maximalist positions… and the pragmatism of refugees, who often distinguish between a symbolic recognition of the right of return and its actual implementation.”
Even so, it is extremely unlikely that the Israelis will be persuaded, on an issue that they regard as existential, to accept any formula that rests on guesswork on the probabilities of actual refugee return. They would rather depend on their decision and their complete control of the entry of refugees to Israel proper in the framework of a future agreement.
The Mutually Intrusive Perceptions of Two States
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians accept the principle of two states for the two peoples. In practice, however, the respective positions that the players actually hold on the two-state solution are incompatible. Their perceptions of statehood conflict with the complete sovereignty of the neighboring state, as their respective conceptions of statehood protrude into the territory of their next-door neighbors.
The PLO accepted partition and the two-state idea a quarter of a century ago in 1988, in its Declaration of Independence. But this acceptance of partition was rather convoluted and anything but whole-hearted. According to the declaration, the partition resolution of 1947 “despite the historical injustice” inherent in it, “resulting in the dispersal [of the Palestinian people] and depriving them of their right to self-determination,” did nevertheless provide international legitimacy for Palestinian “sovereignty and national independence.” It is especially worthy of note that partition does not satisfy Palestinian rights to self-determination, but only to sovereignty and independence. Self-determination in PLO parlance is equated solely with statehood in all of Palestine and partition is described as a denial of this right, according to the text of this very same declaration.
Two states, therefore, as a neat division and clear act of finality was not acceptable to the Palestinians without some element of correction of the historical injustice they saw in the partition itself, thus the continued demand for some measure of refugee return to Israel proper. The Palestinian intrusion into Israel with refugees is for the Israelis a defiance of the basic logic of two states. For Israel, acquiescence in a Palestinian state was at least partly due to the expectation that the future state of Palestine would be the home of the refugees who sought return. It made no sense to the Israelis for a Palestinian state to be established, and then for the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel rather than to Palestine.
But, as the Palestinians from Mahmud Abbas down would explain, the 1948 refugees all originally came from places that had become part of Israel. None of them were from the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed many of them presently lived in camps in the occupied territories. It made no sense to them to speak of “return” to where they already were or to places from which they had not come originally. As already noted, the Palestinian discourse of recent years of Fatah and Hamas alike has flatly rejected any form of refugee resettlement (tawtin) as part of the solution. Even in the unofficial Geneva accords between moderate Israelis and Palestinians achieved in 2003, there was no mutually acceptable resolution of this refugee conundrum.
Israel has countered with demands both on narrative and security. In the narrative domain Israel has demanded, in various formulations, since shortly after the failure of the Camp David negotiations that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Realizing that there could not be a simple trade-off between the 1967 and the 1948 questions, the Israelis sought a cast-iron barrier between the two in the form of a Palestinian declaration that would essentially mean that refugees would not return to Israel.
For the Palestinians such a declaration was tantamount to an abandonment of the fundamentals of their historical narrative. Recognizing Israel as the nation state of the Jews could be construed to mean Palestinian acceptance of the fact that most, or all, of Palestine was indeed historically Jewish. Needless to say, the Palestinian leadership across the board refused. It was most unlikely that the Palestinians would ever do so, any more than the Zionists would recognize that Eretz Yisrael was historically Arab. Another reason for the Palestinian rejection of the Israeli demand was related to the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. The Palestinians believed that if they recognized Israel as Jewish they might be undermining the civil rights of their Palestinian brethren, who were citizens of Israel, by playing into the hands of some on the far right in Israel, who actively sought to disenfranchise the Arab minority.
