Copyright © Bernard Chazelle   June 2008   home — Romanian / Polish courtesy of A. Seremina/ M.

Ivancov — travel to the West Bank

Why Israel Won't Accept a Two-State Solution

by Bernard Chazelle

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often narrated as a morality play, where offers

are generous, lessons are taught, consciousness is seared, terrorism is rewarded,
etc. Let's quit the blame game and focus, instead, on what's feasible and what's
not. For starters, one can safely notch the right-wing fantasy of a Jordanian
absorption of Palestine in the "Dream on, settlers" column. Ethnic cleansing is
passé.

What about a one-state solution? Within 10 years, Jews will be a clear minority
in the population west of the Jordan, so a democratic unitary state (eg, modeled
on South Africa) would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, an outcome not
everyone would greet with cartwheels. Though rarely discussed, a federal
alternative could be envisaged. Besides the sticky issue of land division,
however, the physical laws of politics work against it. Absent a modicum of trust
and a desire to share a common fate, centrifugal forces might prove too
powerful to forestall an eventual breakup. If Belgium, a model of harmony by
Mideast standards, can barely pull it off, what chance does a (con)federal
"Isratine" have? Don't expect a democratic binational state any time soon.

The two-state solution has its appeal. It would satisfy a majority of Palestinians
and confer upon Israel the statehood legitimacy that it craves. It would bring the
Jewish state peace with the Arab world along the lines of the 2002 Saudi
Initiative, as well as a recognized right of self-defense against Palestinian cross-
border attacks. Unfortunately, 40 years of history have gamed the system against
the two-state solution. Once the only realistic road to peace, it is now a challenge
likely beyond Israel's ability. This leaves the region with two options: Apartheid
or war. Barring a miracle, it will get both. So let's talk about the miracle.

With its popularity fading rapidly, the main asset of the two-state solution is its
consensual delineation: Taba '01 or any '67-border variant that ensures the
viability of a Palestinian state. Opponents cite the failure of the 2005 Gaza
evacuation to bring peace to the Strip as Exhibit A. They conveniently forget that
the occupation continued and the total number of settlers was actually higher
after the withdrawal than before. They ask, How do we keep a two-state solution
from turning into a Qassam launch-pad expansion program? Such concerns
must and can be addressed. But the stumbling block lies elsewhere—specifically,
in a game-theoretic deadlock.

To understand this, it is best to begin with a paradox. Everybody knows that to

"rewind to '67" would be a risky move for any Israeli leader and that the risk
increases with every settlement expansion. Why then has the number of settlers
doubled since Oslo? The never-say-die E1 project threatens to cut off East
Jerusalem from the West Bank and divide a future Palestinian state into 3 (and
arguably 4) noncontiguous parts. As I drove recently by the giant settlement of
Ma'ale Adumim, I wondered how a Palestinian capital could ever be wrested
from that urban octopus of Israeli control now girding East Jerusalem.
Condoleezza Rice's latest bit of cheerleading was promptly acknowledged by an
Israeli Cabinet decision to build hundreds of housing units in Givat Ze'ev. The
number of checkpoints and obstacles was supposed to go down after Annapolis:
it went up by 51. Can Israel be serious about a two-state solution?

When someone embarks on a diet and then proceeds to double his food intake,
it is reasonable to wonder if he doesn't secretly enjoy the extra weight.
Reasonable, yes; but, in this case, wrong. The crux of the paradox is not that
Israel enjoys the status quo but that it has no incentive to play a land-for-peace
game incrementally. Three reasons for this: Israeli aims are intangible (eg,
promise of peace) but Palestinian objectives are concrete (eg, land handover);
settler withdrawal is irreversible, whereas a lull in violence can be broken at any
time; finally, the two-state solution is an asynchronous trade, ie, an exchange of a
present good (land) for a future one (peace). Instead of addressing these deal
breakers head-on, the Road Map tossed in a goodie bag full of sops (eg,
governance reform, trade offices, demonstration of good faith), which only gave
Israel political cover for sitting on its hands. Incrementalism runs against
Palestinian interests as well because what they have to offer, peace, is not
splittable into tradable chunks.

