NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
Just 6 items below, and none very long.
The small number of items today is not due to their not being more news. I’m just too tired to read anymore—the result of going to bed at 3AM last night after returning home from our son’s family where we went for the Seder, about 1 ½ hour’s drive away.
I really haven’t any desire to celebrate Jewish holidays, and among those that I have the least desire for is Passover. I find it disgusting to celebrate our (Jewish) attainment of freedom from slavery when Israeli Jews deny another people their freedom, and continue to oppress not only Palestinians but also refugees seeking a refuge, but especially Palestinians.
Still, I place a great deal of importance on family, and so would not turn my back on my children when they ask us to come. Fortunately, last night among the 30 or so members of my daughter-in-law’s family and 3 of our grandchildren and partners there were about 10 or 11 children, from infants to 10 year olds, so the small living room which had been emptied of furniture and where we sat was noisy. Moreover, the participants were more interested in loudly and energetically singing the usual Passover songs, without caring about the meaning of anything. So it was easier to take. All our kids and grandkids know where spouse and I stand on political issues, yet even though most of them do not agree or entirely agree with our ideas, they love us all the same, and we they.
Anyhow, the result of getting to bed at 3AM is that I did not read much today.
As for those below:
Item 1 speaks about the ‘state of Israel’s lopsided history’ and coincidentally prepares for item 2, which is about the new Minister of Education. When I expressed hope that this gentleman would be better than the outgoing minister, I did not realize what we were dealing with. If Sefi Rachlevsky’s depiction of him is correct (and I believe it is), then our poor kids will be yet more brain washed than till now. Not only will school be highly nationalistic, but apparently it will also be more religious. How will there ever be peace here when our youngsters are raised to believe the lies taught by Israeli schoolbooks and teachers?
Item3 is about Palm Sunday in the holy land. Imagine that Christian Palestinians can be denied the right to practice their religion in Jerusalem. Imagine that Jews were denied the right! What an outcry there would be. But Palestinians? Who cares—except a few, of which Amira Hass is one.
In item 4 Gideon Levy and Alex Levac depict the problems of a refugee camp in which rocks replace hope. The problem with rock throwing is that it gives Israel an additional excuse to arrest and intimidate.
In item 5 Erdogan makes clear his 3 criteria for normalization. Israel has agreed to two, but so far as I have seen, Netanyahu has not agreed to the third, namely easing up on the siege of Gaza. We shall see what happens to this.
The final item is a new, but not really novel peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. I have seen the idea of “Condominialism” before, but under different names. I’ll accept any idea that both sides will agree to, but frankly do not particularly like this idea. It is not the same as the EU, as the author suggests. No country in the EU is grounded on a single religion/ethnicity/race. And no country that is can be democratic. The idea expressed in this article sounds good, but it won’t work. Israel will continue to fear for its Jewish demography, and when Palestinians become sufficiently numerous to pose a so-called demographic threat, Israel will act much as it does now. Why not a single state with a separation of religion from state where everyone who wishes can live and practice his/her religion just as is done in so-called western countries in the world, of which Israel so wants us to believe that it belongs, but does not?
That’s it for tonight.
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Dorothy
1 The Recorder Wednesday, March 5, 2013
The state of Israel’s lopsided history
http://www.recorder.com/home/4898151-95/israel-israeli-history-official
My Turn: Yael Petretti
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
As an Israeli citizen, I would like to chime into this ongoing — is it a conversation or a battle? — about Israel and the Palestinians. I recently relocated to the peaceful hills of western Massachusetts after having lived in Jerusalem for nearly 30 years.
The use of statements such as “Israel is the original terrorist” brings many people to their feet, angry fists raised and ears firmly shut. Perhaps that is why the editor chose that sentence as a title of the Nov. 29, 2012 “My Turn.”
And it is also a reflexive response of those who want to defend Israel against such charges to recite the official Israeli narrative about the Jewish state’s early history. Much of it is true: The Jews were coming from the Holocaust in Europe, bought land in Palestine, worked to develop agriculture and industry, academic excellence and artistic achievement. Believe me, I know the drill; I worked as a tourist guide for more than 25 years.
But, the official records of Israel’s early modern history were opened up recently. They show that from the very beginning of its modern history, Israel set as its official (if secret) policy to take as much of the land — by whatever means necessary — for the use of the Jewish people alone. Read the minutes of these government meetings yourself and see that Israel’s founders said very plainly that they would kill and displace Arabs wherever necessary. Massacres were deliberately perpetrated against entire populations of Arab villages by the Israeli military forces.
