It’s back in the news yet again. So lets say a miracle happens, Israel and Palestine agree to a two state solution. Palestine gets the west bank, east Jerusalem and the gaza strip. Israel recognises the Palestinian state. Everyone rejoices…
Then what?
How could the new nation state of Palestine ever be a viable successful nation? 4 Million people with two non-contiguous land areas and no significant natural resources, very little infrastructure and land that isn’t particularly productive. Is there an actual plan as to how you’d turn this into something other than a failed state waiting to happen? What industries will there be in the new state, what will they export?
BTW, I’m actually pretty neutral on the entire issue, both Israel and the Palestinians have done terrible scummy things, the whole thing is a mess and everyone is to blame. I just find it bizarre to see people pushing for a “solution” that seems like it’s doomed to end up with a failed state. And to be clear, I’m not in favour of a one state solution and I’m not in favour of Israel ceasing to exist, I don’t see any freaking actual solution that has a hope of working out being talked about by anyone.
If you look at the original plan for partition, it’s not obvious that one side has the better of the deal. Israel made itself into a prosperous nation, so there is no reason that the Palestinians couldn’t do the same.
It could work, as long of course as the Palestinians don’t turn their state into a base for operations against Israel. And unfortunately that’s exactly what some of them would do. The moderate Palestinians need to forswear the extremists if they want to persuade Israelis of their good intentions. And, yes, I think the same goes for the Israelis.
Then Hamas or an equivalent group steps up their terrorist attacks on Israel in an effort to get Israel to react. Then either Israel reacts, and the UN passes some resolutions condemning Israel and Hamas, or Israel doesn’t react, and Hamas steps up their attacks even more.
The leaders of the new state could forswear terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist, and Hamas and the equivalent would target them and their supporters for assassination. Then the US and the West could send them foreign aid, which the leaders would steal or give to terrorists, and Iran would send them military aid, which Hamas would use to attack Israel.
The sine qua non of a land-for-peace deal is that Israel shouldn’t give up the land and not get the peace in return.
I think the 2000 Camp David framework and the 2006-2008 negotiations between Mahmoud Abbas and Olmert are probably the most realistic guidelines for how a two state solution would work. The latter negotiations basically had these criteria:
Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods, with a degree of free movement guaranteed.
Israel would annex around 5-6% of land that is legally Palestinian, these are primarily the settlement blocs near the 1967 border, particularly in strategically vital areas which were previously used to stage difficult-to-defend against attacks against Israel in the prior war. If you look at a settlement map, these would largely be the settlements on the “Israeli side” of the West Bank barrier wall, the settlements outside of it would presumably be given up. In exchange, Israel was offering a like acreage of land to Palestine, from legally Israeli territory, to make up for this. I believe a lot of the proposed land was to be around the Gaza Strip, since it’s a very small and crowded area now that’s probably the most reasonable area.
Israel would guaranteed a corridor of free movement between Gaza and the West Bank, the corridor would have Israeli sovereignty but Israel would guarantee free movement along it.
Israel and Palestine would recognize various integrated institutions, like a joint business climate, cooperation on water, utilities, banking and tourism. It’d basically be like a special relationship between two sovereign states where they integrate a lot of things. Part of this would be necessary because a lot of the State infrastructure needed to provide structure and stability to its people is largely absent in Palestine at the moment.
As best we can tell Olmert and Abbas were pretty close to agreement, apparently the biggest sticking point was how much land Israel was going to annex and how much it was going to give to the Palestinians, and the quality of the respective lands. But they were decently close to agreement.
Why did it fall apart? Mainly because Palestine is too unstable to make agreements. During these negotiations, which were ongoing for almost two years you had the election of Hamas in Gaza and immediate Israeli and international reactions when Hamas refused to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. This lead to both the Hamas-Fatah Civil War inside Palestine, and the Gaza War between Israel and Gaza.