Besides ruling out a phased process, a highly asymmetric deal of the land-for-
peace type requires either trust between the parties (nonexistent) or a mutually
trusted arbiter with coercive power. Israel trusts only the US and coercion is not
an option. Why not? Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar tells this joke: "Mr Prime
Minister, would you like Israel to become our 51st state?" "Thanks but no thanks,
Mr President." "Why not?" "Because, as a US state, we would have only two
senators." The tragedy of US-Israeli relations is that AIPAC has deprived Israeli
leaders of one of the most potent arrows in their political quiver: the "option" of
letting Israel be (or appear to be) coerced by the US. Whether the US would ever
acquiesce is another matter.
Some context: The US has always opposed national liberation movements that
got in the way of its hegemonic aims, so why would it suddenly make an
exception for the Palestinians? It is convenient to exonerate US policymakers by
pointing the finger at the Israel lobby, but the root of the problem goes beyond
AIPAC. Mearsheimer and Walt correctly answered the wrong question:
Congress, indeed, takes its marching orders from AIPAC and US-Israeli relations
are bad for both countries (though excellent for their establishments). No doubt
the Israel lobby has stood in the way of a fair settlement. But to lay the blame
squarely on it, one would need to make the case that US policy would be notably
different in its absence. The evidence is unpersuasive. Israel has been the
linchpin of Pax Americana in the Middle East since June 1967: Cold War then;
Carter Doctrine now. The lobby may rejoice in this but can hardly take credit for
it. In fact, if it ever deviated from US hegemonic goals (which might eventually
happen over Iran), it would quickly discover the limits of its power.

It is undeniable, however, that efforts to stifle public criticism of Israel have

created a climate of intimidation. Not everyone enjoys being called an anti-
Semite or a self-hating Jew for accurately describing the West Bank as an
Apartheid society. Media gatekeepers and college administrators have been kept
in line. The cranks at Campus Watch are shameless thugs, but what do we call
the self-censoring academics and cowed public intellectuals who toss overboard
any shred of moral courage to speed their ascension to power? Why must the
New York Times feature opinions about Israel that cover only a fraction of the
range on offer in Haaretz?

Intangibility, irreversibility, asynchronicity, plus the lack of mutual trust or of a

trusted enforcer: these are the strategic reasons all incremental approaches to
the two-state solution have failed so far (eg, Oslo I/II, Wye River, Road Map). As if
this were not enough, two more disincentives have kept Israel from playing
along. One of them is the paradox that, by curbing terrorism, the separation
barrier has diminished the short-term added value of peace, a commodity
whose market price tends to vary in proportion to its distance to the buyer's
present sense of security. (Growing missile threats may soon mess up this
calculus.) The other disincentive is Israel's lack of bargaining power. How so? To
be effective, a peace agreement would require overwhelming support among
Palestinians (whereas majority support in Israel would be sufficient). This
niggling detail all but decimates Israel's bargaining power, as it presents it with
a "binary" negotiating stand, where wresting the slightest concession quickly
becomes counterproductive. Think of it as negotiating the purchase of a
parachute: settling for half a parachute at half the price might be an option for
the seller but not the buyer. For Israel, it's all or nothing.
What's wrong with "nothing"? Nothing, of course, is the current policy. It is also
Zionism's death march. So you'd think Israel would have ditched the "Road Map
to Nowhere" long ago and hurried to cut a two-state deal. Ah, if only it could, but
you've heard it before: Hamas must recognize Israel; Abbas is a weakling; the
terrorist infrastructure must be dismantled; etc. Hogwash. Israel drags its feet
because it finds the peace pill unbearably bitter. How bitter? At the very least:
dismantling 120 settlements; relocating 110,000 settlers; swapping pre-67 land
for settlement blocs already in Israeli hands; rerouting the separation barrier;
ceding control over 40% of the West Bank; sharing Jerusalem as a capital; letting
in 10-50K refugees; giving away vital water rights; returning the Golan to Syria
(no comprehensive peace without it); engaging Hamas; facing violent domestic
opposition; endangering the careers and lives of Israeli leaders; last but not
least, implicitly admitting that two-thirds of Israel's history has been a
monumental blunder.

