Seeking Peace in the Middle East

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the wake of the Gaza war, the so-called two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state side by side -- has been resurrected.

This idea dates back to at least 1937, when a British commission suggested a partition of the British mandate of Palestine into two states. Ten years later, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which proposed two states for two peoples: one Arab, one Jewish.

Although the resolution’s recommendation of territorial partition left neither side satisfied, the Jews accepted it, but the Palestinians, encouraged by their Arab state sponsors, rejected it. The ensuing 1948 war led to the founding of the state of Israel; millions of Palestinians, meanwhile, became refugees, and their national aspirations languished.

In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo accords, recognizing each other and laying the groundwork for a phased, incremental process intended to eventually lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The two-state solution’s moment appeared to have arrived.

But neither side was ready to compromise on the highly emotional question of who would control Jerusalem or on the issue of “the right of return” of Palestinian refugees, which was deeply threatening to the Israelis. And so it floundered and despite interminable attempts to resurrect it, by brokers such as the United States, it remained a dead letter.

Today, it seems even more of a fantasy. Given the current situation, the two sides seem less likely than ever to achieve the mutual trust that a two-state solution would require. There is a complete disconnect between renewed international calls for a two-state solution and the fears and desires currently shaping Israeli and Palestinian society.

Polls make it clear that both Israelis and Palestinians are highly unenthusiastic about and wary of the idea. Gallup polls conducted since late last year found that 65 per cent of Israeli respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 25 per cent supported it. The gap is even larger among Palestinians; in polls that Gallup conducted last summer, before the October 7 Hamas attacks, 72 per cent of Palestinian respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 24 per cent supported it.

What, then, of other solutions? There is Hamas’s position, which is the destruction of Israel. There is the Israeli right’s solution, which is the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. There is the approach pursued for the last decade or so by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to maintain the status quo indefinitely – now impossible. And there is the idea of a binational state in which Jews would become a minority, thus ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state.

None of those alternatives would resolve the conflict to one or the other side’s satisfaction. That leaves only one viable medium-term arrangement that would allow Israel to safeguard its security and let Palestinians enjoy normal lives free from Israeli rule: some form of confederation with another entity for the Palestinians.

The most sensible idea would be to create a Palestinian government that would join in a confederation with an existing sovereign state, one that already has a stable and effective security force; maintains law and order; and fights terrorism.

That country would be Jordan, which borders the West Bank and whose population is overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim, and already more than half Palestinian. The Hashemite Kingdom was originally for a brief period part of the original Palestine Mandate, and, as Trans-Jordan, was the only Arab entity that more than held its own in 1948, conquering the West Bank and east Jerusalem, including the Old City and its religious centres. These areas were incorporated into Jordan until lost in 1967. To this day, Jordan still retains some rights there.

The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan committed Israel to “respect the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem” and that “when negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.” In 2013, an agreement between Jordan and the Palestinian Authority recognized Jordan’s role in Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites.

This idea is not new and has been advanced before. But even as a stopgap solution, it is infinitely preferable to what exists today.