Another issue where historical narratives, rights and heritage impeded the negotiations and eroded mutual trust was the fate of Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. For the Muslims it was the third holiest place to Islam after Mecca and Medina, and the place from whence Muhammad the Prophet ascended to heaven. For the Jews it was the holiest of holy places, the site of the remains of the destroyed Second Temple. The Israelis would not accept that the Mount be placed entirely under Muslim sovereignty, and the Palestinians would accept no less. The Israelis demanded control and access to the underground archaeological remains of the Second Temple, which the Palestinians feared would be exploited by Israel to undermine the foundations of the Muslim holy places above ground. The Israelis, for their part, suspected that if the Jews were denied access and control of the archaeological resources the Muslims would gradually remove every remnant of the Jewish past from Temple Mount. Agreement on Temple Mount, like on refugees, remained elusive as narrative, history and heritage were increasingly dragged into the negotiation.
The last round of serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations took place between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmud Abbas in late 2007 and during 2008. Significantly progress was made on the territorial issues of 1967 but not on the 1948 questions. If anything, positions on refugees were hardening and being driven further apart. On refugees Olmert proposed that 5000 refugees be allowed to return to Israel over five years, that is, 1000 a year for five years. In the negotiations, behind closed doors, the Palestinians suggested that 100 thousand refugees (ten thousand a year for ten years) or 150 thousand (15 thousand a year for ten years) be allowed to enter Israel, that is, 20 to 30 times more than Olmert’s suggestion. However, when these numbers were leaked eventually to the media by The Guardian/al-Jazeera revelations in early 2011 they were widely condemned amongst Palestinians as a sell-out. They were then hurriedly and emphatically denied by the Palestinian negotiators who claimed that no ceiling on refugee return had really been discussed.
If the Palestinian perception of statehood intruded into Israel through refugee return, the Israeli intrusion into the prospective state of Palestine came through a variety of security arrangements that the Israelis deemed to be vital. If a formal “end of conflict” agreement remained elusive the Israelis could never rid themselves entirely of the apprehension that the West Bank might be transformed into an aggressive platform for future attack against Israel. Israel therefore demanded not only that Palestine be demilitarized or non-militarized, a demand the Palestinians were willing to discuss, but also that Israeli forces maintain certain security zones in the Palestinian state, especially along the Jordan Valley, that Israel remain in control of the West Bank’s air space as well as the border crossings from Jordan. It was against these demands that the Palestinians lodged their complaint about Israel’s “occupation mentality.”
Conclusion
Discordant historical narratives are at the root of profound and mutual Israeli-Palestinian mistrust. The profound underlying mistrust between the parties gave birth to the governing principle of their negotiations that “nothing was agreed until everything was agreed.”Both Israelis and Palestinians favored this principle, albeit for conflicting reasons. The Palestinians were driven by the fear of an interim arrangement, in which only some issues would be agreed. Their concern was that such an arrangement would allow the Israelis to indefinitely postpone negotiations of the outstanding issues, leaving the Palestinians stranded in a temporary arrangement, which in practice would become final, without ever satisfying their national agenda.
If the Palestinians feared that “interim” would become “final,” the Israelis feared that “final” might become “interim.” The Israelis were concerned about giving away territorial assets for nothing tangible in return. They were troubled by the thought that the Palestinians would “pocket” Israeli concessions without really ending the conflict, and that the territories Israel withdrew from would, just like Gaza, soon become hostile bases of aggression or subversion, converting a future “final” agreement into a temporary one used to undermine Israel rather than keep the peace with it.
Though it was not difficult to explain the reasoning behind the rule that “nothing was agreed until everything was agreed” the principle had a debilitating effect on the negotiations. Since agreeing on everything was virtually impossible, the negotiators were indeed left with nothing, unable to make any real progress on the ground until all issues had been finally agreed. And that was not about to happen any time soon.
Initial mistrust gave rise to principles of negotiation which unintentionally deepened mistrust even further. Mistrust also led to the dragging of the historical narratives into the negotiations especially by the Israelis seeking reassurance from the Palestinians on the 1948 file. Israel’s demands for declarations of finality or for recognition of Israel’s Jewishness were motivated by the fear of the Israelis that refugee return would subvert Israel’s being as the nation state of the Jews. But however one may understand and appreciate the Israeli motivation for these demands they could not possibly be met by the Palestinians without the rewriting of their historical narrative. Dragging the narratives into the negotiation only made matters worse. Palestinian unwillingness to concede on narrative left key Israeli demands unmet and only reinforced Israeli reluctance to make concessions of substance to the Palestinians. Mistrust begets more mistrust. The respective demands that go unmet add fuel to the fire, propelling a vicious cycle of disagreement and further mistrust, and so on and so forth.
