Steve’s post has led me to brood. Back in December 2000, Henry Siegman made the following observation about the Palestinian negotiating position:
Palestinian insistence on Israel’s withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza is not evidence of Palestinian irrationality or diabolism. The withdrawal they ask for, even if fully accommodated by Israel, would leave Palestinians with about 20 percent of the original mandate divided by the United Nations in 1947; Israel would have about 80 percent. The popular Israeli notion that Israel is expected ”to give and give” while Palestinians only ”take and take” is a self-serving distortion of reality.
Observers continue to believe that “Israel’s withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza” is the end-state envisioned by the mainstream Palestinian leadership. That is almost certainly false. There’s a reason the Palestinian Authority hasn’t explicitly defined its territorial redlines. If a Palestinian state is in fact established in the entire West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian political entrepreneurs, like the articulate and ambitious Michael Tarazi, will see it as an opening gambit in a bid for a binational state. And any imaginable binational state, at least for the next few decades, would represent a repudiation of the Zionist project-to create a refuge and homeland for the Jewish people.
HAS THE WINDOW CLOSED?: Why is that? As Siegman suggests, the sense that an 80-20 split would represent a grave injustice will not vanish into thin air. Ironically enough, Siegman, in this passage, is offering solace to hawkish elements in Israel who oppose any territorial concessions. Those hawkish elements, in turn, have rendered a viable two-state solution impossible through support for the settler movement. Under conditions of liberal democracy, disentangling Arab and Jewish communities in the West Bank is unimaginable. It would require the sustained use of armed force against either Israeli citizens or the mass expulsion of Palestinians, or both in varying degrees of intensity. If the Palestinians ever reject terrorist violence, the moral-ethical claim to citizenship in a binational democratic state will be virtually unanswerable, whether friends of Israel (myself included) like it or not. In such a state, the right of return, long Israel’s raison d’etre, will be scrapped, or it will be enshrined alongside a right of return for Palestinian refugees. A populist Palestinian political culture, spines stiffened by political “victory,” will revolt against perceived economic and social inequalities. Finally, Israeli Jews will find themselves strangers in their own country.
This is not to say I oppose efforts in the direction of a two-state solution. It would, to my mind, be vastly preferable to a binational state. But I worry that the window has closed. Maybe it was possible twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. Not now. When Siegman and others try to convince you that if only Israel would make reasonable concessions everything would work itself out, think again.
I seriously hope I’m wrong. I wish those of you who think so the best of luck. Funnily enough, there’s a town in southern Lebanon called “Reihan,” and I think it was some kind of terrorist den. Not sure what to make of that. I have also heard that my name means “Sweet Basil,” which would be a good name for an R&B album. (Or an R&G album, in which case I’d use the moniker “Hash Brown.”)
— Reihan