Every Israeli schoolchild is taught from birth that our army is the “most moral in the world” and that Arabs fled their villages in fear, etc. These and other standard myths soothe our consciences. We did not even have to wait for the official records to be revealed; this lopsided history was quite conspicuous to anyone who cared too look. Most Israelis refuse to look. It’s too painful, too shameful and too threatening to look.
When defenders of Israel repeat the claim that Arabs in Israel “have a higher standard of living than elsewhere in the Middle East,” I wonder if they have ever spent any time with a Palestinian family. Do they know that Palestinian citizens of Israel pay taxes and get no municipal services, for instance, in Jerusalem? Israeli leaders love to call Jerusalem the “united capital of Israel.” There has rarely been a less united city anywhere on earth. Several hundred yards from lovely Israeli apartment complexes of French Hill (built on Palestinian private land) are the slums of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. These hovels have been inhabited by Palestinian families who were pushed out of their original homes to make room for the Jewish city of Netanya. Two years ago, they were forced out of their crowded, cinder-block houses at gun point by Israeli police. I know; I was there. Together with their children, they sat on the road in front of their home as Jewish settlers moved in and, obscenely, put a gigantic menorah on the roof, just in case there was any doubt about who lived there.
All of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods are being ethnically cleansed in this way as are many other places in “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Muslims do not hate Jews as a matter of course. Or at least didn’t up until the early 20th century when the political movement called Zionism was born. Jews and Muslims and Christians lived together in Palestine. They shared houses, attended each other’s weddings, nursed each other’s children, ate and farmed together. It was a diverse society — and not an “empty land” — as the Israeli official narrative claims. What threatened the Arabs was the prospect of a new, political entity called the “State of Israel,” a Zionist government, which would have exclusive control over their lives and lands. They knew very well about the land grabs; they were living them. When more extremist Palestinians speak of “wiping Israel off the map,” it should be understood in this context rather than in the well-nurtured Israeli fear and hatred of Arabs.
We Jews feel very protective of Israel. Those who defend her policies of occupation and settlement in the West Bank, however, are killing her with good intentions.
It is the loss of our own values, given to us by the Prophets, which is destroying the modern State of Israel from within, not the Palestinians. There is no justice, no honesty, and no mercy for the “stranger” (the non-Jews who were actually in Israel/Palestine before 1948.) The “we will survive no matter what we have to do” school of thought rules now. The end will justify the means. The Prophets would never recognize this perversion of our ethical values as Judaism.
Yael Petretti lives in Southampton
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2 Haaretz Monday, March 25, 2013
Yair Lapid’s strange choice
Why would someone who could be seen as the Israeli Obama want to align himself with someone like new Education Minister Shai Piron?
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/yair-lapid-s-strange-choice.premium-1.511699
By Sefi Rachlevsky
Mar.25, 2013
The new education minister, Rabbi Shai Piron. Photo by Michal Fattal
Prior to the election, newly appointed Education Minister Shai Piron, a rabbi in the settlement of Oranit, sat on the dais and declared to the cameras that he would have voted for Habayit Hayehudi if he were not on Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid’s ticket. And so, in honor of the Passover seder – which literally means “order” – we must bring some order to the spin which turned civic-oriented election results into settler-oriented results. One of the signs of the seder is the Pironism embodied in the commandment “lo tehanem” (“Don’t let the Gentiles on the ground”).
The “Piron-lo-tehanem” affair led to no end of excuses. But a non-truth is not a truth. And contrary to what some claim, Piron’s ruling was not a “theoretical” halakhic discussion of religious law, nor an examination of viewpoints. It was a practical religious ruling for a specific person in Haifa, who asked whether he was allowed to sell an apartment to an Arab. Piron’s reply was thundering: No. It is forbidden. Absolutely. Lo tehanem.
Even beyond the ethical disaster of this ruling and its historical significance – that a nation persecuted out of racism, and to whom the sale of houses was forbidden, would turn around and do the very same thing – even beyond that, it is illegal and violates the law against incitement to racism.
