Reviewing The One State Reality (May 2024)

The One State Reality: What Is Israel/Palestine? was published in March 2023 almost seven months before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7^th. This is a crucial point because so much has changed in the world of public policy as well as daily life since October 7^th. The editors—Michael Barnett, Nathan J. Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami—prepared this collection of articles from various scholars in Middle Eastern studies. The purpose of the volume is to change the focus of the Palestine/Israel issue from comparing prescriptive policies to describing actually existing conditions in the area. The view is that progress can be made only by understanding the reality of the current state of affairs where only one state exists and is the ultimate authority of law and order. The editors and authors agree with the assessment that the status quo is the real world of Israel/Palestine that has existed for some time and that may well continue to exist well into the future. In their view, the theoretical models of what could or should be are largely determined by the situation on the ground in the world of everyday life. One simple example is that Palestinians in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank are not Israeli citizens and are therefore ineligible to vote in national elections. Citizenship and the right to vote in national elections are limited to Jews and those Arabs who live inside the Green Line, i.e., the pre-1967 borders of Israel. It is that world that the authors describe in order to better inform leaders, policymakers and the public of what issues must be faced sooner or later in any future Palestine/Israel.

In this review, three chapters will be discussed at some length, and four more will be briefly mentioned. It is hoped that this review will provide a sufficient preview for readers who wish to read the book for themselves. Some of the chapters are easier to read than others and part of this depends upon the reader’s prior knowledge. I found the book challenging, but reading it was definitely worthwhile. It does go well beyond mass media coverage but it is still accessible to the non-scholar, which is how I would characterize myself. For the more detailed part of this review, I will take the chapters out of order, starting with Chapter 12, a history of American foreign policy in the region, proceeding to Chapter 13, a status update since the failure of the Oslo Peace Accords and then to Chapter 8 and an assessment of the views of Jewish Americans vis à vis Israeli Jews.

In Chapter 12, ‘Palestinian Statehood in American Policy,’ Kevin Huggard and Tamara Cofman Wittes describe America’s role mediating Arab-Jewish state relations in the Middle East since the 1979 Camp David treaty between Egypt and Israel The term ‘mediator’ exaggerates the objectivity of American foreign policy, which has historically tilted in favour of the Israelis. The alliance has been shaped by Cold War politics, America’s need for a reliable ally in the oil-rich Middle East, the affinity of a large body of America’s Christians with the Jewish nation, and, of course, the memory of the Holocaust. While the security of the Israeli state is an important foreign policy objective, “compared to the 1970s when Arab-Israeli diplomacy was a core arena for Cold War positioning, or to the 1990s when it was a central dimension of American global hegemony, the conflict today simply does not move the same mountains in U.S. geopolitical strategy.”

In the 1990s, the Oslo two-state solution was an opportunity to reconcile Jewish nationalism and Palestinian nationalism; however, it failed after more than two decades of effort. The two-state solution appeared to be in jeopardy, widening the gap between the two parties such that “Today, the conflict may be on the cusp of a new phase, in which the currently reigning interpretation of Jewish nationalism on the Israeli Right devours not only the prospect of a negotiated compromise but perhaps also the Jewish democratic state itself.” And on the Palestinian side, the prospects of anything other than the status quo threaten to undermine the Palestinian commitment to a political solution and a reversion to armed struggle. What the authors couldn’t have known was that later in 2023, October 7^th and the Israeli war in Gaza would reinvigorate talk among U.S. and European leaders for a two-state solution. What remains unknown is what effect October 7^th and beyond will have on Israeli politics and Palestinian politics. Adding to this uncertainty is the possibility that a different U.S. administration could be flexible in terms of its acceptable outcomes “that provide for democracy and equal rights for all those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

In Chapter 13, ‘Beyond Oslo,’ Khaled Elgindy states that “The Oslo process is dead and has been for some time, and the prospect of a negotiated two state solution, in both political and physical terms, appears to be headed for a similar fate.” Therefore, the times are appropriate for starting from “a clean slate by which to rethink old assumptions and explore new possibilities.” This rethink, Elgindy believes, must address the inequalities that exist in the one state reality that is Israel. He argues that as the sole state authority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is responsible for the existence and perpetuation of different and unequal legal/political regimes—one for Israeli Jews, one for Israeli Palestinians, one for West Bank Palestinians, one for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and one for Gazans. At the top are the Israeli Jews and at the bottom are the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Elgindy states that “Israel clearly has the ability to shape or dictate outcomes in ways that Palestinians do not.” He continues by pointing out that Israel is a first-world economy and has the most powerful military in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Palestinians live under occupation, meaning that they are a stateless people who can be displaced as in the West Bank and Jerusalem, blockaded as in Gaza and denied full democratic rights granted to their neighbours in Israel proper. The fact that U.S. administrations downplay the significance of the occupation prejudices any peace talks as the two parties are vastly unequal in virtually every way. So, regardless of the configuration of a reworked Palestine/Israel map, any solution promising equal rights must deliver its corresponding outcomes to have any meaning and value for Palestinians. Otherwise, the status quo is Israel/Palestine with unequal legal and political rights for different people.

Elgindy describes three possible scenarios: one-state solution, two-state solution or confederation as in the Balkans. At present an egalitarian unitary state model is virtually impossible to even contemplate. The two-state model as of the time Elgindy was writing this article seemed hopeless, and confederation model is essentially a placeholder for any better ideas that have not been developed and put forward yet. Regardless, what model is used, Elgindy emphasizes that “there is no credible solution that does not entail Israel, and specifically Israeli Jews, giving up some degree of power and privilege,” which does not augur well for the future absent significant inducements to compensate for Jewish concessions.

