The Secular Solution: Debating Israel-Palestine

VIRGINIA TILLEY

The Secular Solution: DebatingIsrael-Palestine

New Left Review 38, Mar-April 2006Available at:

http://newleftreview.org/II/38/virginia-tilley-the-secular-solution-debating-israel-palestine

I appreciate Yoav Peled’s undertaking this review of my book, TheOne-State Solution.1 Some of his criticisms help to move the debate onthe Israeli–Palestinian question forward, and since this was acentral goal of the book, those moments are very welcome. Still,his arguments reflect all-too-common ills plaguing the one-state/two-state debate, in impressively evading both the actualcomplexities of ‘facts on the ground’ that I describe and theurgent need for action that I highlight. He takes some earlysummary statements in the book, regarding a one-state solution,to charge that my argument is over-simplified: ‘real politicallife is a little more complicated than that’, he concludes. Healso dismisses my extended discussion of Zionist doctrine as‘ethereal’, over-absorbed with ‘texts’, and divorced from usefulreality. He agrees that the two-state solution is ‘dead’ yetinterprets this simply as Palestinian ‘defeat’—failing torecognize that it also signifies Zionism’s defeat. Indeed, hisarticle is perplexing in arguing that no views are malleable and,effectively, that no solution is imaginable. Need we be sopessimistic and fatalistic? Can we afford to be? The search foran equitable solution is as urgent and legitimate as ever.

Two central aspects of the book’s agenda, as well as itstheoretical underpinning, seem to have eluded Peled. A first goalof the book, as he acknowledges, is to lay out the empiricalevidence that a viable two-state solution is now dead. Hence theopening chapters offer a dense overview of relevant ‘facts on theground’: the geographic realities of the settlement grid—thathuge and deliberately sprawling network of stone and concretecities, suburbs, industrial zones, and highways that have alreadydissected the West Bank into cantons—as well as the social,political and economic grids underlying them. (While he chides me

for over-simplicity in this section, Peled does not address mostof the evidence I do include: for instance, targeting my two-pagesummary of water politics but ignoring the 36-page argument inwhich it is nested, and citing uncritically the very plans forsettlement withdrawal that I show to be unfeasible.) A furtherchapter explores at length the backing, tacit and otherwise, thatIsrael’s annexation strategies have received from the UnitedStates, and how that backing is secured politically by a matrixof high-profile pro-Israeli ‘research’ and lobbying organizationsthat coordinate with a nation-wide array of small but activegrassroots constituencies regularly mobilized to pressureCongress and the media. Peled ignores this important materialentirely.

The goal of stimulating debate also informed a second aspect ofthe book’s agenda: to free up discussion of a one-state solutionby addressing head-on what is, in my experience, its principalpolitical obstacle—the canon of intimidating and confoundingclaims deployed by mainstream Zionist propaganda tanks (like alocal Zionist federation or ‘Israel Media Team’). As many of usknow to our great frustration, that canon now cripples pragmaticrethinking and frank discussion among the entire internationalcommunity about the fiction—or lie, or swindle—represented by the‘road map’. Especially, it is almost impossible for us to discussa one-state solution without incurring orchestrated Zionistattack as anti-Semitic.2 The second half of my book took on thisZionist edifice in its substantive as well as divisivedimensions, in the hope that exposing ambiguities would help toliberate the social and political analysis that, as Peledcorrectly asserts, is essential to a one-state solution.

Some solid political science theory also underlay this approach,which seems to have run afoul of Peled’s own preferredtheoretical framework. The ineffable realm of values and emotion,wrapped up in ethnic identities and nationalist myths, is alwayscrucial to ethnic-conflict resolution. That realm of belief andemotion may strike some as ‘ethereal’—particularly those whoconsider class struggle to be the only ‘real’ conflict in society—but it packs a solid political punch, nonetheless. Discourseanalysis should be understood to complement rather than competewith socio-economic approaches; to pursue one is hardly todismiss the importance of the other. Since Zionism and the two-state solution both exist as discourses, their analysis seemed totake priority as an opening step. If he did not grasp theseagendas and the theory driving them, it is less surprising that

Peled challenges me for what I did not attempt to do.

One of the most baffling of Peled’s criticisms is his assertionthat I write particularly for a US readership.3 This is mistaken.As noted above, he overlooks entirely my lengthy discussion ofthe internal US political constraints regarding Middle Eastpolicy, as he overlooks my citing the external ones—that neitherEurope nor the Arab states nor the Palestinians have sufficientwill or leverage to alter US policy. Facing these politicalrealities squarely should lead concerned observers to admit thathope for any meaningful change in US government policy must beabandoned and the driving force for change must be soughtelsewhere. The transnational human rights community may nowcomprise the only agent that can create the essential politicalspace for the diplomatic community to consider a one-statesolution: for example, through the international boycott anddivestment campaign now springing up in European, US and South-South human rights networks.