The fact that the attorney general did not sic the law on rabbis who follow Dov Lior and Shmuel Eliyahu does not change the law. One cannot purify oneself of incitement and a framework for committing crimes of hatred and racism by murmuring about “kiruv levavot” – drawing their hearts closer – without a revolutionary halakhic change. Supporting incitement to racism cannot be an option.
The order “lo tehanem” is central to the rabbis of the generation. There are three interpretations of this commandment: One may not praise the Gentiles; one may not give them a place to live; and one may not pardon them.
They are not empty words. Of all the first-grade Jewish children in Piron’s education system, 52.5 percent are sent to religious and ultra-Orthodox schools. And almost all receive this kind of extreme education. Now even in the flagship system, the state religious track, an order has been given to separate boys and girls after third grade. Separation is the basis for prejudice. There is no separate but equal.
Here too everything comes from halakha. According to the Shulhan Arukh, the authoritative codex of Jewish law, the worst of all sins – that which leads to all other sins – is not racist murder but the spilling of seed in vain. All the demons and destructive forces in the world are created by the spilling of Jewish seed. Once again, this is no hypothetical situation. All the popular midnight prayer sessions, tikkun chatzot, came to correct this one sin.
In the same way, Yair Lapid’s plan for a draft at the age of 18 was also Judaized with the embrace of his new “brothers.” Girls, it seems, are exempt because of the aforementioned halakhic view on spilled seed. Some 2,000 people a year will be funded for their entire lives, creating a community hundreds of thousands strong. A draft age of 21-22, as is common in the country’s reigning Mercaz Harav messianic yeshiva, will intensify the pressure for early marriage so couples can secure the “married+1” salary in the “draft.”
For the minority who enlist in the army, women will be kept at even further a distance – this, by the way, includes the head of the Israel Defense Forces Personnel Directorate – because of the chance of spilled seed and demons.
Yes, Lapid and his Yesh Atid party have good intentions. The winds of change they bring are genuine. But intentions are not enough.
Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who similarly rode a wave of desire for civic normalcy with “one nation, one draft,” refrained from a civic government, left the Housing Ministry “for the interim” in the hands of the settler Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, thought that he was “repairing” the ultra-Orthodox Shas party by distancing Aryeh Deri, and wanted to prove that he didn’t despise the religious.
He too paid the price for his mistake. Anyone who turns his back on his political base and abandons the donkey he rode in on has to return to the tower on foot.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech proved the strangeness of Lapid’s choice. His supporters voted for him, the man who plays the guitar and listens to the Beatles, not for a rabbi, a settler and a racist. Why should someone who could be seen as the Israeli Obama, who favors normalcy and freedom from settlements and racism, why would he want to be the brother-servant of racism and Pironism?
Anyone who seeks to bring change only causes harm with mutterings about “kiruv levavot.” The religious community must undergo a revolutionary change in the principles of faith, a revolution that will uproot their racism. Anything less is not enough. The countries in the region have learned: In religion, religious law will always reign supreme.
And the secular community? Their duty is to keep their eyes open. If they continue to let themselves be fooled by honeyed words and an embrace, their dreams will surely disappear.
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3 Haaretz
Monday, March 25, 2013
Palestinians add national meaning to Palm Sunday in Jerusalem
Thousands of Christians gathered in Jerusalem for the start of Easter week on Sunday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/palestinians-add-national-meaning-to-palm-sunday-in-jerusalem.premium-1.511736
By Amira Hass and The Associated Press
A Christian pilgrim holds a Polish national flag as others hold palm fronds during the traditional Palm Sunday procession on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem’s old city, March 24, 2013. Photo by AP
Old City Jerusalem The traditional Palm Sunday procession, marking the beginning of Easter week for Catholic and Protestant Christians, was tinged with Israeli-Palestinian politics in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Thousands of Christians gathered at noon in the courtyard of the Bethphage Greek Orthodox Church on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, where Jesus is said to have begun his entrance to Jerusalem five days before his crucifixion. Many carried palm or olive branches as they made their way to the Old City.
In Bethlehem, meanwhile, mostly Palestinian worshipers gathered in the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, traditional site of Jesus’ birth, clutching olive branches and bouquets as they sung in praise.
For years the Jerusalem procession was attended mainly by non-Palestinian pilgrims, but in recent years the Christian communities in the West Bank and Gaza have made their presence felt, encouraged to do so by the Palestine Liberation Organization.
