THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN-JORDANIAN CONFEDERATION ALTERNATIVE

In 2021, we marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Madrid Conference, which took place from October 30 to November 1, 1991, following the first Gulf War. That is considered to be the first serious attempt to set in motion a process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is important to recall that, due to the objections of the right-wing Israeli government led at the time by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir—Benjamin Netanyahu had just entered Israeli politics and was serving as Deputy Foreign Minister—the Palestinians did not appear as an independent entity but rather as part of a Palestinian-Jordanian delegation. The Palestinians were eloquently represented by Dr. Hayder Abdel Shafi from Gaza, and leading members of the Palestinian delegation were in constant contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership based at the time in exile in Tunis. But it was the fact of the tie-in with Jordan which made the Palestinian representatives acceptable to a right-wing Israeli government.

Given the current right-wing tendencies within Israeli politics, is it possible that the way to break the current impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations is to try to return the Jordanian factor to the equation? There is an international consensus that the two-state solution—the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital—should be the basis for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is the position of the UN, the United States, the EU, Russia, China, the Arab League, etc. As I write this article in the summer of 2022, that remains the official position of the PLO, as expressed by President Mahmoud Abbas. It is also the position of Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who replaced rejectionist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on July 1. However, the last serious attempt to negotiate a two-state solution was the 2013/14 Israeli-Palestinian negotiations facilitated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The Kerry negotiations failed to produce an agreement, and since then there hasn't even been an attempt at resuming a negotiation process.

Israel held four rounds of elections, between 2019 and 2021, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply was not on the agenda. As we head toward a fifth round of elections on November 1, it appears that once again the primary issue will be “Bibi, yes or no,” the question of whether former Prime Minister Netanyahu will return once again, with perhaps his most extreme government ever, and the fate of Israeli democracy. On the Palestinian side, the general population has lost confidence in the leadership, which has continued to avoid elections since 2005. Public opinion surveys indicate a constant decline in support for, and belief in, the possibility of a two-state solution and a growth in support for violence, armed resistance, as a means of challenging the ongoing and deepening occupation.

To best explain my current approach to the situation, it is necessary to reprise a series of historical regrets. Going back to 1947 and the end of the British Mandate, I regret that the bi-national solution for Jews returning to their historical homeland and the indigenous Palestinians who were emerging as a distinct Arab nation—advocated by the left-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair movement (that I belonged to), Prof. Martin Buber and his colleagues in the Brit Shalom and Ichud movements, Hebrew University founding President Rabbi Judah Magnes, Albert Einstein, Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, Hanna Arendt, the young Noam Chomsky, and others—was rejected by the majority of the Jews, and virtually all of the Palestinians and Arabs. That would have been the ideal solution to the conflict, ensuring the right to national self-determination for both peoples within a joint state. That rejection led to the passing of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, the Partition Plan, which was supposed to create a Jewish and an Arab state in Mandatory Palestine, together with an economic union. As we know, the Jewish state, Israel, was established, and the second part of resolution, the establishment of an Arab (Palestinian) state has not yet been fulfilled; 181 was the cornerstone of what we call today the two-state solution.

I regret that after the 1967 war, the United States and the international community did not act like U.S. President Eisenhower and Soviet President Bulganin in 1957 after the Suez/Sinai Campaign, and demand that Israel withdraw from the newly occupied territories in exchange for peace with all the Arab states and the fulfillment of the other half of 181, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

I regret that the Oslo Accords that were signed in 1993 did not include a clear endgame for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

I regret that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in 1995, since there is significant evidence that he was on a journey leading to the advocacy of a genuine two-state solution and had the credibility to get the backing of the majority of the Israeli people for it.

I regret that Camp David 2000, the negotiations between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO President Yasir Arafat, hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton, failed to resolve the conflict, and consider responsibility for the failure to be divided equally between the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Americans.

I regret that the Second Intifada, which began after the failure of Camp David 2000, was so violent, with suicide bombings against civilians leading to the loss of 1,400 Israeli lives, causing Israeli public opinion to move to the right and lose confidence in the Palestinian intentions toward the Israelis. The fact that Prime Minister Ehud Barak violated a pledge not to blame any side for a possible failure of the summit and declared that “we have no partner” on the Palestinian side of course, did not help.

I regret that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fell in 2009, partially because he was undermined by the right and partially his own responsibility, since he and President Mahmoud Abbas came the closest to resolving the conflict based upon a realistic two-state solution. To this day they both continue to claim that if they had just a few more months, they would have reached an agreement.

I regret that there are around 650,000 settlers living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which is illegal according to international law.

I regret that the governments of the Arab states have essentially abandoned their Palestinian brothers and sisters by not trying to seriously promote the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which conditioned normal diplomatic relations with Israel on the ending of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. The Abraham Accords signed by the UAE and Bahrain, and later joined by Morocco, put the cart before the horse, undermining the basic principle of the API. Yet I also regret that the Palestinians have totally rejected the Accords, and did not try to leverage them to their advantage.