Support for the one-state solution

My interest in addressing a transnational readership alsoreflects the transnational character of its debate. I’m afraidthe ivory tower is aggravating the common misapprehension, sharedby Peled, that arguments for a one-state solution are largelyconfined to ‘Palestinian intellectuals’ (or to academicsgenerally). The natural propensity of intellectuals to fill theirdays by reading each other’s tracts is no excuse for assumingthat other voices are silent. My own recent experience inWashington, London, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Budapest, Berlin andPretoria, not to mention broad Internet activism, has confirmedthat the death of the two-state solution has become the elephantin the room for diplomats, human rights activists and the ‘Arabstreet’ alike. Judging by confidential reports, belief that aone-state solution has become inevitable is circulating withinthe PA itself. (In December 2005, Saeb Erekat told me that he isthe primary voice in the PA still arguing against a one-statesolution, indirectly confirming this internal turmoil.) Nor isthis analysis confined to Palestinians: certainly diplomats andother staff from European states and the United Nations arediscussing the one-state solution privately but widely. Moreover,among the most eloquent endorsements of a one-state solution areprominent Jewish professionals in Israel and abroad: Tony Judt,Rabbi David Goldberg, Haim Hanegbi and Tony Lehman comeimmediately to mind. The scope of this widening concern can be

measured also by angry denunciations of one-state ideas nowregularly emanating from Israeli government arms and localZionist organizations, which would not be moved by the writingsof a few ‘Palestinian intellectuals’.

Opinion surveys also complicate Peled’s view that a one-statesolution utterly lacks popular Palestinian or Jewish support.Oddly for an academic of his experience, Peled cites opinionpolls as though they deliver an absolute and frozen judgment onpolitical prospects for a one-state solution, while implying thatI fail to appreciate such data. Certainly it is essential toconsider surveys regarding Jewish-Israeli polarization regardingwithdrawal of the settlements, Jewish-Israeli antipathy to Arabs,and how Jewish-Israeli concerns about a binational state arefeeding Jewish support for a two-state solution.4 And certainlyit is alarming and disheartening to consider data indicating suchstrong Jewish support for ‘transfer’, such as the opinion poll byAsher Arian from 2003.5 The 2005 survey by Sammy Smooha cited byPeled was completed after I wrote the book, but its findings areconsistent with earlier survey data that I provided on Jewish-Israeli views and Jewish views in the US.6

But in offering his ‘little thought experiment’ to support theassertion that the ‘vast majority of Jews would opt for a Jewish,non-democratic state over a democratic non-Jewish state’, Peledoverlooked my discussion of precisely this point.7 In thatdiscussion, I drew on another poll by Sammy Smooha, conducted in1995, in which Israeli Jews responded to the question: ‘Whatwould you prefer in the event that the democratic-egalitariancharacter of the state comes into contradiction with its Jewish-Zionist character, and you are forced to choose between them?’Nearly 22 per cent replied that they would ‘certainly’ support ademocratic-egalitarian character, while almost 24 per centthought they would but ‘could not be certain’. Another 30 percent thought they would support a Jewish state but could not becertain—suggesting that only one fifth of Israeli-Jews werecertain that the Jewish-Zionist character of the state was theirfirst priority. Unsurprisingly, these views have changeddramatically a decade later. But that very fluidity suggests thatJewish xenophobia is sensitive to the political context and that,in more favourable conditions, it might respond to a movementattempting to craft a new space for debate about an OSS. Inrunning his ‘thought experiment’, Peled might have consideredthis data. At least, any historian of nationalism would concurwith my concluding comment that ‘Whole nations have been imagined

and created from a smaller social base than this’.

Intepreting opinion polls

The apparent sensitivity of Jewish public opinion to thepolitical environment should alert us to treat survey informationfrom both sides with some care. Peled alludes to data in myAppendix B, which shows that, through 2003, about one quarter ofPalestinians consistently supported a ‘binational’ state, whilean additional one tenth supported a unitary state of some kind.This data supports Peled’s assertion that the great majority ofPalestinians presently favor a two-state solution. But he doesnot seem to register my observation, also in Appendix B, thatsuch poll data may be difficult to interpret. Public discussionof a one-state solution is heavily suppressed in the OccupiedTerritories, and even in the Palestinian diaspora, because it is(rightly) considered subversive of the PA’s diplomacy and evenits existence (as it was established by the Oslo Accords as thePalestinian agency charged with implementing a two-statesolution). Absent such public discussion among Palestinians, thevery meaning of the term ‘binational state’ remains opaque andlacks public consensus. How Palestinian respondents understand itin responding to survey questions is therefore also entirelycloudy. More or fewer respondents might select it, if it weredefined for them in any detail—although no single definitionpresently enjoys a consensus among scholars, either.

Moreover, it is an obvious political reality that Palestinians inthe territories are living in a political environment stilldominated by an urgent collective norm—common in anyrevolutionary movement—to maintain political unity behind theleadership. Hence it is at least reasonable to suspect that theymight state their support for a two-state solution to a pollsterbecause it is the party line, or otherwise ‘politically correct’.This is not to say that the poll data is wrong, or thatPalestinian views have not grown so bitter since the Oslo debaclethat co-existence with ‘the Jews’ has become unimaginable, oreven an anathema, for most. But it does suggest that 25 per centsupport among Palestinians for a one-state solution under thesevery negative conditions is actually formidable, and could signalmuch broader sentiment favoring a unified state. Similarly, giventhat Israeli Jews face serious social sanctions against evendiscussing a one-state solution, and that the Israeli governmentretains a monopoly over popular knowledge (for instance, byinstilling the hegemonic myth of Arafat’s rejectionism at Camp

David), relatively low Jewish-Israeli support for a one-statesolution does not define what might emerge under differentpolitical circumstances. At least, the data calls for greatercaution than Peled shows when he argues that Jewish orPalestinian rejection of a one-state solution should be taken asan unyielding edifice. Popular views may change dramatically asrecognition of the death of the two-state solution becomes morewidespread.