This year the Palestinians stressed their presence by carrying placards bearing the name of an Arab community, the distance of the community from Jerusalem and the word “Palestine.” Many waved small Palestinian flags, marching among groups of pilgrims from the Philippines, Ethiopia, Germany, Italy and other countries.
One banner, which caused Hebrew and Arab speakers to smile sadly, was a large replica of an entrance permit ostensibly issued by the Civil Administration that read: “The purpose of the permit: Christian holiday. Valid: March 19-May 11. Name: The Palestinian People. ID number: 1948.”
PLO officials hoped the banner would raise awareness among Christians regarding the difficulties Christian Palestinians typically encounter when wishing to visit the holy sites in Jerusalem.
According to the PLO officials, in many communities only half the requests by some of the 50,000 Palestinian Christians were approved, at most.
The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, however, said it rejected, on security grounds, only 192 of the 19,000 requests it received.
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4 Haaretz
Friday, March 22, 2013
Twilight Zone
In a West Bank refugee camp, stones take place of hope
In the Al-Fawar refugee camp near Hebron, the hope shared over a decade ago by a few has disappeared, without a trace.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/twilight-zone/in-a-west-bank-refugee-camp-stones-take-place-of-hope.premium-1.511298
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
Mar.22, 2013
The Al-Fawar camp in Hebron. Photo by Alex Levac
It was on the evening that Milan played Barcelona, on Tuesday of last week. All the young men of the refugee camp wandered aimlessly on its main and only road, waiting for the start of the game, which they planned to watch on the televisions set up in the dismal coffee shops and on the scarred road with no sidewalk.
The place: the Al-Fawar camp, home to some 12,000 people living in one square kilometer – one of the remotest and poorest of the West Bank’s camps, south of Hebron.
A little after 9 P.M., a convoy of three jeeps and a larger armored vehicle belonging to the Israel Defense Forces hurtled toward the camp. The stone-throwing commenced immediately. Three of the vehicles disappeared up the road to Yatta, but one jeep got stuck. Dozens of youths pelted it with rocks.
The six soldiers sitting inside the vehicle did not respond at first. Maybe they were paralyzed by fear, maybe they were showing restraint. Now the youths summoned up courage and began to approach the jeep. A few climbed onto its roof and tried to rip off its antennas; one youth managed to open the door and pull one of the soldiers out.
The soldiers began shooting with live ammunition and the youth who was trying to pull out the soldier was badly wounded in his abdomen. The dozens of young men retreated in panic. They took shelter at the corner of Beit Jibrin Street – all the alleyways in the camp are named for the lost villages of 1948, from which their residents originated – and resumed throwing stones from behind a wall. Peeking, throwing and then taking shelter. In the meantime more IDF jeeps arrived, and their soldiers began firing live ammunition at the young men.
Mohammed Titi, an Islamic Jihad operative, was hit in the face by a bullet, and was killed on the spot. Just six days earlier he had been released from a Palestinian prison. Titi was in and out of Israeli and Palestinian jails in recent years. Between one arrest and another he set up a website for his organization’s youth movement in support of other Palestinian prisoners.
Titi’s funeral was among the largest the camp had ever known. Now we are standing on the spot where he fell: There are dozens of bullet holes on the walls of the houses, and in the windows and the iron doors of the barbershop and local restaurant. Pictures of the shaheed (martyr) hang in the display windows. The words “Immortality is yours, O Mohammed,” are written on a wall.
Titi, with the neatly kempt goatee, lived in the Iraq al-Manshiyya alley, which is as wide as a man’s body. Torn Palestinian flags flap in the wind on the countless electricity and telephone wires that crisscross the main street of the camp. Even late at night the street, in which trash is piling up, is still bustling with dozens of young men who have nothing to get up for in the morning and no reason to go to bed. “The street is our park,” one youth told us this week.
The entrance to the camp is covered in soot from the dozens of tires that were burned here in protest over Titi’s killing. Idle youths huddle on every corner, sending blank and sometimes also hostile glances. Most of the camp’s young men are unemployed, including the university graduates among them. An emergency program administered by UNRWA provides them with work-relief employment for just two months each year, cleaning or guarding schools for $420 per month.
Ever since residents were barred from working in Israel more than a decade ago Al-Fawar has sunk into deep unemployment and even more abject poverty than before. Throwing stones at an IDF jeep is the only bit of excitement in a camp, whose boundaries the occupants demarcate thus: It starts at an iron gate (on Route 60 ) and ends at a cemetery.