And I regret the fact that the international community, unlike the way it admirably reacted to the Russian attempt to occupy Ukraine in 2022, has not been sufficiently proactive in trying to end the Israeli occupation and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based upon a two-state solution.

Following the failure of the bi-national state proposal in 1947 and the international acceptance of the principle of partition, I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the basis for any realistic solution today.

Yes, there are 650,000 settlers living in illegal settlements (according to international law) east of the Green Line international border in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. From June 12, the day after the end of the war in 1967, I was opposed to the establishment of even a single settlement in the newly occupied territories. Yet all Israeli governments since then have been complicit in the establishment of the settlements. But that does not mean that a two-state solution is no longer possible. My guide for this understanding is the ongoing research carried out by former IDF colonel Dr. Shaul Arieli, who was head of the Peace Administration in Ehud Barak's government.

Arieli, the author of A Border Between Us (Arieli 2021a) and, more recently, The Truman Institute Atlas for the Jewish-Arab Conflict (Arieli 2021b) under the auspices of the Hebrew University's Truman Institute for Peace, says that the settlement enterprise has not succeeded in preventing a two-state solution. One of the formulators of the Geneva Initiative, he says that it would be possible to establish a two-state solution with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, with the aid of a 4–5 percent mutual transfer of land, since 80 percent of the settlers live in that area adjacent to the Green Line (Arieli 2021a, 2021b). That would leave 80,000 to 100,000 settlers within the Palestinian area of sovereignty. Most would prefer to return to Israel proper, the sovereign State of Israel within the recognized international borders, backed by Israeli and international financial compensation; a few will be ready to continue to live under Palestinian sovereignty; and just a few thousand extremists might oppose the agreement. Once such an agreement will be reached, the majority of the Israeli population will prefer peace to ongoing conflict, backed by the force of the IDF, as was the case in the Gaza Disengagement in 2005. Of the settlers, 200,000 live in the new post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhoods that were established in the eastern side of the city, such as French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, and Gilo. Palestinian negotiators have agreed that, in the context of mutual one-to-one land swaps, those neighborhoods would remain under Israeli sovereignty, as would the Jewish and Armenian Quarters of the Old City, together with the Western Wall.

Of course, what has been lacking, particularly on the Israeli side after Rabin's assassination and the fall of Olmert, throughout the Netanyahu period and even in the brief one-year period when Bennett was prime minister, is the political will to reach such an agreement. Hamas, which opposes such an agreement (and is not a member of the PLO), has always said that Abbas and the PLO leadership, who are the authorized Palestinian negotiators according to the Oslo Accords, are welcome to try, and if an agreement is reached, they will abide by the results of a referendum of the entire Palestinian people. They add, however, that they do not believe such an agreement will be reached. And after Clinton at Camp David 2000, George H.W. Bush at Annapolis in 2007, and John Kerry in 2013–2014, the international community has also not seriously tried to promote a solution

The current ongoing impasse has led to the emergence of alternative proposals, “thinking out of the box,” to try to revive a negotiating process. Among the proposals are the recent “Holy Land Confederation” proposal by a group of Israelis and Palestinians led by Yossi Beilin and Hiba Husseini, Josef Avesar's “Israeli-Palestinian Confederation” initiative, the “Land for all: Two States One Homeland” proposal, and of course the one-state solution.

The one-state solution is a non-starter. There is no question that, ideally, equal rights for all Jews and Palestinians within the area of Israel and the occupied territories would be preferable to the current apartheid-like situation with its dual legal system for Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews want a predominantly Jewish state, expressing the Jewish right to national self-determination. Although despair about the lack of hope for a two-state solution has led a growing percentage of Palestinians in the West Bank to support a one-state solution, there is no significant constituency within Israeli society which supports one-state with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. There is no factor in the Israeli political arena which advocates such a solution. Hadash (the Israeli Communists), the leading component within the predominantly Arab left-wing Joint List, continues to raise the banner of “two states for two peoples” at all its rallies. And the record of one state with more than one nation/people—think Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and India-Pakistan—is not great, to put it mildly.

As for the various Israeli-Palestinian confederation proposals, the two-state solution remains at the core of all of the proposals, and they are definitely worth considering. One of the roads in the quest for a breakthrough in the current impasse leads us to the question I raised at the beginning of this article. Can the addition of Jordan to the equation help?

