"The curse of the nation-state" is what the African historian Basil
Davidson calls the conflict-generating political framework imposed
by Europe on the African continent. The phrase can be equally
applied to Israel/Palestine. The lack of fit between cultural
geography, state boundaries and unitary state structures is
self-evident, especially as each state - Israel and the prospective
Palestinian state - presumes to represent a particular "nation,"
but in fact incorporates within its borders one or more other
national groups demanding their own self-determination. If we
conceive of cultural, economic and political relations as a fluid
"field" moving across whole regions and continents, then it is
clear that no state can "capture" an entire people within its
boundaries. Both the Palestinian diaspora and the hundreds of
thousands of Israeli yordim (emigrants) illustrate that.
"Nation-states," in particular, as Israel purports to be and
Palestine aspires to become, contain special potential for
generating conflict, since they rarely, if ever, represent one
distinct nation. Yet the world is still composed of states, and
self-determination has little meaning without the political and
economic apparatus to back it up. Thus the apparent saliency of the
"two-state solution."
At this juncture of Palestinian and Israeli history, however, where
despite the seeming impasses new political forms are perceptibly
arising, it might be useful to look at the limitations of the
nation-state as an appropriate framework. Since Israel possesses
state power which makes it a dominant force vis-a-vis the
Palestinians, I will begin by examining the insoluble dilemmas
inherent in the Israeli state, its national aspirations and its
policies. I will then go on to consider how Binyamin Netanyahu, who
is keenly aware of these dilemmas, proposes to address them,
suggesting that the inadequacy of his proposals derives as much
from the limitations of a nation-state approach as from his Likud
ideology. I will conclude by reflecting on possible limitations of
the two-state solution and raise the possibility of other
options.
'The Israeli Blind': A Starting Point
The dilemma is a familiar one. Since 1967 Israel has tried
desperately to juggle three essential aspirations. With varying
degrees of emphasis between the right and left, religious and
secular, it seeks to be a Jewish as well as democratic state, and
to retain control over the Greater Land of Israel. But reality has
dictated that, in the long run and on the best of terms, it can
only achieve two out of the three. Which two go to the heart of the
public debate in Israel?
Option One is for Israel to be Jewish and democratic, but for that
to happen it must concede the West Bank and Gaza to the
Palestinians. This is the option favored by most middle-class
secular Jews of European origin who tend to vote for the
Labor/Meretz bloc, but they comprise only between a third to 40
percent of the Jewish public. They enjoy the tacit support of
Palestinian Israelis (which is why the Labor/Meretz bloc held out
hope of winning the last elections). Yet even if advocates of this
option came to power, the chances that they would evacuate the
settlers and disengage from major portions of the West Bank in
terms of security, water and infrastructure are extremely slim.
Labor supporters, in particular, lack the will to take such
decisive and far-reaching steps, especially if their actions, de
legitimized in the eyes of most Israeli Jews as those of a Jewish
minority supported by Arabs, threatened serious civil conflict.
Indeed, one can only assume that the Rabin/Peres government pursued
this option, since they equivocated on their final aims and
consistently denied either envisioning a Palestinian state beside
Israel or the possibility that Israel might eventually relinquish
its West Bank/Gaza settlements or its control over security and
borders. Although Peres has spoken often of the untenability of one
people ruling over another, the "independence-minus" Bantustans
Labor offered the Palestinians is clearly unacceptable to them,
thus rendering Option One ideologically and theoretically viable,
but an unlikely eventuality in practice.
Another major obstacle to Option One is the view held by most Arab
citizens of Israel that "Jewish" and "democratic" are themselves
mutually exclusive, and that a truly democratic Israel will be a
binational one in which all citizens' civil status is equal and
takes precedence over national, ethnic or religious background.
Even Meretz supporters, I would argue, do not go this far. As
Zionists (whatever that problematic term may mean today), they
uphold the value of Jewish self-determination, and would argue that
a strengthened civic equality in Israel, coupled with a Palestinian
state next door, would constitute a substantive and acceptable, if
not absolute, compromise. While I have no hard data to substantiate
this, I would assume that even the most "left-wing" Zionist would
oppose, for example, abolishing the Law of Return. Still, any
attempt to measurably equalize the civil status of Arabs and Jews
would be rigorously opposed by a Jewish majority that would
consider it threatening to the Jewish character of the state.
