What’s Next for Israel/Palestine?: An Introduction

NETANYAHU HAS WON RE-ELECTION. ISRAELI VOTERS ARE MOVING TO THE RIGHT. HOPES FOR A TWO-STATE SOLUTION ARE DWINDLING . . .

Sliman Mansour

It has become increasingly clear to many people around the world and among many American Jews that the Israeli government has no intention of creating a politically and economically viable Palestinian state. On the eve of his reelection, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that no Palestinian state would emerge under his next five-year government. Although Netanyahu subsequently qualified this promise by claiming he only meant that the conditions for creating such a state do not yet exist, his party almost certainly owed its electoral victory to his display of staunch opposition to Palestinian state-hood. The government he subsequently appointed contains members who are even more extreme and overtly racist than Netanyahu himself. Such a far right government was made possible because Israeli public opinion has shifted significantly against any two-state solution. This opinion is likely to hold until massive external pressure compels Israel to consider a different direction.

Israel faces growing international pressure either to move now to create a viable Palestinian state (not a series of isolated cities with no control over their own borders and surrounded by Israeli West Bank settlers and the Israel Defense Forces) or else give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the same voting rights that Palestinians enjoy as citizens of Israel within the pre-1967 borders.

“One person, one vote” is not an ideal solution, and history leads many to doubt that a one-state solution is viable: forcing multiple peoples into one state did not, for instance, lead to peace in Yugoslavia or Iraq. Unless both parties really desire such a state, its creation through international pressure might lead to a bloody civil war. On the other hand, if the Palestinian people were to launch a campaign for “one person, one vote,” it would have resonance not only globally but also within Israel and among many American Jews. The democratic aspiration embodied in that demand, made by a people who are now occupied and subjugated, resonates far beyond the demand for two states. Insisting on equal suffrage might weaken Israel’s ability to withstand international pressure for a more democratic society. The fear that a “one person, one vote” policy might eventually be imposed on Israelis could move those at Israel’s center away from the right-wingers they increasingly support and toward those who are building pressure for a two-state solution. So strategically speaking, Palestinians who favor a two-state solution might get one more quickly by demanding voting rights within Israel. But this approach will feel contrived and dishonest unless it represents a change in what the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza really want—and there’s little evidence for that.

I have little hope that either pressure on Israel from the international community to create a two-state solution or pressure to give Palestinians the vote will actually work. Both Israelis and Palestinians are victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some Palestinians remind us that there is nothing “post” about the trauma of the Occupation or of living in Gaza, parts of which were reduced to rubble by the Israeli offensive in the summer of 2014, leaving thousands dead or wounded and tens of thousands homeless. And Israelis who spent much of that summer fleeing to bomb shelters several times a day remind us that they too are not just responding to the oppression of bygone eras, but have recently had that history dramatically reinforced. By attempting to bomb Israeli cities in the summer of 2014, Hamas also ensured that Israelis would have recent evidence that their fears are justified. Once again, a de facto extremist alliance—of Israeli right-wing extremists who wish to rule over the Palestinian people (or push them out of Palestine entirely) and Hamas extremists who wish to eliminate the State of Israel—has managed temporarily to marginalize those on both sides who believe in nonviolence and mutual reconciliation. And all this takes place...