There are two primary Israeli forerunners to that idea. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Foreign Minister Abba Eban raised what he called the Benelux proposal, an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, “communities that combine national independence with a large measure of integration and mutual openness, as Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg did in 1948 when they established the Benelux Economic Union.” As he described it in an article in the LA Times on May 28 (Eban 1989),

It would be incompatible with history, geography and human experience for the West Bank and Gaza to be cut off from a political relationship with Jordan and an economic and human relationship with Israel. These three entities can never be as separate from each other as are the traditional hermetic boundaries between sovereign states. Even when war rages and revolt flares up, thousands of people move across open bridges and border posts between Jordan and the Arab-populated West Bank--and between the West Bank and the sovereign territory of Israel as defined in Israeli legislation. How incongruous it would be if this human traffic were to flow in times of war, only to be stifled by the establishment of peace.

Eban (1989) goes on to note that, “the peoples of this area need separation for the purpose of defining their juridical and cultural identity, but they need mutual accessibility and integrative habits for all other constructive ends.” And the upshot of his argument endorses a tri-state arrangement.

There is good reason for opposing the idea of a Palestine state totally cut off from Israel and Jordan, but most objections would be alleviated if there were an integrative atmosphere in a peace accord involving Israel, Jordan and some densely populated Arab areas of the West Bank and Gaza, supplemented by an agreement on the demilitarization of the West Bank and Gaza that could be monitored by a vigilant Israel and Jordan. (Eban 1989)

The other Israeli forerunner to the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation was Arie (Lova) Eliav, who was general secretary of the Labor Party in the early 1970s. In his influential book “The Land of the Hart” (Eliav 1973), he advocated an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation for a resolution of the conflict that he called “Isfalor” (Israel/Falestine/Urdain).

And now, Ben-Meir (2022) has revived the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation with his article “The Case for an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian Confederation: Why Now and How?” that was published in World Affairs volume 185 (1). As he wrote in the abstract of that article,

After 73 years of conflict, regardless of the many changes on the ground, the political wind that swept the region, and the intermittent violence between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinians will not give up on their aspiration for statehood. Ultimately a two-state solution remains the only viable option to end their conflict. The difference however between the framework for peace that had been discussed in the 1990s and 2000s where the focus was on establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza versus the present time is that many new, irreversible facts have been created: in particular the interspersing of the Israeli and Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel proper; the status of Jerusalem, where both sides have a unique religious affinity; the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the majority of which will have to remain in place; the intertwined national security concerns of Israelis and Palestinians; and the Palestinian refugees, who need to be resettled and/or compensated. This leads me to believe that independent Israeli and Palestinian states can peacefully coexist and be sustained only through the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation that would subsequently be joined by Jordan, which has an intrinsic national interest in the solution of all conflicting issues between Israel and the Palestinians. To that end, all sides will have to fully and permanently collaborate on many levels necessitated by the above changing conditions on the ground, most of which can no longer be restored to the status quo ante. (Ben-Meir 2022, 9)

One of the advantages of the proposal is that it enables all three partners, the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Jordanians, to have a solid realization of their respective rights to national self-determination.

A second advantage is that adding the Jordanians to the equation will help to calm many of the Jewish Israeli fears about Palestinian intentions, since they will only be one-third of the equation, and the addition of the Jordanians will help to calm Israeli security fears. And yes, despite being the strongest military power in the Middle East, and one of the strongest armies in the world, with a significant nuclear potential, Israelis still have fears, partially based on fearmongering by some of their leaders, but also based upon the memories of historical experience, both in Europe and in the region.

The triple confederation would also have major economic advantages when it comes to employment, water, the climate, and of course tourism when that returns to a post-COVID normal. We should not forget that the 1947 Partition Plan was based on two separate states together with an economic union.

One of the challenges to the proposal will be to convince the Jordanians to sign on, since they relinquished any responsibility for the West Bank in 1988, except for the role of the Jordanian Waqf in Jerusalem managing the al-Aqsa Mosque as stipulated by the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, preferring to focus on storing up the security of the Hashemite Kingdom given the fact that Palestinians are a majority of the citizens of Jordan. Furthermore, the Palestinians would also have to agree to accept the return of Jordan as a partner to a potential resolution of the conflict. Since Jordan, together with Egypt, is one of the two Arab countries designated by the Arab League to promote the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative with the Israeli government and society, perhaps if the Arab League would express support for such a triple confederation it might help both the Jordanians and the Palestinians to become partners to the proposal.

When President Biden arrived in Israel on July 13, 2022, to begin a four-day tour of the Middle East, he said that the two-state solution “remains in my view the best way to ensure the future of equal measure of freedom, prosperity and democracy for Israelis and Palestinians alike.” But he also said “even though I know it's not in the near term” (Biden 2022). That is clearly not enough. A continuation of the current situation is not sustainable in the long run, and no one knows when a slight incident might ignite a third violent potentially game-changing intifada, that could have ripple effects far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian arena. And the “Shrinking the Conflict” idea adopted by the Israeli government is an avoidance of dealing with the fundamental problem.

We—Israelis and Palestinians—need new initiatives to break the impasse. One of the possibilities that is worth exploring is the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation.