Everyone pooh-poohs the road map. From State Department
and other "quartet" officials through the office
of Ariel Sharon to international activists and the average
person on the streets of Palestine and Israel, one would
be hard-pressed to find a single believer in the "road
map." From the start it has been dismissed as another
failed initiative, joining a long line from Mitchell and
Tenet to Gunnar Jarring and the Roger's Plan. But is it?
In my view the road map possesses a significance that has
been lost even on its adherents.
If The Road Map Fails: Permanent Apartheid
Looked at from the ground up, from the perspective of Israel's
completion of its three decade campaign to create irreversible
"facts on the ground," the road map represents
the last gasp of the two-state solution. This is the crunch.
As anyone who has spent even a few hours in the Occupied
Territories readily understands, Israel has entered in the
last phase of fully and finally incorporating the West Bank
into Israeli proper, of transforming a temporary occupation
into a permanent state of apartheid.
Sharon's implementation of Jabotinsky's doctrine of the
"Iron Wall" establishing such massive "facts
on the ground" that the Palestinians will despair of
ever having a viable state of their own has reached its
critical mass. The Israeli settlement blocs are so extensive,
their incorporation into Israel proper by a massive system
of highways and "by-pass roads" so complete and
the Separation Wall physically confining the Palestinians
to tiny cantons so advanced as to render any genuine two-state
solution impossible and ridiculous. Given the unwillingness
of the international community to force Israel's withdrawal
from the Occupied Territories and in particular the American
Congress's refusal to countenance any meaningful pressure
on Israel, we may say that Israel is on the brink of emerging
as the world's next apartheid state. Only the road map,
the last dying breath of the two-state solution, stands
between the hope of Palestinian self-determination in their
own viable and truly sovereign (if tiny) state and the de
facto creation of one state controlled by Israel. Rather
than merely another failed initiative on the way to yet
others, we must view the road map as a watershed in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its final failure will alter
fundamentally the entire nature of struggle for a just and
sustainable solution to the Palestinian issue.
The problem has less to do with vision, content and process
than with implementation. As a document, the road map has
a number of commendable elements. It is the first international
document approved by the US that calls for "an end
to the Occupation." Indeed, it is the first that uses
the term "occupation" at all, defying Israel's
longstanding denial that it even has an occupation. It is
also the first initiative that sets as a goal the establishment
of a viable Palestinian state, putting it far beyond the
vague and open-ended negotiations of the Oslo Accords. The
mere use of the term "viable" raised hopes that
the international community had finally gotten wise to Israel's
strategy of creating "facts on the ground" that
prejudice any negotiations and render a genuine Palestinian
state impossible. The fact that the time-line was short
and finite an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian
state living side by side in peace and security with Israel
by the year 2005 stood the road map in good stead. So, too,
did the performance-based, mutual nature of the process,
monitored by the Quartet rather than by the Americans exclusively,
and the fact that the terms of reference included UN resolutions,
agreements previously reached by the parties and the Saudi
initiative. Both in its content and structure the road map
is a well-conceptualized, do-able and potentially just attempt
at achieving "a final and comprehensive settlement
of the Israel-Palestinian conflict."
But, as everyone knew from the start, the will to make it
work was lacking. Four months after its release the road
map appears almost dead in its tracks. Russia and the UN
never entered into the process in the first place, and Europe,
as is its wont, passed all responsibility to the US. Bush,
dutifully, announced in Aqaba that the US would once again
assume the role as the sole mediator, acquiescing to one
of Israel's key "reservations." While much effort
was expended ensuring "reforms" in the Palestinian
Authority (including the undemocratic installation of a
Prime Minister with no public credibility) and while a low-ranking
State Department official was dispatched to deal with "security
concerns," Israel's campaign to finally consolidate
its hold over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza proceeded
unencumbered. Since no one had any illusions that the road
map would produce any other result, there is no smug, self-congratulatory
"I-told-you-so" attitude among its critics, nor
any real sense of another missed opportunity. Instead there
is a general hunkering down, a steadfast determination to
continue the struggle against the Occupation regardless
of how long it takes. The road map, alive only because it
has not been declared dead, is on its way to being consigned
to the dustbin of history, another one of the forgettable
attempts to achieve a just peace in the Middle East.