Immovable obstacles

Peled’s focus on popular support, however, occludes the centralargument offered in my book. It might well be concluded, as heargues, that a one-state solution would be nice in some dreamyfiction but remains unfeasible in reality. I attempt todemonstrate the opposite case: that it is the two-state solutionthat has become an unworkable fiction. The moral arguments for aone-state solution must therefore be plumbed with new courage:not only because we might like to see them prevail, but becausewe should feel compelled to avert a destabilizing and dangerousBantustan or apartheid future. Reducing several hundred pages ofthis argument to two dimensions—that the settlements areimmovable and the water problem intractable—Peled finds bothdimensions weak.

In dismissing my case that the settlements are immovable, Peledfocuses on diplomatic options, briefly citing several withdrawal‘plans’ that (he claims) offer ‘best-case scenarios’. To do so,however, he must ignore the dense body of empirical evidence inthe book that casts these plans as logistically unworkable oroutright frauds. As I demonstrate, a strategic constellation offactors anchors the West Bank settlement grid and its half-million population of Jewish settlers. These factors include itseconomic value (hundreds of billions of dollars of private andpublic investment); its bureaucratic embeddedness in the Israelistate (I detail state funding and other government complicity);its demographic weight (hundreds of thousands of settlers in theWest Bank and East Jerusalem, only a small percentage of whom arereligious zealots); its political weight (polarizing the Israelielectorate in ways that would bring down any governmentattempting withdrawal); its ideological weight (being integral toideas of Jewish ‘return’ to the biblical homeland, both insecular-nationalist and religious-nationalist discourse); and afeckless international community debilitated by the US diplomaticmonopoly.

On the political will required to remove the settlements, Idiscuss how the interplay of all of these factors blocks allmainstream options for withdrawal by comprising a politicalbehemoth that even the best-intentioned Israeli government—whichconspicuously does not exist—could not tackle. Yet none of thisbackground seems to enter into Peled’s sweeping assertion thatthe Sharon government overturned my conclusion: that thewithdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip showedsufficient political will. It is clear, as my book details, thatthe West Bank and the Gaza Strip figure very differently inIsraeli politics and the economy—not to mention Zionistdiscourses of the historical (biblical) Jewish homeland andhegemonic notions of Israeli national security. Moreover,withdrawing some 7,500 people from a few bedroom communities withportable greenhouses is hardly comparable to withdrawing thecomplex of sizable cities, their industrial zones and the half-million residents now entrenched in the West Bank and EastJerusalem. It is therefore not adequate for Peled simply toassert that Sharon’s orchestrated withdrawal from 0.2 per cent ofhistoric Palestine in Gaza demonstrates that the ‘pre-conditionhas been met’ for a comparable withdrawal from the West Bank. Ifhe rejects my analysis of this disparity, in reviewing my book heshould at least address it.

Instead, Peled says that I offer only a ‘worst-case scenario’ forthe two-state solution in holding that nearly a half-millionsettlers are involved. He argues that the Clinton, Taba andGeneva ‘plans’ each proposed a viable two-state solution that‘would have involved the removal of only 80,000 settlers’. Butplans that are politically and economically unworkable cannot besaid to be ‘best-case scenarios’.8 None of these ‘plans’ had abreath of real life. Authoritative post mortems like ClaytonSwisher’s The Truth About Camp David have demonstrated that the Osloand Camp David negotiations amounted to little more thandiplomatic tap-dancing to distract from Israel’s on-goingsettlement construction.9 But even if we credit these plans withpolitical viability, none would have prevented the West Bank frombeing divided into unsustainable Bantustans. The micro-managingrhetoric of Madeline Albright and others—‘92 per cent’ or ‘96 percent’—never acknowledged that narrow shafts of Israelisovereignty plunging deep into West Bank territory will cantonizeit just as effectively as wider shafts would do. Peled does notacknowledge this geographic problem despite my explicit attentionto it—accompanied by maps of all these plans.

The Geneva Accord, which Peled also cites as a ‘plan’, was nevereven on Israel’s table: it was a maverick initiative denounced bythe Israeli and US governments, and conducted entirely outsidethe orbit of state diplomacy. Still, some people believe itoffered a viable plan that a future Israeli government couldadopt in a burst of enlightened self-interest. A critique of theGeneva Accord is beyond the scope of this article, but I canreiterate my reason for treating it so briefly in the book: thatit shunted off to a never-written ‘Annex X’ precisely thosestumbling blocks to ‘final status’ talks that Israel has erectedfor every plan. It even unilaterally dismissed what is still anon-negotiable Palestinian demand, the right of Palestinianreturn. If any such plan were sufficient, we would have had peacedecades ago. I find it surprising that so many smart andresponsible people have considered Geneva a major step forwardwhen its lack of substance casts it as no more than a well-intended chimera. Its only significant contribution was seriouslyto dent Israel’s claim that the Palestinians offer ‘no partnerfor peace’—a good gain, but circumscribed by a lack of broadersupport for the Accord that has reflected its fundamental flaws.