(II) The Viability and Potential Opportunities of a Two-State Solution
As difficult as it may be to attain a lasting agreement, there is no solution more viable than the two-state solution. There is no one-state “solution.” The notion that after over a century of conflict and bloodshed, when Israelis and Palestinians are still incapable of achieving a negotiated settlement they should be thrust together into the boiling pot of one state is illogical to say the least. What Czechs and Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Slovenes could not achieve in Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia would hardly be more likely in the one state of Israel-Palestine. In the eyes of Israelis of the right, one state is to be one of Jewish Israeli domination by force of subdued Palestinians. As for one-state supporters from the Palestinian side, one-state is no more than a euphemism for the undoing of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. One state is a formula for endless conflict, bloodshed and eventual civil war.
The Clinton Parameters (December 2000) and the Kerry Principles (December 2016) outline the contours of what may become an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on two states, if and when the parties finally realize that they do not really have better alternatives.
Kerry’s speech included the following six principles:
One: Provide for secure and recognized international borders between Israel and a viable and contiguous Palestine, negotiated on the basis of the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed equivalent swaps.
Two: Fulfill the vision of the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947) of two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Arab.
Three: Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, consistent with two states for two peoples [i.e. no massive return to Israel].
Four: Provide an agreed resolution for Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states.
Five: Satisfy Israel’s security needs and bring a full end, ultimately, to the occupation.
Six: End the conflict and all outstanding claims.
In the meantime it remains essential to preserve the viability of the two-state idea by both parties, even if an agreement is not presently attainable. In the main that means the abstinence from actions that erode the viability of two states, such as new settlement activity by the Israelis or activity by the Palestinians in the international arena designed to delegitimize Israel. On the other hand, both Israel and the Palestinians could separately engage in unilateral actions that would be conducive to the maintenance of the two-state option. Israel could gradually redeploy its forces in the West Bank allowing for greater Palestinian contiguity and freedom of movement. The Palestinians could engage in the building of the institutions of their future statehood, while also making the added effort to enhancing security in the areas under their control, especially if and when the Israelis engage in redeployment.
For a two state solution to be viable, the future state of Palestine would have to eventually consist of a contiguous West Bank territory that would include 90 + percent of the West Bank, to which would be added land from Israel proper, a land swap in exchange for the blocs of Jewish settlement in the West Bank (the blocs are about 7-8 percent of the West Bank) that would be annexed to Israel. The West Bank would be linked by means of a safe passage (a highway, and/or a tunnel or railway) that would traverse Israeli territory to the Gaza Strip (the distance is only some 25 miles).
The viability of the future State of Palestine (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) would be significantly enhanced by economic links to Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Special relations with Jordan in the form of a possible confederation between Palestine and Jordan have been discussed for many years. For reasons of history, geography, topography, and demography (about half or more of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin) a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation would make a great deal of sense, linking Palestine to its Arab hinterland. This is an idea that has been supported in the past by many if not most Jordanians and Palestinians.
It must be emphasized, however, that the idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation should not be proposed for implementation except after the establishment of the independent state of Palestine. Proposing the idea beforehand would be seen by Palestinians as an illegitimate effort to sideline them by Jordanian premature intervention. Jordanians would be equally suspicious of what they would see as an effort to drag them into the Palestinian malaise and to “dump” the Palestinians on them against their own real wishes and interests. Furthermore, this is not an idea to be publicly proposed, and definitely not imposed, by outsiders. It is the business of the Palestinians and the Jordanians to be freely negotiated by them alone, unless they themselves seek otherwise.