In Chapter 8, ‘American Jewry and the One State Reality,’ by Michael Barnett and Lara Friedman, make the argument that a one-state solution is the best path forward for giving Jews the means to reconcile their liberal democratic political views with their commitment to Jewishness. In this reviewer’s opinion, this is an extraordinary request, not incomparable with asking 19^th century Americans to accept Native Indians as full citizens in a westwardly-expanding United States—the parallels between President Andrew Jackson (just to name one firm believer of America’s Manifest Destiny) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being uncomfortably similar. Whether a sufficient body of Israeli Jews would feel secure in charitably extending democratic rights to others is uncertain—the everyday circumstances of living being quite different between American Jews and Israeli Jews. As the authors note, in the past “Jewish Americans overlooked the possible fault lines in Israel’s liberal democracy because of the memory of the Holocaust and Israel’s just wars for survival.” Just how much October 7^th and the ensuing war in Gaza has changed this perspective remains to be seen, particularly in light of the way the war has been prosecuted so far.

The following is intended to highlight some of the themes in several other chapters.

In Chapter 1, ‘What and Where Is Israel? Time for a Gestalt Shift,’ Ian Lustick advances the proposition that only by analyzing the one-state reality of Israel can the fundamental questions that need to be asked be raised, viz. those related to political equality. The following extended quote provides an example of the sort of gestalt (or paradigm) shift that Lustick has in mind.

If trying to see the situation in terms of the TSS [two-state solution] paradigm produces anomalies, switching one’s gestalt to a one state reality (OSR) paradigm eliminates them. From the OSR perspective it is not puzzling that no meaningful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), or brokered by the international community, took place over the last decade. If the PA, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip are within the State of Israel, why should one imagine otherwise? Similarly, that Israel arrests Palestinians in all areas of the West Bank virtually every night, or that it simply closes off whole sections of Ramallah or other West Bank cities at will, is not surprising. That is how Israel has long treated Arab, especially noncitizen Arab, inhabitants. That is to be expected given a OSR in which the dominant group in the state is threatened by a furious and subordinated population.

In Chapter 3, ‘Israel/Palestine: Towards Decolonization,’ Yousef Munayyer addresses what he considers to be a deficiency in the literature of International Relations: statelessness and settler colonialism. Regarding the former, he directs attention to Hannah Arendt, herself a stateless person in Germany and then France before moving to the U.S., and the provocative yet obvious thesis that only the state can grant “the right to have rights.” As to the latter, Munayyer is not speaking of the colonialism of the British in India or the Belgians in the Congo, but he is talking about the idea of manifest destiny (a concept familiar to students of American history), which is clearly expressed in Prime Minister Netanayhu’s claim that “This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw his vision of eternal peace.”

According to Munayyer, settler colonialism is established by the “taking by the stronger group of land, rights, access, and identity from the weaker indigenous population over time.” It is “an overall process of replacement within a physical space, perhaps the most important process is that of land taking.” The transfer of land ownership from the weaker to the stronger is accompanied by and, in turn, provides the foundation for a new legal/political regime. Insofar as this new regime is part of a state, those uprooted from the land essentially become stateless. This is the paradigm that Munayyer asks the reader to apply towards understanding fundamental power asymmetry between Israeli citizens and Palestinian residents of the occupied territories. And it is this asymmetrical distribution of political power, backed by the law of the state and its military, that perpetuates the democratic deficit in Israel/Palestine. Munayyer does not suggest that decolonization should be a reversal of ‘replacement,’ i.e. a re-replacement. Instead, it should be “based on the principle of co-permanence: the idea that the land is, and will always be, home to both peoples together and not for one at the expense of the other.” And the principles of co-permanence must be established in the “law, land and language.”

In Chapter 4, ‘Citizenship as a Mobility Regime,’ Yael Berda asserts that citizenship grants “the right to have rights”, e.g., the freedom to move and live freely within the territory of the state. It is this mobility that Berda regards as “the primary right in liberal modern states, linking political concepts of freedom, security, and violence, as well as facilitating the exercise of all other rights.” The one state reality in Israel “successfully segregates and separates Palestinian populations by graded access or denial of mobility.” For example, “the permit regime in the West Bank and East Jerusalem” is part of “the most sophisticated surveillance and population management system in the world.” In addition, entry/exit to/from the Gaza Strip is tightly controlled by Israel by means of a long-standing blockade. Israel’s “racialized regime of mobility [is] a central feature of the one state reality.”

In the Conclusion, Marc Lynch, one of the editors, restates the intention of this volume to apply empirical and theoretical analysis to the study of the Israel/Palestine issue, but by book’s end he concludes that the task of perfect objectivity is impossible as empathy and ethical values intrude from every direction.

[T]he way we frame research questions is never neutral. While we parse the meaning of apartheid in the context of Israel and Palestine, millions of Palestinians suffer enormously from the reality of capricious domination, expropriation, and dispossession. How does one sustain a focus on the effects of Israeli military action in Gaza on global narratives while watching Israeli snipers mow down unarmed Palestinians at the border fence? What do we give up by adopting the cool, rational analysis of power and interests against the raw passions of dispossessed Palestinians or Israelis who fear the delegitimization of their own identity?

This book was recommended by Amaney Jamal, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, who was interviewed regarding her October 6^th survey of Palestinian public opinion in Gaza and the West Bank. The complete interview is available at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-amaney-jamal.html. Following Hamas’ October 7^th attack on Israeli citizens, the Ezra Klein Show devoted a number of podcasts representing various perspectives—so it is impossible to imagine anyone agreeing with all of the guests—on the polarized and polarizing Palestine/Israel issue post-October 7^th. Of particular interest are some of the titles recommended by guests, three of which have been reviewed elsewhere: Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine (1979), Yossi Klein Halevi’s Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (2018) and Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020).