Back to the future in a consociational Palestine?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Imagine a country with two communities so deeply divided along ethnic or religious lines that it can only maintain democratic institutions within the framework of a unified state if the leaders of each ethnic group cooperate in power-sharing provisions to govern the country.

These arrangements, which political scientists refer to as consociationalism, often mandate a precise numerical ratio of parliamentary seats, governmental positions, and other offices, between the two groups. The groups often vote in separate, ethnically-based constituencies, rather than on a common electoral roll.

The very intricate constitution may also reserve certain important executive positions – say, the offices of president, vice-president, or prime minister – for one or the other community. It usually also specifies that the armed forces and police be composed of members of both groups. Finally, there are mutual vetoes in matters regarding the preservation of the culture and security of each community.

In such states, the groups in question are subject to both their internal ethnic leadership and that of the very weak state, and such dual authority politics, with overlapping fields of authority, creates a conflict between ethnic loyalty and state loyalty. The former almost invariably predominates. After all, the groups have little in common other than economic and political relationships, which tend to be antagonistic in nature.

Not surprisingly, such states are usually mere facades, the sovereign equivalents of Potemkin villages, often only held together due to pressure from outside forces who for one reason or another are unwilling to let such Humpty-Dumpty entities break into smaller pieces.

Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, and perhaps Northern Ireland, are among many that spring immediately to mind. States such as Fiji, Nigeria and Sudan might join the list. And since there is no common sense of nationality, but rather competing nationalisms and jockeying for power, these artificial constructs often do finally splinter into partitioned entities: Cyprus after 1974 is a typical example, as were India and Palestine in 1947-48.

Today, though, we hear voices calling for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state, to be replaced by a “secular” entity – Palestine? – of Arabs and Jews.

No doubt, given the decades of mistrust and strife, this state too would soon enough manifest a politics revolving around the competing demands of the two constituent communities.

Communal violence would be an almost certain outcome, with a de facto geographical separation of the two groups within the state, as has been the case with the examples cited above.

Sooner or later, assuming one group did not eliminate the other through expulsion or massacre, there would be calls to partition the country – and we’d have come full circle, right back to UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947, the original plan to partition Palestine.

So why rewind and replay the tape? Political realism requires the acknowledgment of a fact that might be inconvenient to maximalists on either side: the final recognition of Israeli and Palestinian states within mutually recognized boundaries between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.