Israel and Palestine

It was pretty good pun really.

Blinken tells Israel: Palestinians should enjoy same rights, freedoms as you do.

Apparently the standard bearer organization of the "liberal Zionist" crowd, J-Street, is now putting a confederation on the map, as opposed to the traditional two-state-hard-border model it's endorsed basically throughout its whole existence. It's interesting to see how much the discourse has changed over just the past few years (Peter Beinart, another prominent thinker in the same sort of political tribe, made a similar leap last year). It seems the Trump administration's uncritical endorsement of right-wing Israeli desires has torn the mask off the situation for a lot of people.

Here's an article from 972. J Street apparently held a talk on the issue April 6 (I'll see if I can find a link to it).

Interesting article. Confederation seems like great idea, assuming the two sides were on board (which I would assume is unfortunately unlikely).

I couldn't help but think though of what I've heard about issues in Belgium with the Flemmish and Walloons in Belgium. I worry that it might be something similar, but with a lot more violence.

Also, in a partly joking partly serious way I was thinking of The Treaty of Westphalia.

But being serious, a confederation seems like a good way of addressing conflicts over specific land areas, especially because Palestine is currently non-contiguous.

Belgium is an interesting case because it demonstrates a) that two ethnic groups living together in a binational arrangement can work just fine and b) for this to work, there needs to be a common identity. I sort of see the beginnings of that in IP, but it's still a long way off (I've long been a confederation supporter).

Yeah, I do agree. Although as I understand it, polls in Belgium show high support for splitting the country in two (correct me if I'm wrong here) it obviously functions pretty well as a single country day to day. So, that actually would be something to strive for.

Bosnia and Herzegovina might be a better example to look to, as before it was formed all three sides were trying to genocide each other. Each of the two major consistent parts (Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) even had their own militaries until they were combined in 2005.

Frankly, I don't think these worked particularly well. I can see the merits of a confederation but how does one balance political power in it?

The High Commissioner was given extraordinary powers (and NATO's muscle to enforce it). An office, I might add, that has been slowly fading away since the 2000s. At this point, the only thing keeping the Bosnian confederation together is momentum.

A similar set up would not work here unless Israel gave up a lot of authority...and it won't.

And yet a two-state solution is completely non-viable, confederation is a long shot but it's the only option there is.

The first step is for the US to stop covering for Israel, that will force them to confront the unsustainability of their current regime.

As someone who likes two-state far more than one-state, I'm fine with confederation, but I do agree I'm not sure it's particularly likely (not that a two-state is at this point). I do feel Biden has to get far more hardline with Israel. That might make them consider alternatives to what they're barreling towards.

Edited by jjjj2 on Apr 17th 2021 at 12:58:29 PM

Neither are viable so long as the settlements are maintained. Palestine looks like a sponge at the moment.

That doesn't make sense, a two-state solution isn't viable because of the land taken up yes but a one-state solution still would be viable.

And confederation as one-state adjacent would be viable as well, horrific borders don't matter if Palestinians can go where they want. The settlement are only really an intrinsic obstacle to the two-state solution.

The settlements are a problem even beyond one or two state solutions because the settlements also take up economically useful land for the sole use of one side. Confederation and one state solutions don't fix that unless the settlements go away.

I get what you're trying to say, but I think the point is that a one-state solution would give Palestinians equal rights to access settlement land, since they'd now be citizens of the country. Israel restricting Palestinians' and Israeli Arabs' ability to obtain infrastructure permits is another issue.

The borders would impact the ability of the Palestinian half of the confederation. Remember that area C (the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control) splits the Palestinian areas into a multitude of territorial islands. A Palestinian government wouldn’t be able to lay/manage basic infrastructure (roads, power lines, water pipes, ect...) across its territory and could easily see access for policing/defence activities be cut off by the Israeli government.

If you put the unsettled parts of area C to the Palestinian half you’ve got the same problem in reverse, a bunch of settlements would become enclaves within the Palestinian half of the confederation, giving the Israeli government the exact same barriers to governance that I just listed.

Even if you could draw the super border-gore that could connect everything up for both sides, you’ve then got such absurdly snakey routes that governance becomes an absolute nightmare.

