Comment by skissane
2 years ago
> Palestinians did not reject a one state solution. Most Israelis don't want that. I.e. annex the West Bank and Gaza and have a single country, let's call it "Israel-Palestine".
Hardliners in the current Israeli government (e.g Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu) want to "annex Judaea and Samaria". There seems to be a bit of ambiguity about whether they mean only Area C, or the whole of the West Bank (or even annex Area C now as a precursor to annexing A and B later.)
If they did that, what would happen to the Palestinians living in those areas – would they become Israeli Arabs? Would they first have to request Israeli citizenship? Would they be entitled to it, or would it be up to the Israeli government to decide whether to extend it to them?
"One state solution" is an idea primarily associated with Israel's peacenik far left, but maybe the best way to achieve it might (paradoxically) be to let the Israeli far right get a big chunk of what it wants?
> If you want more radical ideas then if all Palestinian Arabs convert to Judaism we can also solve the problem pretty quickly...
Speaking of radical ideas, I find the "cantonization" proposals [0] for the future of Israel rather fascinating. Basically convert it into a federation of different "cantons" representing the different sectors of Israeli society (secular, religious, Haredi, Arab). These cantons might be partially geographical and partially personal – i.e. every citizen belongs to a canton personally, the canton also controls the territory where its members are a majority, but has to protect the rights of minorities from other cantons in its territory; individuals will receive some government services from the canton of residence (e.g. public utilities), others might be provided by their personal canton (e.g. education, family law)
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-05/ty-article-ma...
The hardliners real plan is to Annex Judea and Samaria, make the Palestinians second-class citizens and convince them to immigrate.
Sort of apartheid.
It's more wishful thinking than a plan.
Possible outcome: they win the argument on annexing Judaea and Samaria, which is the first step of their plan, but then they fail to achieve the subsequent steps (denying Palestinians citizenship, mass deportation of Palestinians, etc) – which could produce an end result which is a long way from what they actually want – e.g. Israeli annexation could make all West Bank Palestinians eligible for Israeli citizenship, and then what if large numbers of them decide they want it, and end up getting it? Suddenly the "binational one-state solution" seems a lot closer to reality, as Arabs become an increasing percentage of Israeli citizens – even though what the hardliners actually wanted to achieve by annexation was the "mononational one-state solution" (Israel gets all the land while the Palestinians all leave and give up their Palestinian identity)
I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
> I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
Under the "canton" proposal, there would still be a national government in charge of the military, intelligence agencies, diplomacy, foreign trade, the currency, the banking system, etc. The "cantons" would primarily control local matters, schools, housing, family law, religious affairs, etc. So I don't think it would make much difference to military.
It would basically be transforming Israel from a unitary state (like New Zealand) to a federal state (like the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland) - however, with the added factor that the top-level national subdivisions would be based on cultural factors rather than purely geographical ones – which would be a system more like that of Belgium.
You would wonder if there would be sufficient unifying factors for government to remain functional or it'll end in stalemate. At best leading to stagnation or at worst leading to near failed state. An example of how it could go wrong would be Lebanon. Also a certain faction could play the long game with end goal of constitutional change.
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Chomsky called it. Then again he stated that none of it is hidden. Those ideas were floated in the open, but not covered in US at all.