All ‘plans’ hefted in the hands of actual Israeli governmentdiplomats during the Oslo and Camp David processes were revealedas empty gestures—or outright frauds—by the simultaneous growthof the large West Bank settlements, which doubled theirpopulation during that period. Public statements by the Sharonand Olmert governments have confirmed what its internal planningdocuments have indicated for decades: government intentions toanchor the large settlements permanently in the West Banklandscape. The route of the ‘security barrier’ has, with newprecision, demonstrated Israel’s intention to annex some 45 percent of the West Bank. Indeed, Peled must dismiss the materialevidence now gleaming from West Bank hilltops—massive apartmentcomplexes and shopping malls, spreading daily over hill afterhill, topped with construction cranes—to assume that any of these‘plans’ were ever more than diplomatic stage shows.

Minimizing the water issue

The question of water—to which Peled applies more weight than itsimportance for my argument could justify—is more technical,although here analysts reasonably disagree. I’m therefore sorrythat Peled has chosen simply to dismiss sober warnings emanatingfrom a myriad of independent analysts—from the Institute forAdvanced Strategic and Political Studies to the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology to the Applied Research Institute inJerusalem—as a ‘red herring used by the Israeli right’.10 Instead,he cites only Jan Selby’s interesting but outlier analysis, whichminimizes the water problem beyond the opinion of most analysts.Selby is accurate in two senses: Israel will not go to warprimarily over water (although that is never argued) anddesalination is one way to offset the mounting shortfall.Desalination is indeed on the agenda. In 2000, the Israeligovernment approved a desalination ‘Master Plan’ that willestablish four plants along the Mediterranean that, whencompleted, will hopefully produce close to half a billion cubicmeters annually. By comparison to Israel’s GDP, the costs mightappear manageable, although they are certainly more than SaulArlosoroff estimated: around a billion dollars, judging by thecosts of the new plant in Ashkelon.11 Still, the master planremains a ‘best-case scenario’: Israel’s economy is currently onthe mend, but a billion dollars for desalination plants is hardly‘cheap’ and may not be easy to find.

Israel’s desalination plan itself reflects another reality: thatthe shortfall is more than the 100 million cubic metres argued byArlosoroff. With the coastal aquifer seriously contaminated andthe level of Lake Tiberius falling to dangerous new lows,desalination plants will go toward replacing failing fresh-waterresources for Israel’s growing population rather than topping offexisting supplies. Moreover, relying more on desalination willraise water costs, straining the budgets of industry. The WestBank aquifers will therefore remain indispensable to Israel’spermanent supply for the foreseeable future. Handing over toPalestinians the cheap water from the West Bank—half a billioncubic meters annually of the best-quality water in the territory,one third of Israel’s present supply—is certainly not on theagenda.

Determination to fund desalination plants is also likely towobble due to another ‘fact on the ground’: the geographic spreadof the large West Bank settlements is strategically congruentwith the grid of Israeli pumping stations that tap the West Bankaquifers. (Juxtaposing a map of the present settlement blocksover a map of Israeli wells and pumping stations makes thisrelationship immediately clear.) Hence, if ‘Israeli policy makersno longer consider water a core issue for negotiations’, as Peledargues (citing Selby), it is because the question has alreadybeen pre-empted. Palestinian negotiators, viewing water asepiphenomenal to control of West Bank land, may well have treated

it as a secondary issue at Camp David. But, viewing this scenariowith alarm, their technical staff has not been placated by talkof a desalination plant on the Mediterranean that would providefresh water to the West Bank via a pipeline. For one thing, thatplan promises to replace only the ten per cent of West Bank waterthat Israeli occupation policy has left to Palestinians, which isa fraction of what Palestinians need. For another, suchdependency is frightening. Depending for fresh water on theplant, expertise and good graces of a historically hostileneighbour is not a welcome prospect for any state, particularlywhen that neighbour has unilaterally appropriated the supply fromits aquifer. In light of Israel’s stated strategy to keep thePalestinian cantons geographically isolated and thereforedependent on Israeli fiat, water looms as one more mechanismsecuring that vulnerability.

Ethnic blocs

In his absorption with this technical question, Peled touches onone of greater political substance. In his view, Palestinians quaPalestinians would ‘gain sovereignty over the entire country’, aprospect that—regarding water and everything else—Zionists wouldnaturally reject. In this assessment, Peled reproduces classicZionist assumptions that identities like ‘Palestinian’ would bepermanent features of a one-state solution, securing enduringpatterns of mutually hostile ethnic-bloc voting. Although he haschampioned the salience of class divisions, Peled does notconsider that democracy might lead class and other interests tocrosscut and erode the boundaries of established Jewish andPalestinian ethno-nationalist blocs—let alone that new socialunities might also emerge. To offer a different ‘thoughtexperiment’: it is not unimaginable that, in a secular democracy,some Muslims and Jews might find common cause in containingreligious extremism in the government. Upwardly mobile middle-class Mizrahi Jews might form coalitions with middle-class Arabsto confront anti-Arab racial biases in Israeli national life.Israeli Arabs in Galilee might work with neighbouring Jewishcommunities to mitigate the economic impact of Palestinianreturnees arriving from camps in Lebanon. The very category‘Palestinian’ might crumble into its old sectarian and classsubdivisions, and link up with Israeli-Arab interests similarlydivided. All these possibilities are, again, open for study andpossibly even activism.