Is a two-state solution possible? I think it probably is, but it has to be based on realism. Look, the Arab League/Egypt attacked Israel in 1948, and lost. The 1949 Armistice Line dramatically reduced Palestinian territory, and this has been broadly accepted. They went to war again in 1967, and Egypt has basically occupied all of Arab Palestine ever since (it pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but retains a lot of external control of it.) Any realistic peace is going to recognize Israel is going to make territorial gains in the West Bank–the only way to have avoided that would have been to not have declared war against Israel in 1967 and then have lost said war. I think Israel has historically been pretty reasonable in that it’s willing to give up some of its own territory (victors in wars usually don’t do that, for what it’s worth.)
The current Israeli administration is so far right wing they likely will never agree to any peace, but just like in America, Israel is in a far right political mood now but that won’t last forever. Eventually Israelis who favor peace will likely be back in political power.
Probably the biggest thing Israel could do is to focus on improving quality of life in the West Bank and Gaza, because the sort of political unification that is necessary in the PLA for there to be someone who they can send to the negotiating table that can actually agree to something the Palestinians will abide, requires societal stability that just isn’t there in Palestine at the moment. Israel has a lot to do with that because it’s the occupying power in the West Bank, and it has basically walled off Gaza and made it like a tiny country under siege.
I don’t know if there will ever be peace, but if there is I think it’ll be roughly along the lines I’ve spelled out here.
Thanks for that Martin, I think it misses a few key points about the long term feasibility of a future Palestinian state (two state solution style). Israel succeeded in becoming a modern prosperous country, but it has always had a single contiguous landmass and a large coastline to build ports on (large compared to the gaza strip anyway).
The West Bank is landlocked, and it doesn’t even have a navigable river leading to an ocean port. All trade would have to go through Israel or much longer routes through Jordan to reach a seaport. Israel would agree to a safe passage corridor, but it’s their sovereign territory , in case of any dispute between Palestine / Israel, they can cripple the west bank economy just by demanding inspections or otherwise slowing the passage of trade goods. Similarly they’d allow Palestine to operate airports in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but as I understand it Israel would still maintain absolute control over the entire airspace.
Would Israel ever allow Palestine to become an arms manufacturing base (for sale to other countries), or allow them to build up their own military that was genuinely able to stand against Israel? Would they be allowed to run their own foreign policy and accept investment or military aid from any country they want to?
Overall a two state solution Palestine would be utterly dependent on Israel, it would be a nation state in name only, which to me seems like a highly unstable solution that’s going to end up one way or another in Palestine / Israel war, then Israel occupation and we’re back where we started from.
So why push for a solution that has no realistic chance of being stable?
There are plenty of landlocked countries in the world (and Palestine would not even be one of them anyway). Again, look at the partisan map, and you’ll see just how much coastline the Arab part would have gotten. Palestine would have to do significant PR campaign to lure back much of the brain drain that has taken place over the previous decades. I think that would be a key step needed to make a successful state. Without an entrepreneurial class, yeah, there isn’t much hope for a prosperous future. And without prosperity, you’re going to get civil unrest not unlike what we see today.
The 1947 map is irrelevant to a future two state solution. I’m talking about a future state based on a realistic future agreement. Palestine is not getting Acre or the Golan Heights, those have been fully annexed into Israel. So yes the majority of the future Palestinian State (the West Bank) is landlocked. There is no proposal I’m aware of to give a corridor of land connecting the two that Palestine would have Sovereignty over.
And there is no example in the world of a successful stable nation with the geographical challenges that Palestine would have. I somehow don’t see you could usefully compare Palestine and Lichenstein, Andorra or San Marino.
No, it’s not and that that’s where you are making your error. That is not to say that the Partition Map is what the Palestinians will end up with anymore than to say that the Israelis will keep every single settlement that they have stated out. The partition map can play a role as an opening position in the negotiation for one side. It will be up to the negotiations to determine what the final deal will look like.