Whether these costs are just deserts or unfairness incarnate is not a subject I
wish to address here—just as I will not discuss whether ceding a mere 22% of
historic Palestine (a lousy deal by '47 standards) is an equitable compromise.
These are the cards on the table today. To borrow a bon mot from his former
chief of staff, Sharon pickled the peace process in "formaldehyde." In truth, Oslo
was an incremental process doomed from the start, regardless of Rabin's fate.
(Only Arafat could manage to make his people swallow such a stinker.) The
parties could have changed tack along the way, but they didn't. No doubt the
Palestinians did their part to undermine the peace process: wicked attacks
against innocent civilians; failure of the PLO, like Algeria's FLN before it, to grow
from a revolutionary movement into a governing institution; etc. Yet, like France
in Algeria, Israel bears the ultimate responsibility for the conflict: occupiers
always do.

That said, critics of Israel tend to underestimate the barriers to peace. This is not
an excuse but a statement of fact: the two-state solution demands of Israel the
kind of concessions history wrests from nations defeated at war. Having been
defeated at peace, not at war, Israel is psychologically unequipped for the task.
All the giving must be, de facto, Israeli and the taking Palestinian—the neat
thing about having nothing is that you have nothing to give. Of course, Israel
would be "giving" nothing—only returning what it grabbed in contravention of
international law—but it is indicative of its delusions of innocence that it should
always speak of generous offers, never of legal redress. Peace requires quick,
painful surgery. The Road Map? Think of it as handing the patient a Swiss Army
knife and asking her to cut off her own leg. Is it any wonder Israel has opted to
live with the gangrene and cement the current Apartheid regime in the
territories?

If Israel's 60th anniversary proves anything, it is that the Palestinian problem

won't go away on its own. Sounding like a pyromaniac warning of the dangers of
fire, Olmert put it bluntly: "If the day comes when the two-state solution
collapses [...] the State of Israel is finished." Squelched in 1948, the two-state idea
began to gain mutual acceptance barely two decades ago; it took 15 years for
Arafat to sell it to the PLO. It was not even part of Oslo and it has never captured
the Palestinian imagination. Today, it elicits among Israelis not a sigh of hope but
a collective yawn. The two-state solution may be that rare idea that goes directly
from "futuristic" to "obsolete" without stopping at the intermediate stage called
"timely."

Geopolitics is changing, too. Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, the region's ascending
power, now loom larger in the Israeli psyche than the Palestinian conflict. Israel
has never lost a war against the Palestinians but it got bloodied twice in
Lebanon. Peace with Syria has a low cost/benefit ratio for Israel and it appears
to be back on the agenda. A deal would frustrate Washington because it
wouldn't break the Tehran-Damascus axis, just as Jordan's normalization with
Israel didn't hurt a bit its relations with Saddam or Hamas—who can forget King
Hussein's ordering Bibi to provide Meshaal an antidote after Mossad botched his
assassination? America's waning influence in the region may prove a blessing. It
may force Israel to ditch its endless excuses and realize it is powerful enough to
take the risks of peace: deal with Syria; engage with Hamas; and, crucially, end
the occupation. One can dream. The evidence is somewhat less oneiric: unless
Palestine accepts to become a client state of the US, Israel will never be leaned
upon to set it free; and it won't do it of its own volition.

Approaching the two-state solution as an incremental exchange of piecemeal

concessions is doomed. Outside coercion is ruled out, so a successful
implementation would require of Israel to assume voluntarily the submissive
posture of a vanquished nation: an unlikely scenario for a country
unaccustomed to defeat and the behavioral exigencies that go with it. (Losing
wars is bad, but that's how nations grow up.) The two-state solution calls for
visionary leadership that Israel does not have, international prodding that is
nonexistent, and an obliging enemy that has never much been the obliging kind.
The final nail in the coffin might be its dwindling popular support.

Ominously for Israel, the military deterrent of a small country stuck in the heart
of the Muslim world will not last. The clock is ticking. If Israel ceases to be a
Jewish-majority state, what will Israeli parents say when their secular children
ask them what's so cool about being a minority in a small country next to Syria
when one could be a minority in a big country next to Canada? Israel must
travel the painful road to Taba: all the way, all alone, and all at once. The odds
are stacked against it. But then the odds of Moses parting the sea were never
that good either.
               Click here to read about my trip to the West Bank