Paradoxically, this same assumption—that ethno-nationalist

identities would remain polarized—seems also to inform Peled’sargument that secular democracy would ipso facto eradicate theJewish ‘national home’. Here his neglect of my argument is moreculpable, for probing that assumption was my central project inthe closing section of the book—which Peled disparages as over-absorbed with ‘texts’. Yet that discussion reflected a task basicto any study of ethnic conflict: that is, to assess howdemocratization will affect ethnic interests, we must firstestablish what those interests are. To understand how unificationwould affect a ‘Jewish national home’, we must ask what thenature, mission and needs of that ‘home’ truly are, andinterrogate more closely why and how people understand Jewishstatehood to provide the necessary conditions for them.

This effort is hardly some rarefied project to ‘transform’Israeli society ‘through the correct interpretation of texts’. Inpractice, popular Jewish rejection of a one-state solutionderives its logics and passions from a net of Zionist aphorismsand polemics about Jewish-national welfare and survival.Especially important is the classic Zionist narrative, whichproposes that a peace-loving Jewish-national movement settled andmodernized the arid and empty deserts of the Jewish biblicalhomeland, sought peaceful co-existence that backward and anti-Semitic Arabs irrationally rejected, and so was forced to defenditself against attack by ‘five Arab armies’. Today (the narrativecontinues), democratic Israel is still surrounded by Arabneighbours whose burning hostility is driven only by anti-Semitism, and remains a vital sanctuary for Jews who everywhereface brooding anti-Semitic threats. All these beliefs rest onhistorical myths and tautologies, but they comprise a worldview—and generate real fears—that we must treat seriously in order tofacilitate willingness in their adherents to engage in revisingthem.

Cultivating such willingness is indeed very difficult, not leastbecause Israeli-Jewish society does famously sustain manynormative bans on serious discussion of Zionism itself. But it isboth condescending and unhelpful of Peled to assert that thereading Jewish public ‘does not have the patience for a realanalysis of Israeli society and its problems’. For one thing,willingness to confront unpleasant or dreaded subjects istypically cultivated, in all societies, by crisis conditions. IfIsraelis are brought to recognize that they face precisely such acrisis—indicated by empirical evidence from which they are nowsheltered—the required ‘patience’ may suddenly manifest. But for

another, popular reluctance to confront disastrous outcomes of acherished nationalist ideology is hardly a legitimate cause forinternational reticence on the subject. Even if domestic Israelidebate is stalled, the international community must neverthelessconsider frankly—if only in the selfish interest of internationalsecurity—whether the Jewish national home actually requires aJewish state, in order to clarify its own moral and politicalobligations to Zionist arguments.

Jewish national home

In interviews and through scrutiny of Zionist tracts, I’ve foundthat Zionist concerns to preserve a Jewish state largely reduceto one core belief: that only Jewish control over the state canpreserve the Jewish majority deemed essential to securing theJewish national home. The central concern is indeed a ‘Jewishnational home’, understood as the crucible for Jewish-nationalculture, vital in providing a diaspora-Jewish sanctuary, andsometimes as essential to reconstituting religious (or spiritual)Jewish practice. But Zionist arguments for a Jewish state evinceunclear conflations of nationhood and statehood. (Many peopleconfuse ‘state’ and ‘nation’ at the best of times.) They alsosuffer from an unfamiliarity with how international normsregarding the ‘nation-state’ concept have been profoundlytransformed over the last half-century, moving from ethnic tocivil-territorial premises. As a consequence, Zionists today showvery little understanding that Israel has become an atavisticoutlier in this regard, prompting Tony Judt to call Israel an‘anachronism’. They assume that an ethnic state providesessential conditions for ethnic life—although such conditions arebeing met elsewhere, and with less risk of conflagration, byneutral democratic states. Hence arguments for a Jewish state areinternally quite complicated, building from circular andsometimes contradictory beliefs about the international systemand a collective, mythic memory of Jewish and Zionist experience.

Peled himself, however, asserts that only two irreducible tenetsare fundamental to the ‘Jewish national home’: Jewish immigrationto Palestine and Jewish control over land. He demands ‘courage’among proponents of a one-state solution in order to accept that,without Jewish statehood, these ethnic privileges wouldevaporate, and the Jewish ‘national home’ along with them. Yet itis exactly this kind of opaque and reductionist argument thatprompted the deeper exploration I attempted in The One-State Solution.Why should we grant force to this argument when even its

proponents leave its internal logic unclear? Why, precisely,would changes in the Law of Return eradicate the Jewish nationalhome? Peled does not say. Would elimination of this Law or itsreform, in itself, dissolve Jewish-national life for a Jewish-Israelipopulation that is already over five million strong, and thatsustains a sophisticated national literature and media, vigorousarts and a sturdy political culture? It is hard to defend such aclaim. Indeed, partly out of Sabra fatigue with US-born,extremist settler thugs, Israeli-Jews themselves have alreadyconducted public debates about halting aliyah (at least, as adeliberate recruitment program), or modifying the Law of Return,or separating Israel more substantively from its interdependencewith the Jewish diaspora. Even Hannah Arendt, whom Peled and Iboth quote, qualified her understanding of Jewish immigration asrightly ‘limited in numbers and in time’.