I’m kinda fond on this extreme solution … very extreme … so it’ll never happen:
Build a massive US military base in the West Bank … I mean HUGE … guaranty the safety of any multinational corporation who builds factories there … put the Palestinians to work with family wage jobs … invest in infrastructure, especially a top quality water system …
What the hell … there’s room for two more stars on the American flag … make them all US citizens … I know exact one Israeli well enough to discuss this with … and her heart is just shredded when she sees how the elderly Palestinians widow women are treated by Hamas … breaks down in tears … it’s just awful how badly these terrorists treat their own … just awful …
No–the 1947 lines are meaningless now. The 1949 Armistice Lines have basically become the accepted legal borders of Israel. Even the most recent resolution didn’t call out Israel for its development of those lines (the original agreement highly suggested Israeli land seized prior to the Armistice was basically to be like a DMZ), and subsequent peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and even Palestine’s own application for UN membership have more or less formalized the 1949 Armistice Line as the legal border of Palestine.
Basically nothing short of defeating Israel in a war will ever change that. It’s akin to the Korean cease fire line, under the original partition of the Koreas legally set the border at the 38th parallel, but no one seriously contests the border isn’t what it is today. It’s been that way too long–and more importantly, war would result from any attempts to change it.
The 1949 Armistice Line (also referred to as the 1967 border, as this was the border in “fact” until the 1967 war and its aftermath), is the starting point for negotiations, not the 1947 UN lines.
I think any realistic two state solution will probably have a period of time in which Palestine is heavily dependent on Israel. Since the rest of the Arab world isn’t exactly likely to help out, and Israel bears some blame for Palestine’s current shitty infrastructure and political culture, there’s really no one else out there who could help Palestine get normalized banking, help build out and maintain utility services to modern standards, assume some level of responsibility for Palestine’s military defense and etc.
The West Bank being land locked isn’t all that big of a deal, their situation is only dire now because Israel and Jordan have basically walled it off, and similarly Israel and Egypt for Gaza. On the part of the Arab states this is because they basically really don’t want any more Palestinians moving to their country (some have already in years past.) If we ever got to a two-state solution it’s presumed the greater stabilization would see better freedom of movement and thus the perception of being “locked in” wouldn’t be so realistic. Being non-contiguous isn’t the end of the world, Alaska isn’t for us, Kaliningrad for Russia, various other examples exist. A free movement corridor would be functionally little different than the Baltic Sea which provides Russia access to Kaliningrad as an alternative to being reliant on going through other countries, and would in fact be less troublesome to cross since I think most proposals for the corridor would be a sort of special highway type thing.
Most important, I think, is that some spirit of shared humanity develops among the young people. Are there cultural exchange programs, tourism, and shared children’s outings to encourage mutual respect and friendship? This may seem naïve, but isn’t this, rather than territorial details, key to long-term peace?
None of that was necessary for peace between Israel and Egypt, or between Israel and Jordan. All that was necessary was an Arab leader in full control of his country’s military willing to give up armed conflict with Israel.
Agreed with that 100%, the singular reason there has been no peace between Palestine and Israel is there has never been a point in time in which a Palestinian ruler with complete control of the militant forces of his country was willing to have peace. Arafat was more or less in control of Palestine, but wasn’t willing to have peace. Mahmoud Abbas was at one point willing to talk peace with Olmert, but half the country was controlled by Hamas at the time, and in fact Fata and Hamas basically had a civil war inside Palestine and then Israel went to war against Hamas controlled Gaza. Obviously no one was in full control.
Israel can be defended for a lot of things it’s done and condemned for a lot of things it’s done, but at the end of the day the biggest reason we haven’t had peace is because no one has ever been fully in control in Palestine. And a good chunk of why that is, is because Israel’s occupation/walling off of Palestine has made it very hard for a stable government that has full control to exist. This is why for there to be peace Israel needs to do more than just make the kind of territorial concessions they’ve already shown a willingness to make, they have to be willing to help some stable government get built up in Palestine to at least a base line level where agreements can be struck. Palestine, and Palestinians, have a much bigger task–they have to aggressively demand this sort of leadership and aggressively shun factions that want war no matter what, as long as those factions have any meaningful power Israel will never make peace.
