Israel and Palestine as one country?

A single state solution is an idea that grew up in the 1920s and then died with the Six-Day War when divisions between the newly-founded Israeli state and the rest of the region were too entrenched for the idea to retain any traction. The political landscape after the war and even today is what many Jewish groups feared when Jewish Zionists were calling for a return to the biblical homeland to develop a Jewish state.

They were far-outnumbered though and for several decades now, hostility and tension have been the hallmarks of politics between Israel and her neighbors with ideologies and perspectives too crystallized for the peace process to make any headway, while the conflicting interests of those involved create a quagmire of goals and wants and needs. Just one facet of the problem, for example, are the settlements, Israelis have created a home for themselves in these areas, while some Palestinians see the land as their homeland.

Ali Abunimah is one of the commentators who believe the Palestinian territories and Israel should become one country that incorporates Jews, Muslims, Christians and every other religious or cultural grouping in the region. He is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Abunimah argues that over 10 million people live in Israel and the Palestinian territories, but that the political situation currently is unbalanced because the authorities in Palestine have no real power and the government of Israel calls the shots. “Half of them are Israeli Jews; half of them are Palestinians.  There are about a million people mixed in there who wouldn't fit neatly into either category.   And effectively, there's one government that runs the country - and that is the government of Israel.”

Abunimah, like many pro-one state commentators, makes a controversial analogy between the present situation in Israel-Palestine and Apartheid South Africa. During Apartheid, the government of South Africa created black ‘homelands’ that were legally defined as separate entities to the country, had a local authority of their own with little real power and acted as large labor reserves for the economy of South Africa.

The similarities are many and indeed the reference to Apartheid is often invoked in a cheapened fashion in order to make a political point, as Ben Cohen, Associate Director of Communications for the American Jewish Committee, points out when he says “I think the apartheid analogy is wholly inappropriate” adding that “people use the word ‘apartheid’ not because they are concerned about the historical integrity of the analogy, but because they are trying to make a very cheap political point”. There is, of course, a huge difference, Apartheid was a form of governance enshrined in the laws of the former South African state, the superiority of whites over blacks was codified in the constitution of the country. Israel has no such laws.

When the country made moves to unify as a single democratic state, there was considerable anxiety and fear, the white population were afraid they would be punished by the incoming government, which was no longer white-dominated and many international and local commentators were sure the new political system could never work, for the ideological and cultural differences between whites and blacks were too deep.

The same argument exists now as part of the skepticism of a single state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Carlo Strenger, a political commentator for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, argues that the deep-seated differences between the two dominant groups, Jews and Muslim Palestinians, would lead to forms of sectarian division, possibly ethnic violence and the threat of competing battles for power over government.

“That, I think is a very, very bad starting point for a state that is supposed to function with any form of coherency and harmony,” he says. Which is true, the point of a unified country, as Abunimah sees it, is that the government would be a government of and for the people with everyone’s interests represented, such a government, for many, is an impossible ideal. Not least of which, because the single state model works only for the Palestinians and not Israelis, according to Dr. Hussein Ibish anyway.

A senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based American Task Force on Palestine, Dr. Ibish claims that such a scenario would render Israel non-existent, the state of Israel as Israelis know it would no longer exist because Israel is defined as a democratic Jewish state and if the Palestinian territories and Israel became one state, says Ibish, Israelis would be a minority and so the government would not be Jewish. He is also among the commentators that believe the model would lead to ethnic and sectarian violence like that seen across the Middle East.

South Africa again is an example often pointed to in order to dispel this notion.

The transformation of government that took place in South Africa should not have succeeded given the track record of Africa as a continent. Ethnic violence has been a theme of politics in Africa since colonization brought modern politics to the continent, whites have been driven out of most country’s that came under majority rule. South Africa should, according to statistics and historical examples, be like Zimbabwe, a failed state reliant on foreign aid.

But it isn’t, the people made the transition and unification work. South Africa is the only country in the world to have undergone such a dramatic political change without the massacres and violence that so often accompany these shifts in government.

According to Abunimah, Israel would gain through adopting a single state model. The single state solution would remove the rampant and constant security threat, the religious divisions within the country and the international criticism and isolation that the country is often subjected to.

Like all discussion of the peace process and dissections of possible solutions to the impasse, the single state solution is just a thought exercise. In the current climate, like so many other solutions and compromises, it holds little weight and on the ground it is as solid as a wisp of dust blowing over the separation walls of the West Bank.