Hence we can peer more closely at issues like ‘Jewishimmigration’ to see what its core concerns are and whether theymight be addressed by a constitution securing non-discriminatorygovernance. One of Peled’s more startling claims is that Israel’sjuridical status as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’ is confirmedby its constitution. Israel famously has no constitution; itsethnic character is confirmed by several Basic Laws. Could a trueconstitution, crafted through a collective, consultative process,satisfy the core elements of the formula ‘Jewish and democratic’in a secular-democratic state? What are those concerns,precisely? A central one is that Israel provide the sanctuary oflast resort for Jews, in the event of some dire resurgence ofanti-Semitism. But in that sense of asylum, the Law of Returnneed not be eliminated but only amended. Peled is also wrong instating that the Law of Return conveys citizenship to Jewishimmigrants upon arrival. Citizenship is actually conveyed by theCitizenship Law, which among other provisions for naturalizationgrants citizenship to anyone arriving in Israel under the Law ofReturn. In a one-state solution, consistent with the principle ofnon-discrimination, naturalization could be divorced from the Lawof Return. Or the Law of Return itself could be made ethnicallyneutral yet continue to serve concerns for Jewish sanctuary byrevising it as a Law of Asylum, listing racism as one qualifyingcause for granting asylum, and (if the redundancy is deemednecessary) specifying that anti-Semitism is a form of racism.

As a corollary measure, however, deliberate programs by stateagencies to encourage immigration of anyone on the basis ofethnicity would have to be proscribed. For instance, Peled is

right in observing that Palestinians would doubtless want to‘balance [the Law of Return] with a law of return of their own’.But this does not equate with new ethnic rivalry. Return ofPalestinian refugees—a necessary and difficult early stage in thenormalization process—could be handled either through temporarylegislation or a constitutional provision for naturalizationbased not on ethnicity but on indigeneity (documented familyorigins in the land). Similarly, land ownership must be detachedfrom any ethnic privilege, precluding the rival Palestinianambitions that Peled predicts.

But of course, democracy would not threaten the Jewish nationalhome through any such law in isolation. As Peled points out, thereal fear is the supposed ‘demographic threat’: that Muslim andChristian Arabs will become a majority and seize control of thegovernment as a whole, to the point of damaging Jewish interestsor persecuting Jews. On a popular level, this fear is entirelyunderstandable—if arguable, as I explore at length in the book.But its reproduction here by scholars like Peled is lessdefensible, for it rests on several shaky premises. First, itassumes that ‘Palestinian’ would remain an electoral bloc.Second, it fails to consider that neither Jews nor Palestinianswould accept a single state that failed to provide ruggedconstitutional protections against ethnic discrimination.Generating a true constitution that enjoys broad popularlegitimacy (as was done in South Africa) would be essential to astable one-state solution.

Third, Peled assumes that Palestinians themselves would notsupport such a constitution, even though its survival wouldclearly be essential to the economic and political success of thecountry. The racism inherent in that assumption is obvious: thatArabs are incapable of long-term vision and instead, like thefabled scorpion on the frog, will drown themselves because it istheir ‘nature’. Yet that view hovers uncomfortably in Peled’saffirmation that, ‘if the Palestinians had their way’, they wouldseize the water, the land, the legal system and everything elsedear to Jews, and destroy the Jewish national home immediately orby stages.

While objecting to Peled’s simplistic assumptions about permanentbloc Palestinian hostility, I would certainly agree thatPalestinian identity will remain salient. Especially in the shortterm, the Palestinians’ historical grievances would remainpolitically central and require difficult compromises. Yet both

sides are equally capable of compromise, not least because bothwill be motivated by rational self-interest. For instance,regarding challenges like managing mass Palestinian return, allparties would have a keen interest in managing the inevitablesocio-economic and political strains. Here we confront theinitial problem that launching negotiations toward such solutionsrequires some preliminary work to make their success imaginable.For instance, Jewish fears of mass Palestinian return reflectapprehension of being swamped by millions of Palestinianreturnees, but it is unclear how ‘mass’ that return would be.Many Palestinians in the refugee camps of the frontline stateswould certainly wish to return as soon as they could, butmillions of others have built decent lives elsewhere, with familyand business ties they would wish to sustain.

Indulging in such speculation here does not equate with seriousconsideration of Palestinian politics, of course, and perhaps mydecision to minimize review of Palestinian views in my book wasinadequate, on several grounds. First, it may insult Palestiniansby seeming tacitly to demote or remove their politics andinterests from the equation. Second, Palestinian politics playout as a dialectic with Jewish-Israeli political thought, suchthat one cannot really be analysed without the other. But, third,Zionists commonly excuse Israeli policies by reducing intricatelytextured Palestinian politics to brute ciphers like terrorism.Increasingly, Zionist rhetoric points to Hamas in order tolegitimate Israeli government rejectionism. Yet Hamas itself is acomplicated and internally factionalized movement, whoseintellectuals are grappling seriously with internal ideologicaland political flux associated with their unexpected gain of aParliamentary majority. Peled’s alarmist allusion to Hamas abusesthis complexity, particularly in his non sequitur equating itsparticipation in the January elections with some fundamentalfalsity in Palestinian democratic values. Contrary to Peled’selision, I therefore did not call Hamas itself a ‘“frighteningIslamic totalitarian” movement’ when I expressed my concern aboutthe ‘frightening rise of Islamic totalitarian doctrines’.12