Here’s the UN map I’m working off for this by the way.[1]

And I haven’t even touched on the economic impact of Palestine having to hand over that much territory or the social impact of having so many displaced people exiled from areas they were kicked out of for settlements.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 18th 2021 at 9:47:27 AM

Additionally, large parts of the settlements have been confiscated from Palestinians by the Israelis. Basically, Israel uses a law from the Birirish colonial period that permits the expropriation of farmland if it’s uncultivated for several years. The Israelis build a settlement, and the Israeli government bars Palestinians from coming within a certain distance of it for “security reasons”, thereby making it impossible for them to farm the land near the settlement. Then, after several years, the Israeli government can claim it on the basis that it’s uncultivated and add it to the settlement.

I agree with a confederation or single state, since the Israelis have rendered a two-state solution impossible. Such a state would still need to resolve the fact that the Israeli settlements have been produced via a systematic process of government land theft for the purposes of ethinic cleansing (i.e. physical removal of Palestinians and their replacement with Israeli Jews).

Edited by Galadriel on Apr 18th 2021 at 5:04:12 AM

The problems listed above are definitely the largest day-to-day issues for Palestinians in the West Bank. Private security forces around settlements are a huge issue in the region — they can be far harsher than the IDF, and they face little-to-no accountability. Unless legislation is passed to reign them in, I can see settlers/security continuing to bar Palestinians from entering or purchasing property in settlements even if a one-state solution is implemented. To be fair, though, I don't think most Palestinians would particularly want to live in settlements, unless large enough swaths could be purchased to allow them a safe community. It's largely a problem that Bedouin people face. They traditionally move around and make use of "empty" land, which they're barred from doing when they can't access or live on most of area C.

Edited by indigoJay on Apr 20th 2021 at 12:10:36 PM

These are all good points about the settlements, it's definitely true that they'd be an issue even in a hypothetical confederacy or unified state. But I think it's also true that if such a thing were even on the table there'd be massive amounts of pressure on them to behave better, if both Palestine and Israel can agree to either kind of close relationship they'd probably not accept the settlement fanatics getting in the way.

This isn't to say that it wouldn't be a problem, but in that scenario, I don't think it would be insurmountable.

One of the main benefits of a confederal arrangement is that it allows most of the settlements and settlers to remain in place. Most two-state proposals I've seen have land swaps to allow Israel to annex most of the settlements close to the border; in a confederation, the remainder could simply stay in Palestine as Israeli citizens, similar to how Palestinian refugees could settle in Israel as citizens of the Palestinian state.

This is definitely also true. Like I said before, the main problem is still that Bedouin Palestinians could still be barred from accessing the land they'd traditionally use by private actors.

See, I think this is true of the government, which solves a lot of issues re- checkpoints and roadblocks. The issue is that private security forces still aren't accountable to the government, which means that they can continue to do shitty things. I guess there would still be pressure on the government to do something about private security. I just think that the government would have stronger excuses to avoid regulating them than they would with the IDF. (It would also be very unpopular with settlers and most right-wing Israelis, and electoral incentives frequently outweigh the international community's opinion.) To be clear, I still think a one-state solution would be a net good, I just think a lot of large problems would remain in place.

I definitely agree, the settlements are a major obstacle to any kind of peace.

Human Rights Watch joins B'Tselem and many other NGO's in labeling the entire Israeli regime an apartheid state

The tidal shift since Trump's "peace plan" has been truly astounding. There's only so many times you can dismiss respected human rights organizations as having an "anti-Israel agenda" before people start to become numb to it. Trump and Bibi tried to end the conflict once and for all on their terms and fired directly into their own balls.

Edited by somerandomdude on Apr 27th 2021 at 10:24:31 PM

It really is telling how quickly the tide shifted, I suppose with the US no longer trying to legitimize Israel and instead aggressively throwing its support behind their oppression has really forced a lot of people to recognize the kind of state it is.

Which is excellent. Hopefully, that pressure leads to change within the US, we need more people to recognize how awful Israel's policies are. Once that happens we could start seeing the US more reliably holding them to task over it.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Apr 27th 2021 at 11:52:53 AM

To clarify, the apartheid is between Israelis and Palestinians rather than between Jews and Arabs - they're specifically concluding that the I/P state structure is itself an apartheid system.