Recently, President Donald Trump extended an invitation to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to meet with him at the White House to discuss the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This comes after a recent reversal on the part of the White House in regards to America's support for the two-state solution and proposals to move the US embassy in Israel to the hotly-contested territory of East Jerusalem. What are the implications of this shift? What would a one-state policy look like? I will examine both potential solutions on their merits in the wake of recent events.
First I will define each of the policies, starting with the two-state solution. Basically, the two-term solution would entail the coexistence of an independent Israeli state and an independent Palestinian state. The borders for these two states would be based upon 1967 ceasefire lines in the currently Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem territories. Palestine would be formed from those latter territories, while Israel would withdraw from those territories and would retain their statehood as well within those borders. This policy currently has the backing of several prominent groups of states at the international level, including the UN, Arab League, European Union (EU), and Russia. While the U.S. has officially supported this policy for decades, recent statements by President Trump have put serious question marks around the new US stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This proposal is seen as better for giving both groups some degree of self-determination and (hopefully) de-escalating the conflict (i.e. reduction in the use of terrorist tactics or other violent means by both groups in favor of negotiation-based dispute settlement at the very least and perhaps long-term peace). Advocates of this solution see this as a solution to improve the security situation in the Middle East in general (as Arab states have historically not been thrilled about Israel's existence as a state along with a subsequent denial of self-determination for Palestinian Arabs).
On the other hand, a one-state policy is pretty self-explanatory. There would be one state, containing both Palestinians and Israelis. What is clear from the outset is that both groups would have to coexist within existing state borders. Also complicating this is the debate over whether the state would still be Jewish and democratic or merely secular and neither group having a majority. Yet another complicating factor is the fierce religious disagreements over holy sites in Jerusalem along with continuing Jewish settlement expansion into disputed territories. This stance is rooted in the fact that many Palestinians were made refugees in 1948 when they were kicked out of their homes in the early days of Israeli statehood; naturally, Palestinians want to go back to their land and keep Israelis from expanding further into territory they regard as theirs. (For a helpful guide to the very complicated history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I recommend Sandy Tolan's Lemon Tree). To be fair though, both sides have dug in their heels in terms of their claims to the same land and this has made any kind of negotiations nearly impossible in regards to territory for a future Palestinian state.
From the view of many international observers, such a tenuous coexistence in a single-state "solution" might undermine the state in the absence of robust dispute settlement mechanisms and adequate representation of Palestinians in the Knesset (Israel's version of Congress) or some other hypothetical legislative body, in the very unlikely event the state of Israel is renamed to accommodate both peoples. Hardly any representation in social, political, and economic institutions for one group (i.e. the Palestinians) makes intrastate conflict that much more likely. This puts both groups of people at risk in the short and long-term, with neither group getting what they deserve: a state of their own where they do not have to fear frequent violence such as terrorist attacks and can live in peace. All in all, there are too many hypotheticals for a one-state solution in many respects, which makes the United States' apparent deviation from the two-state policy it has supported for decades even more alarming from a security and humanitarian perspective.
While some regard the two-state policy as utopian, non-realistic and near impossible due to current circumstances (increased Israeli settlement expansion into occupied territories, continuing violence by terrorist groups on both sides, contemplations of a third Intifada or uprising), it remains the best solution in my mind for all sides involved (including the United States and its allies in Europe and elsewhere). The two-state solution is not by any means perfect (it would require the same kinds of debates about how to shape the state in general for either group), but remains the most viable compared to the one-state solution. It would be my hope that President Trump reevaluates his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the good of all sides.
Sources Cited:
BBC News. (2017, March 10). Trump Middle East: Palestinian Leader Invited to White House. Retrieved March 8, 2017, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39237320.
Fisher, Max. (2016, December 29). The Two-State Solution: What It Is and Why It Hasn't Happened. Retrieved March 8, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/middleeast/israel-palestinians-two-state-solution.html?_r=0.
Tolan, Sandy. (2015). The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. New York: Bloomsbury.
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