Palestinian identity

As to my neglecting to mention a Palestinian ‘national home’—aconcern Peled himself confines to a footnote—the reasons aretwofold. First, Palestinians do not fear that a one-statesolution in the territory of Mandate Palestine would eradicatethat home. Their cities and villages are located there, their

political economy and social networks are based there, and theircollective identity and nationalist ideology are centred there.Moreover, worry that ethnic coexistence would endanger that homedoes not plague Palestinian nationalism as it does Zionistthought. “Palestinian” has always been a multi-sectarian andmulti-ethnic identity, as it is based on indigeneity in theterritory, whose population has always included Christians, Jews,Druze, and others. It has always been Zionism’s logic of ethniccleansing that threatens Palestinians. This threat wouldevaporate in a stable one-state solution.

Second, for my own part, I find the notion of a binational stateinadequate and do not feel compelled to affirm symmetrical ethno-national rights on the question. Here I diverge from many otherswho, writing about a one-state solution, believe it would beright and necessary for Jewish and Palestinian nationalisms toenjoy explicit constitutional privileges or protections. I fearthat inscribing these nationalities into constitutional law wouldset up incentives for exploiting them. While a secular-democraticone-state solution must provide all groups with the conditionsfor a rich and satisfying ethnic life, a degree of fluidity—inter-marriage and multi-ethnic identities—will also be vital toprecluding the kind of retrenchment that has plagued countrieslike Lebanon. Securing equal rights and normative standing forcitizens who pertain to neither nationality is also important fora durable democracy. Hence, in my view, a stable one-statesolution in Israel-Palestine should allow the free pursuit ofethnic life but also guard against any penalty—formal or informal—for individuals and groups seeking to reassemble into newidentities, according to their tastes and interests.

The language of binationality reifies now-rival identities and somight impede such fluidity, fostering tendencies to guard andgate-keep rather than soften present national boundaries. Indeed,as Azmi Bishara asserts, Palestinians themselves have neversought a binational solution—which is one apparent reason whythey never endorsed the Ichud program in the 1930s. Peled chidesme, in another footnote, for ignoring Palestinian ‘indifference’to the binational proposals of people like Martin Buber, but hesimply missed my (admittedly brief) reference to this issue.13

More importantly, he also missed my subsequent description ofUnited Nations debates in 1947, when the Arab and Muslim states’delegations to a UN subcommittee unanimously endorsed a one-statesolution in Palestine. It could be very interesting for scholarsto bring that resolution, and its arguments and proposals for a

unitary state, back onto the table for fresh review.14

As the previous discussion has illustrated, the South Africancomparison frequently arises in analysis of the one-statesolution, as a useful font of experience and ideas. I’m baffledas to why Peled says I’m inconsistent about the comparison,‘dismissing it at one point as irrelevant but repeatedlyreferring to it nonetheless’ in what he calls ‘rhetoricalplatitudes’. I have a separate section on this comparison where Ithought that my argument was entirely transparent:

In sum, looking to the South African experience for guidanceor inspiration will avail little unless policymakers alsoadopt the principles, standards, and values that guided thatstruggle: that is, that ethnic supremacy is illegitimate andcannot generate a just political system and that formal civildemocracy, for all its flaws and lingering injustices, isessential to permitting a more egalitarian and peacefulpolitical competition for resources . . . But the very ideaof ethnic equality or multiethnic democracy is explicitlyrejected by dominant Israeli doctrine. If that rejection isactually accepted by the international community, the SouthAfrican experience in eliminating apartheid must beconsidered irrelevant.15

That is, the comparison fails if one assumes that peace inPalestine must be made through ethnic separation rather than aone-state solution, such as the one South Africa pursued. But ifwe argue that Israel-Palestine must pursue a one-state solution,as I do, then the comparison becomes very useful indeed.

Pending completion of my follow-up study on the comparison, Ifind it most useful heuristically, especially when people assertthat the Jews ‘will never accept a one-state solution’. Forinstance, Jewish fears of annihilation at the hands of native(Arab) hordes strongly recall Afrikaner fears and prejudicesabout Africans. Afrikaners also believed blacks incapable ofdemocracy, and intransigently vengeful and hostile toward whites,echoing Zionist claims that Arabs are capable only ofdictatorship. South Africa’s transition may therefore offerinvaluable insights toward softening Jewish fears and beliefs.Again, such willingness clearly also requires external pressure:the international boycott and sanctions campaign against SouthAfrica combined with internal strikes, selective sabotage, andmoral opprobrium to bring the South African white community to

face the necessity of abandoning apartheid. But a range ofconciliatory gestures also allowed whites to imagine thatapartheid could be dismantled without ruin and mayhem tothemselves: e.g., formal ANC statements toward a ‘rainbownation’, secret negotiations in Europe and internationalguarantees.

