Bernard Spiegal

It is not a requirement of belief, that prayers are answered. People pray anyway, often in situations when more materially substantial actions are not available, either to salve a hurt, or correct a wrong.

So it is with the optimistically titled two-state solution. It had all but expired as a meaningful, let alone just, approach to resolving the Palestine/Israel impasse. But now we find that various international actors seek to resuscitate the depleted body of an idea that can hardly sustain itself. An act of faith, to be sure.

For reasons previously discussed here and here, from my perspective, a two-state ‘solution’ could never be what it claimed to be: a solution to the Palestine/Israel impasse. But now it is being resurrected by international actors that include the USA, UK, EU, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE with, perhaps, more than a touch of desperation. As the poem has it:  Always keep a-hold of Nurse/ For fear of finding something worse.

Significant danger

This revived enthusiasm for a two-state approach represents a significant danger to hopes of justice with peace for Palestinians and Palestine; and, indeed, for Israel and Israelis. However inadequate a two-state approach may have been in the past, it is now even more unjustified than previously, whether Israel supports it or not. Currently, it does not, but one can imagine a situation where, via threats and inducements from the states and others identified above, not least the USA, it will come round to accepting the existence of some sort of Palestinian state, at least in name. If Israel does buy into, though, it will be on Israel’s terms – that will not auger well for Palestinian interests. 

The form of a state; or the substance of a state?

It is difficult to see that Israel would accept in practice a Palestinian state able to enact meaningful sovereignty within its boundaries. That would have some sort of armed force, that would control a substantial landmass that is contiguous, allowing for free movement within its boundaries, this as the necessary prerequisites for cultural, religious and economic flourishing; that would control its natural resources, along with its air-space, sea-space and electronic spectrum.  

What it might accept, is a denuded, neutered, utterly dependent Palestinian entity, subsisting in a shrunken geographical area, that is, in practice, devoid of meaningful sovereignty yet has the superficial trappings of a state: a flag, and anthem, a constitution (of sorts). Israel itself will remain a Jewish supremacist state, as enshrined in its 2018 Nation State law, surely a bitter pill to swallow for the 20% of Israel’s population that is Palestinian.  Israel will remain the power in the region -economically, militarily.

There are some 750,000 Jewish settlers living in (as of January 2023) 144 settlements, along with 100 Israeli illegal outposts, in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem.  The settlements box-in and surround Palestinian villages and towns, thereby enabling Jewish settlers, aided by the IDF and Border Police, to prevent or allow Palestinian movement on a whim.  And the whims operate daily.

Are 750,000 Jewish settlers to be moved back to Israel?  And if not moved, would a significant proportion agree to come under Palestinian sovereignty to ensure that the new state controls a contiguous landmass?

Durable?

How long a two-state outcome would hold, is an open question. We need to recall here that the 2018 Nation State law ‘views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value’ and the state will ‘act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.’  Given the drift to the right and to fundamentalist religious orthodoxy of a significant proportion of the Israeli population, not least among the young, how will they respond to what they would perceive as the ‘loss’ of what they call Judea and Sameria? 

If some sort of two-state deal is conjured, will the fundamentalists be contained within Israel’s new borders, or will they be straining at the leash to undertake incursions into the places they deem holy, but are formally within Palestinian territory? Can any Israelis government survive without taking their requirements into account? To the extent that they will be taken into accounts, so will the notional Palestinian state be diluted in the key area of its sovereign authority and reach.  

Palestinians: the younger generation

An earlier iteration of the two-state solution envisaged that a Palestinian state would have sovereignty over 22% of the land mass of historic Palestine, a truncated state even then. It seems unlikely that under any revived two-state dispensation that a Palestinian state would get as much as 22%. 

And what of young Palestinians, in particular? Will they willingly accept a two-state outcome that effectively, permanently, without horizon of hope, kills the possibility of ever returning to the stolen towns and villages where their parents and grandparents once lived?

It is not an accident that a key – a key to the door of their stolen houses – is a Palestinian symbol, of displacement, memory and resistance.  It is well-known that people indigenous to a land have a relationship to it that is deep and enduring. A patina of international legitimacy for what would in practice be a hobbled Palestinian state is unlikely to neutralise or cancel that. We can therefore anticipate that, sooner or later, armed or unarmed Palestinian incursions into Israel will occur. There is no need to spell out here the likely Israeli response.

Now is now

If ten or fifteen years ago one could imagine a two-state outcome that had at least a hope of viability, those potential moments have surely passed. Israel’s post 7^th October wreaking of genocidal carnage in Gaza, along with the ramped-up Israeli violence meted out in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has surely closed the door on a generation of young Palestinians being willing, passively, to accept a so-called ‘solution’ that is but the shadow of a fully-formed, meaningfully sovereign state entity. 

Should such a ‘settlement’ be imposed, it is hard to believe that, in particular, young Palestinians’ disaffection with the arrangements will be contained within the boundaries of an artificial rump of a factitious state.

Israelis, too, traumatised and vengeful as result of 7^th October, enculturated since birth to view Palestinians through a racist, dehumanising lens, will have little appetite for a Palestinian state on their doorstep.  

Wider context

What perhaps has changed, is the wider geo-political environment within which the Palestine/Israel impasse subsists. Across the world, popular opinion in support of Palestinians has erupted and condemnation of Israel has grown, especially among the young, not only in the global south, but in the West as well.

Support for BDS continues to increase. Part of its inherent strength is that it is international. The mere fact that, for example, the UK and Germany exert strenuous effort to ban or marginalise it, and Israel devotes significant resources in the attempt to counter its influence, is testament to its actual and latent power to impose costs on Israel.

However reprehensible is the support given to Israel by, for example, the USA, UK, the EU and others, positions are shifting in response to the horrors Israel is perpetrating, and in the face of sustained, mass protest across the world.

South Africa has led the world by sparking international law to life at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charging Israel with genocide against the Palestine people. That court found that Israel had a plausible case to answer and has imposed six provisional measures designed to halt alleged genocidal actions. At the date of writing, Israel appears not to be implementing those measures.

At the same time, in a separate case, the ICJ has been asked by the UN General Assembly to comment on ’the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.’  Fifty-two states and three international organisations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union and the Arab League submitted comments to the court.

International law does not exist in a vacuum, its capacity to enforce its findings are limited, most particularly because power resides in the UN Security Council where its five permanent members – China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States of America – have the power of veto, a power that the USA in particular has used to protect Israel from censure or the imposition of sanctions.

A new dynamic?

Are we seeing a new dynamic emerging, the immediate prompt being Israel’s almost unbelievable actions in Gaza? Is it now more meaningful than previously to speak about ‘international civil society opinion’ and its potential to affect governments’ decisions in respect of Israel? Is Israel becoming a liability to, for example, the US? Where once it was seen as beneficial to America’s wider interests, now this previously close ally acts as though it can disregard its key sponsor, thereby potentially disrupting America’s wider interests in the Middle East and the global south. 

Given the general turbulence around Palestine/Israel, the time may be approaching, perhaps has already arrived, when International Law has acquired more heft than has previously been the case; and that we may see a growing reluctance by Israel’s allies to deploy a Security Council veto in its favour.  Matter to pursue in future articles.

 Postscript

For a cogent, wider perspective on two-state proposals it’s worth watching a short ICHAD video by Jeff Halper.