Option Two, that Israel could remain a Jewish state and continue to
control the entire Land of Israel, would require it to deny
citizenship to the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and
Gaza, thereby relinquishing any democratic pretense in favor of an
apartheid regime. This is essentially the position of Netanyahu's
government, but since he lectured the Arab world on the importance
of democracy from his platform in the American Congress ¬and
since he has committed himself publicly to the peace process - he
obviously cannot frame his position as such. Indeed, Netanyahu
believes he can "save" all three aspirations, including reconciling
democracy with Israeli rule over the entire West Bank and Gaza.
How? By offering "autonomy-plus" a la (as he suggested) Puerto Rico
or Andorra. If the Palestinians will only accept autonomy within
the borders of their Bantustans, all will be fine. Resistance only
proves the Arabs' insincerity and strengthens the belief of the
Likud and its coalition partners that the Palestinians seek not
peace but the destruction of Israel.
Option Three is the most theoretical and unlikely of all: a
democratic state encompassing the entire Land of Israel/Palestine,
meaning a binational state. For Jews this entails relinquishing the
Jewish character of Israel (in fact, relinquishing an Israeli state
in general in favor of a more representative entity), and Jewish
national self-determination, a cardinal principle of political
Zionism and its very rationale. This alone makes Option Three a
non-starter. Whether the Palestinians would be willing to forego
their own national self-determination in favor of such a state is
an open question, although the possibility has occasionally been
raised by Palestinian leaders.
Netanyahu's Option: State over Nation
Oslo changed the whole picture. The vision of the final settlement
with the Palestinians still remained vague on the part of Labor.
Indeed, Oslo was predicated on "good faith," on the assumption that
the Israeli public would not immediately accept peace based on a
neighboring Palestinian state, and on the belief that a mutually
acceptable and "salable" arrangement would emerge over time. But
the status quo changed enough that the dilemmas facing Israel
assumed a much more concrete and pressing character. Instead of a
purely internal debate inside Israel, the peace process brought the
PLO, Jordan and, to a much more tangible degree, Egypt and the
United States into active involvement - not to mention those Muslim
countries with which Israel was beginning to foster economic
relations.
Where all that would have led is today speculation. The election of
Netanyahu and the forming of his government radically altered the
political trajectory. Instead of moving towards a mutually
acceptable arrangement, Oslo became a means for forcing the
Palestinians to accept Israel's dictates or be blamed for
"destroying the peace process." Netanyahu has to try and reconcile
the three aspirations - each essential to his party's and
government's world view - while avoiding blame for violating Oslo
or the peace process in general.
This problem he has attacked in a variety of ways, some illusory,
some reflecting his deep-seated belief that Israel can remain
Jewish and democratic, retain control over Judea and Samaria/ the
West Bank, if not Gaza. Several ingredients go into this stew.
First, Netanyahu does not believe that true peace is possible with
the Arabs. Thus, unlike Rabin and Peres, he seeks not a mutually
acceptable solution and reconciliation, but rather a modus vivendi
built upon meeting minimal Palestinian requirements of autonomy,
while preserving a power relationship in which the Palestinians
concede' u Israeli dictates out of fear of losing even their
autonomy. Israel, moreover, reserves for itself the option of
taking any military steps necessary to defend its "security" (a
catch-all phrase that can be invoked at any time). This definition
of peace as merely the absence of conflict reflects the fundamental
role that power plays in Revisionist/Likud thinking. Disputes are
settled by either military victory or political domination. There
has to be a winner and a loser. Arriving at a mutually acceptable
resolution of the causes of conflict is therefore not considered an
"authentic" or long-term solution - certainly where Arabs are
concerned.