Same wretchedness
A musty stairwell leads us to a tiny apartment on the third story of a building that was never completed, and probably never will be. Here we meet with some of the camp’s residents. Thirteen years ago, on the eve of the new millennium, we met here with the same residents: Some of the adults we spoke with then still believed that the future awaiting their children would turn out better than theirs was. They thought, back on New Year’s at the dawn of 2000, that the despotic regimes of Arab states were destined to fall and that this would bequeath change to them as well. Other residents were hopeless then, too, just as they are today.
When I read the description of the camp that I wrote at the time, the picture it paints is exactly identical to the one I now witness. The same wretchedness, the same overcrowding. And now even the hope shared then by a few has disappeared, without a trace. Now the adults too know there is nothing awaiting their children in their lives, other than poverty, unemployment and despair. There isn’t even money to use to get married anymore in this camp, and hundreds of young people grow older single, leaving their helpless parents sad and frustrated.
The adults’ fiercest longing is for the years when they worked in Israel. “We were in heaven, and now we are in the abyss,” says Yousef Makoussi, who used to work at a gas station in Ramle, where half the camp would come to visit him. “I was a king when I worked in Israel, and now I am beneath the floor tiles.”
Hitham Janezra fondly recalls the years he worked at Dimona Textiles. Sometimes Janezra tells his wife, Hena, he’s going to work, just to hide the shame of being unemployed and sitting idly at home. He has six children with Hena, a teacher who barely manages to support her family. Janezra says he would have no problem stealing into Israel. “Give me two hours and I’ll call you from Tel Aviv, but who would give me a job there today?”
The bitterness here is actually directed largely at the Palestinian Authority: “What has it done? Brought us nothing but hunger. It merely freed Israel from handling education and health.” They make a point of referring to their camp as a kfar (village), in their laborers’ Hebrew.
Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for the B’Tselem human rights organization, who was born and raised in Al-Fawar, before he moved out, to the other side of the road, says that the camp’s graves – due to a shortage of space, the dead are interred above ground in stacked burial vaults – remind him in their size and shape of the camp’s original homes, the ones to which his family was forced to flee from the village Iraq al-Manshiyya in 1949, after the war had already ended.
How do you see the future, I asked. “Bleak,” someone replied. And what about Barack Obama’s visit? “A joke,” someone else responded, and everyone in the room burst into laughter, loud and bitter.
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5 Ynet
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Turkey’s Erdogan. Three conditions Photo: Reuters
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4360999,00.html
IsraelNews
Erdogan: We insisted on Israeli apology
Turkish premier says Ankara rejected several Israeli proposals to end diplomatic crisis prior to Obama’s visit to region. ‘They said, ‘Isn’t it enough if we pay?’ We said no’
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that his government had rejected several Israeli proposals for reconciliation before the two countries agreed to normalize their relations.
According to Erdogan, Turkey insisted on three major conditions for the improvement of relations with Israel that included the use of the word “apology,” Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper reported.
In a meeting with fellow party members Erdogan said, “We constantly gave them three conditions. An apology. They wanted to express sorrow, but we said no. We wanted the word apology.”
The Turkish prime minister claimed that Israeli officials had agreed to pay compensation to the Marmara victims’ families but were reluctant to meet Ankara’s two other demands: an apology and an end of the Gaza blockade. ““They said, ‘Isn’t it enough if we pay?’ We said no,” Erdogan told party members.
“Another text came to us ahead of President Barack Obama’s Middle East visit,” he added. “There were things there that were unacceptable, so we turned it down.”
According to Erdogan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised to start work on easing the siege.
“I told him that we accepted the apology, and that we would follow up with the compensations and the embargo,” the Turkish premier remarked. “We will monitor the situation to see if the promises are kept or not.”
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6 Al Jazeera
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
A new-state solution for Israel and Palestine
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332682321538283.html
Anne-Marie Slaughter
“Condominialism” will grant both Palestinians and Jews the right to settle anywhere in either of the two states.
Last Modified: 26 Mar 2013 08:48
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Instead of trying to separate and recreate all of the structures and relationships, it makes far more sense to build on them in ways that benefit both states’ peoples and economies [EPA]
Imagine a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine in which Palestinians would have the right of return; Israelis could settle wherever they could purchase land in the West Bank; and Jerusalem need not be divided. This is not a fanciful vision, but a creative and eminently sensible reinvention of 21st century statehood. And US President Barack Obama’s just-completed visit to Israel provides an opportunity to explore genuinely new thinking.