It is therefore surprising that Peled himself treats thecomparison so simplistically, rejecting its relevance solely onthe basis of union leverage. Here he turns at some length to MonaYounis’s analysis of the ANC and PLO, which stressed the importantrole of labour unions in negotiating the end of apartheid. Idon’t disagree with this (often cited) position, and Younis’sstudy is well argued: white realization that blacks and whitesare inextricably interdependent in South African society wascertainly key to their final acceptance of full suffrage. But thelabour angle hardly casts the South African experience asirrelevant to the Palestinian experience. First, South Africa’stransition resulted from the hard work of many actors, atmultiple levels and in many social sectors, and not only theunions (especially COSATU). Scholars of the comparison between thetwo should explore this complexity, and activists need toidentify modes of action that might compensate Palestinians fortheir lack of corollary union leverage.

Second, it is insupportable for Peled to affirm, in such blanketfashion, that the Palestinian movement has been ‘doomed tofailure’ by its ‘middle-class leadership’ (who is that,precisely? and how is ‘middle-class’ defined here?) and that its‘cadres’ were drawn ‘mostly from the refugee population’. (Thelatter assertion would astonish the millions of Palestinians inthe territories, who have understood themselves to be heavilyengaged in resistance for the past half-century.) True, PLOpolicies and factionalism have fostered the collective weaknessof Palestinian workers, seriously damaging Palestinian collectiveleverage with the Israeli government. But many other problemshave also contributed to the movement’s ‘failure’: not least, itsdramatically different geopolitical context, which includes thecrucial role of US patronage and subsidies to Israel—which,again, remains conspicuously missing from Peled’s analysis.

Finally, even a rigorously Marxist approach to the conflictshould not confine itself to examining Palestinian labour on theSouth African model. Israelis have never successfully ‘excludedPalestinians from their economy’. Palestinian labour was integral

to the Zionist project from its beginnings and it remains so,even though Palestinian employment in Israel has been greatlycurtailed since the Oslo process. (New Israeli industrial zonesare currently being established close to the Wall, in order toexploit this long-standing pool of cheap labour.) The Israelieconomy also remains bound up in Palestinian labour, production,and consumption through the conditions imposed by the occupation:the captive market Israel has made of the territories and dirt-cheap products it imports in return. It is unclear that Israelcan sustain its accustomed living standards without continuing toreap these benefits from the Palestinian sector. Can these hiddenprofits be measured? Can this intrinsic inter-dependencytranslate into new incentives for Israelis to consider moreefficient integration? Could incremental ‘stages’ of economicintegration offer the best way to pursue a stable one-statesolution? These questions remain on the table, ripe for researchand perhaps activism.

I welcome anyone’s contribution in identifying the apparent holesand new research directions suggested by my analysis. Suchquestions abound in my own notes. But Peled seems more concernedto dress me down for exposing these pressing gaps and questions.He did rightly take me to task for neglecting the IDF and its owninterests in the territories, which I should have acknowledged.But his own summary, stressing the occupation’s benefits to theIDF, was uni-dimensional, calling for deeper analysis of how theIDF’s controversial role in the occupation is also corroding itsown internal consensus on those benefits. (Can the IDF’sdemoralizing experience in Lebanon offer any insights?) I alsoneglect questions of gender, semi-proletariat modes ofproduction, the enduring importance of kin ties in Palestinianpolitics—such as hamula/clan affiliations—Palestinian diasporapolitics, Mizrahi politics, the Middle Eastern market and otherimportant issues and categories of analysis. At this writing,major reconfigurations of Israeli and Palestinian politics—signalled by the exit of Ariel Sharon and the election of Hamas—raise new questions. All these and many other areas cry out forexploration.

But to launch those studies, we must face the incontrovertibleevidence that a stable two-state solution in Israel-Palestine isnow on the trash heap of history. Offering only unsupportedclaims about obsolete peace ‘plans’ and a startlinglydepoliticized analysis of the water problem, little in Peled’scontribution addresses that evidence. The dead elephant on the

table—the two-state solution, which even Peled admits is moribund—compels our frank attention. We must stop bickering aboutwhether a new desalination plant can adequately provide drinkingwater to an impoverished Palestinian Bantustan, or cherry-pickingisolated opinion polls to argue for collective inaction, andbegin seriously to sort out the implications.

1 The One-State Solution, Manchester 2005. Henceforth OSS. 2 A storm of Zionist vitriol in the South African press last November, whichspun from a review of my book, was only one of many fresh demonstrations.3 The only reason I can glean for Peled’s view is Tony Judt’s endorsement onthe dust jacket. 4 OSS, pp. 58, 65 and 167. 5 OSS, p. 257.6 OSS, pp. 244, 249. 7 OSS, p. 232. 8 For a discussion of what a viable two-state solution might entail, see GuyMandron, ‘Redividing Palestine?’, NLR 10, July–August 2001. 9 Clayton Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the MiddleEast Peace Process (New York: Nation Books, 2004). 10 See, for example, Steven Plaut, ‘Water Policy in Israel,’ Policy Studies No. 47(July 2000) published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and PoliticalStudies: for related discussion and sources, see OSS, pp. 62–64.11 The Ashkelon plant, which ultimately cost $250 million to build, is designedto produce about 100 mcm annually: one-fifth of the West Bank aquifer rechargeand just five to six per cent of Israel’s present annual consumption.12 OSS, p. 203.13 OSS, p. 200.14 See the full text in Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and thePalestinian Problem until 1948, Washington 1987. 15 OSS, p. 142.