A crucial element in this conception of peace is its almost
exclusively Israeli definition. Settlement, infrastructure,
security, Israel's "ownership" of Jerusalem, the extent of its
phased withdrawals, Palestine's economic relations, and the degree
of autonomy Israel is willing to "grant" the Palestinians - all are
removed from the sphere of negotiations between equal parties to
that of Israeli "approva1." But since peace is equated with
conceding to Israel's "natural and unquestionable" interests, any
resistance is portrayed as proof of Palestinian insincerity and the
cogency of Israel's policies. And since "peace" is essentially a
state of non-conflict detached from the resolution of underlying
conflicts, any resistance on the part of the Palestinians to
Israel's self-evident interests, especially if it is "violent"
(such as youths throwing stones at soldiers, which can only happen
if the Palestinian Authority gives a "green light"), is grounds for
stopping the process. Netanyahu's message: Either concede without
resistance to our policies or carry the blame for ending the peace
process.
New Model
Still, since national self-determination is a recognized human
right that Israel has invoked to justify its won claims to
statehood, Netanyahu is caught in a bind. To set the stage for
accepting national rights for Jews while rejecting them for
Palestinians, he begins by nothing less than questioning the very
notion of the nation-state. Noting that "in tens of states there
are minorities claiming independence" (thereby expanding the
Israeli "state" to include the West Bank and Gaza, while reducing
the entire Palestinian nation to the status of ethnic "minority"
similar to the Palestinians of Israel), Netanyahu searches for "a
new model" in which some peoples (now defined as "minorities"
rather than national groups) are granted "autonomy": "management of
some areas of life and not others." (How one group becomes a
"nation" and the owner of a state with the power to "grant"
autonomy, and another group becomes a "minority" with no state or
national rights to determine its own destiny is left unclear.)
Citing the Palestinians as an example of a wider problem facing the
world's states, Netanyahu suggests that "the problem is the
definition of the right of self-determination." Apparently
decreeing that those nations that now control states are the only
legitimate parties that should decide on such matters, he declares,
no less: "Limitations should be placed on the right to
self-determination, and a balanced order should be found."
Casting about for convenient models, Netanyahu settled on two:
Puerto Rico and Andorra. (He originally included Finland, until an
aide pointed out that Finns do indeed have their own country.) The
Puerto Ricans protested, pointing out they had held several
referendums over their destiny, and that they have been US citizens
since 1917, with free and equal access to the mainland. The
Andorrans thanked Netanyahu for calling world attention to the
existence of their principality of some 65,000 people controlled by
France and the Spanish Bishop of Urgel, but since they belonged to
neither country nor were ethnically different from their neighbors,
they apparently saw in themselves little of the "new model" of
autonomy Netanyahu was seeking for the Palestinians and other
"minorities." It is perhaps telling that in a world of thousands of
national, ethnic, religious and linguistic communities, Netanyahu
could not come up with one useful or convincing or even plausible
example of a people with claims to self-determination happily
settling for minority status.
Having thus called the principle of national self-determination
into doubt and invoking his (apparent) power as head of state to
categorize the Palestinians as a "minority" whose rights must be
subsumed to the wider order of the state (which now encompasses the
West Bank and Gaza), Netanyahu casts his rejection of Palestinian
national claims in broader universal terms, as an issue not of
Israel and the Palestinians, but of states compelled to protect
themselves and the entire international order against the
illegitimate claims of troublesome ethnic groups. To bolster this
view, he brings in another concern that has long been behind such
policies as "Judaizing the Galilee" (or the Negev) but has seldom
been clearly articulated: the worry that if Palestinian national
rights are recognized, then "Israeli Arabs" - apparently not yet
convinced of their status as an ethnic minority in a Jewish state -
may push for their annexation to the Palestinian state.
Some Other Option
If Netanyahu is correct that "tens of states" suffer from internal
cultural conflicts, it is because the state has proven to be an
inappropriate, oppressive and conflict-generating framework in a
world where some form of self-determination is crucial for
protecting one's cultural identity and collective interests. The
nation-state does not work because no contemporary state contains
just one national or cultural group. More just and workable
alternatives do not lie, then, in giving ruling elites even greater
moral and coercive authority to "limit" the rights of "minorities."