Ever since Bill Clinton nearly succeeded in brokering a comprehensive settlement in 2000, the mantra among supporters of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been that, while a solution exists, Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are willing to reach it do not. The solution is a version of the deal that Clinton sought: two sovereign states based on the 1967 borders, with negotiated land swaps to reflect existing settlement patterns.
The agreement would include a land corridor connecting Gaza and the West Bank; a divided Jerusalem with guaranteed access for all to religious sites; Palestinians’ renunciation of the right of return; Israel’s willingness to dismantle settlements outside the agreed borders; and recognition of both states across the Middle East.
But suppose that the reason that no Palestinians and Israelis willing to conclude such a deal have emerged is that the solution itself is domestically unsupportable on both sides. Suppose that as long as a version of this deal is the only game in town, the creeping physical expansion of the Israeli state and the demographic expansion of Israeli Arabs will continue to erode its foundation. For all the dire warnings that the window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing (or has already closed), it is the solution itself that is the problem.
In 2008, a Princeton University graduate student in philosophy named Russell Nieli gave a talk at the Princeton Center for Jewish Life that was so well received that he later expanded it into an article for the US-based magazine Tikkun, founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner. The article, “Toward a Permanent Palestinian/Israeli Peace – the Case for Two-State Condominialism”, was published with the express aim of stimulating “productive thinking among a younger generation of Jews and Arabs not bound by the restricted vision and failed policies of the past”.
Follow the latest developments in the ongoing conflict
“Two-state condominialism” is as visionary as the name is clunky. The core idea is that Israelis and Palestinians would be citizens of two separate states and thus would identify with two separate political authorities. Palestine would be defined as a state of the Palestinian people, and Israel as a Jewish state. Under “condominialism”, however, both Palestinians and Jews “would be granted the right to settle anywhere within the territory of either of the two states, the two states thus forming a single, binational settlement community”.
Think about that for a minute. As Nieli describes it, Palestinians “would have the right to settle anywhere within Israel just as Jews would have the right to settle anywhere within the territory of the Palestinian state. Regardless of which of the two states they lived in, all Palestinians would be citizens of the Palestinian state, all Jews citizens of Israel”.
Each state would have the authority and the obligation to provide for the economic, cultural, religious and welfare needs of its citizens living in the other state’s territory. These would be extraterritorial rights and responsibilities, just as the United States, for example, provides for its large numbers of expatriates, such as civilian dependents of US military personnel based abroad.
To make this work, the borders of each state would first have to be defined – presumably on the basis of the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed territorial swaps. Israeli Arabs would then be required to transfer their citizenship, national identity and national voting rights – but not their residence – to the new Palestinian state. They would have a permanent right to live in Israel and would retain the benefits to which they are currently entitled as Israeli citizens, but they would now vote as citizens of Palestine. All other Palestinians living in Israel would have rights and benefits only under Palestinian law.
Condominialism recognises the reality of the deep interconnectedness of Israeli settlers in the West Bank with the rest of Israel – through roads, water supplies, electricity grids, administrative structures and economic relationships (just as Israeli and Palestinian parts of Jerusalem are interdependent). Instead of trying to separate and recreate all of these structures and relationships, it makes far more sense to build on them in ways that benefit both states’ peoples and economies. And, in a world in which many citizens spend an increasing proportion of their time in virtual space, de facto condominialism is already happening.
In the 1950s, after four decades of war across Europe, the idea of a European Union in which member states’ citizens could live and work freely across national borders while retaining their political allegiance and cultural identity seemed equally far-fetched. (Indeed, the name of the political process by which the EU was to be constructed, “neo-functionalism”, was every bit as abstract and cumbersome as “two-state condominialism”.) Yet French and German statesmen summoned the vision and the will to launch a bold experiment, one that has evolved into a single economy of 500 million people.
Why shouldn’t another site of ancient enmities be the source of a new conception of statehood? Interestingly, many young people in the 1950s, like my Belgian mother, ardently supported the vision of a new Europe. Today’s young Israelis and Palestinians pride themselves on their entrepreneurialism, with all the risk and vision that starting something new entails. Supporting and contributing to an innovative political start-up would be their generation’s defining act.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department (2009-2011), is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.