The Post-Territorial Dimensions of a Future Homeland in Israel and Palestine

Many centuries from now the troublesome chapters tearing Israel and Palestine apart in the second half of the twentieth century may become dim and blurred in the collective memory of the people sharing the land as their homeland. Although judging from places such as Northern Ireland and the Balkans, even that is doubtful. What is quite certain is that in the near future any fruitful discussion of concepts such as homeland will be deeply planted in the interpretation of past events, especially those surrounding the year 1948, but also before and after that year.

The most dominant factor that should not be forgotten is that even for people who are newcomers to Palestine, it has become a homeland, and any future discussion in the concept and its practical implications must take into account that sense, whether it is genuine or the product of a very affective indoctrination. Thus definingthe homeland and determining whom it belongs to will require the input of the people (or their representatives), whether they are the indigenous Palestinians, the veteran Israelis, the recent Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants or the Palestinians and their families that had been expelled from the land in 1948.

The principal argument of this article is that the road to a post-conflictual homeland in Palestine has to pass through reconciliation on abstract issues such as fairness, justice and guilt, and can not be limited to successful compromises on borders, nature of regimes or any other materialistic aspect of a political settlement. In fact, I argue that the possible achievements in the physical issues of land and borders are useless without significant progress on the moral and legal ground.

My departure point would be that "fairness" and "justice" are no less important bricks needed for building the future homeland than armies and territories. This is not an attempt to present only an ethical reflection; it is much more the outcome of a functional approach to the conceptualization of a future solution. An approach based on an assessment that in the discourse of homeland these moral issues are already evolving, no less than the materialistic question of percentages of territory, sovereignty and security. My guess is that the moral issues would even override these practical aspects of a solution.

The Historical Background

Power and knowledge go hand in hand and hence in the West one hears too often and too loudly the conceptualization of "fairness" postulated by the occupier, the winner and the victorious, in our case the Israeli side. One hears little about the point of view of the other side", the subaltern, the Palestinian. This is why in past, British, UN, American, and Israeli conceptualizations of "fairness" dominated the search for peace and were based mainly on the territorial dimension of the conflict while neglecting totally the question of guilt, restitution and justice. These perceptions of "fairness" are closely connected to questions of homeland in the realm of possession, entitlement and future control. In the second part of this article I will argue that only by giving a dominant position to the Palestinian concepts of fairness will it be possible to construct notions of "homeland" conducive to the pacification of the conflict.

The Israel/Palestine conflict was an object of reconciliation, mediation and peace efforts ever since it had erupted in the late nineteen century. The first significant efforts had been made by the British Empire during the mandatory period. At that early period one can distinguish between two stages. The first stage lasted until the 1930s; during that stage the various British initiators of dialogue wished to construct under British auspices a political structure-a joint homeland—that would represent equally the small Jewish community and the Palestinian majority on the land of Palestine. The second stage, beginning in the mid 1930s, was mainly inspired by the principle of partition: dividing the territory between the two communities and constructing two separate political structures. One can talk about a missed opportunity in the first stage, around the year 1928, when, after years of rejecting any compromise, the Palestinian leadership had agreed to discuss a joint federative structure...