Rather, we might look at wider political and economic arrangements
that permit coordination among peoples without forcing them into
unitary frameworks.
Netanyahu might be right that a two-state solution, supported by
both the PLO and segments of the left in Israel, is untenable. This
is not because the Palestinians might attempt to destroy the Jewish
state, as Netanyahu fears, or because Israel destroys the integrity
of Palestine, as Hamas and the Rejectionists believe, but for other
equally cogent reasons: the two peoples and the lands they live on
have simply become too intertwined to ever disengage; and it is in
the interest of both peoples, and their neighbors, that the Middle
East become a well-integrated economic unit. Meron Benvenisti adds
yet another concern: two states would give the Palestinians little
more than a Bantustan, even if they acquired the whole of the West
Bank and Gaza, thus freezing the dominant/submissive relationship
that Israel holds over the Palestinians today.
Dissatisfaction with the two-state solution has led to
reconsideration of the binational state as a viable option. The
idea of a secular, democratic binational state was long the PLO's
favorite solution, and it still is among the Democratic Front and
other Palestinian groups who fear the emergence of an undemocratic
Palestinian state under Arafat's centralized leadership. Member of
Knesset Azmi Bishara has noted the idea of a binational state
always enjoyed more popularity among Palestinians than among
Israelis.
The reason is clear enough: Israel was and is largely
self-contained within its own state boundaries, while major
concentrations of the Palestinian population are found on both
sides of the Green Line, and will be divided if a Palestinian state
emerges alongside Israel. But in perception, if not because of
actual numbers, many Israelis today consider Judea and Samaria and
its Jewish population as no less integral to the Israeli state -
and therefore oppose "partition" for the same reasons as do the
Palestinians. Rabbi Forman of Tekoa, for example, sees a binational
state as a way of Jews retaining the whole Land of Israel, and,
conversely, of the Palestinians retaining the whole of
Palestine.
Yet national and religious identities extend beyond the boundaries
of Israel/Palestine. Salim Tamari of Birzeit University points to a
certain ambivalence in Palestinian nationalism deriving from its
incorporation in wider identities no less important: Pan-Arab,
Mashriq, Syrian and Islamic. Israel exists as a self-contained
unit: world Jewry does not share its national identity nor desires
to immigrate, despite the Law of Return. Thus it need deal only
with issues of settlement within the Land of Israel, together with
practical concerns of relations with its neighbors. A Palestinian
state, by contrast, would have to address both a national diaspora
consisting of people who do share its national identity, but might
not be included within its boundaries, as well as its belonging to
the wider Arab and Muslim worlds. Its interests would be best
served by a fluid type of federation, perhaps an arrangement
resembling the European Union, or even a Semitic Common Market. The
knowledge that one's cultural traditions, identities and interest
were fairly represented in the wider federation or union might
diminish greatly the need for one people or another to control
territory or claim exclusivity.
There is also some logic to Netanyahu's suggestion of moving to
final¬-status negotiations (although he has a very different
agenda in this regard). Without considering alternative options and
moving towards some defined arrangement, the peace process is
liable to get stuck at a certain stage or end up with a solution
(e.g., two states) that resolves neither the needs nor the concerns
of the parties. If, on the other hand, the two-state solution is
conceived as a step on the way to a more innovative and suitable
political arrangement, then even Palestinian autonomy that would
allow Palestinians in Israel, the West bank, Gaza and Jordan to
reestablish close cultural and economic ties might prove to be a
flexible phase in the process.
None of this is to suggest skipping over the two-state model in
favor of more fluid and inclusive political forms whose time has
not yet come. For all the conflicts it generates, the state is
still the only effective instrument of self-determination, and is
still the only political form allowed to participate fully in the
international arena, from the UN to the Olympics. But while the
imperatives of self-determination must be accounted for, it might
be well to look at the two-state solution as a phase towards a more
equitable, workable and culturally satisfactory arrangement. Before
us, then, lies an opportunity to overcome "the curse of the
nation-state."