The significance of the road map derives as much from its
timing as its content. Coinciding with the completion of
Israel's irreversible incorporation of the West Bank, only
immediate international pressure to truly end the Occupation,
to force Israel to withdraw fully from the territories conquered
in 1967 (with minor territorial adjustments) will secure
the fundamental requirement of the two-state solution: a
viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state. If the road
map fails or, more likely, falters, the initiative never
being officially declared dead we enter into a state of
de facto apartheid. Israel will be permitted to continue
its incorporation process, the United States enters into
an extended American presidential period in which no pressures
will be applied on Israel at all, and another period of
a year or two elapses before the next initiative is formulated.
By that time even the illusion that a viable Palestinian
state can be achieved will be finally gone. By its own hand
Israel will have prevented the emergence of a viable Palestinian
state and have created instead a single state. To be sure,
Sharon, in signing on to the road map, declared his support
for the two-state solution. The great danger facing Palestinians
in the limbo of a non-dead road map process is that his
version of a Palestinian state a truncated bantustan with
no control of its borders, no freedom of movement, no economic
viability, no access to its water resources, no meaningful
presence in Jerusalem and no genuine sovereignty, one that
leaves Israel with 90% of the country will be "sold"
by the US as a viable Palestinian state, the successful
outcome of the road map. This is Sharon's scenario. As advocates
for a just resolution of the conflict we must be on guard
against such an eventuality and develop effective strategies
to defeat it.
The Impending Struggle for a Single State
The looming failure of the road map to prevent de facto
apartheid in Palestine-Israel will fundamentally alter the
entire nature of the conflict. Israel by its own hand has
rendered a viable two-state solution impossible. The only
Palestinian "state" that could emerge from Israel's
matrix of control is a Palestinian bantustan. Assuming this
is not an acceptable "solution," only one other
possibility exists: the creation of a single state in Palestine-Israel.
(I have suggested in previous writings that given the permanence
of Israeli control a truncated Palestinian state might be
acceptable as a part of a "two-stage" solution
involving the establishment of a wider Middle East Union
in which residency is disconnected from citizenship. This,
however, is so unlikely at this stage, and the need to end
the Occupation so acute, that it cannot serve as a plan
of action for the immediate future.)
The stage is thus set for the next phase of the struggle
for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
an international campaign for a single state. Since the
Palestinian and Jewish populations are so intermingled (a
million Palestinians live throughout Israel while some 400,000
Jews live throughout the Occupied Territories), the feasibility
of a bi-national state, with the two peoples living in a
kind of federation, seems unworkable. The permanency of
Israel's presence makes it imperative to incorporate it
into any workable political arrangement (though neutralizing
it as an agency of control). Given this "reality"
on the ground, the most practical solution seems to be a
unitary democratic state offering equal citizenship for
all. If that is the case, our slogan in the post-road map
period will be that of the South Africans' struggle against
apartheid: One Person, One Vote.
In this indeterminate twilight of the road map, we are still
in a transition from the two-state solution in which our
energies are devoted to ending the Occupation to a campaign
for a single state which acknowledges that the Occupation
is permanent and therefore seeks to neutralize its controlling
aspects by creating a common state framework. None of the
actors are yet ready for such a shift -- not the Palestinians,
not the international community, not the peace and human
rights activists, not world Jewry and certainly not Israeli
Jews. Representatives of the Palestinian Authority have
even suggested that raising the issue today is counterproductive
since it goes beyond calls what even the most liberal proponents
of peace are currently ready to accept.
As long as the road map offers a glimmer of hope that something
can be done about Israel's Occupation, discussion of alternative
scenarios will be by definition premature. Such discussion
will inevitably come, however, if and when the road map
process fails and the stark reality of Israel's permanent
presence sinks in. Regardless of how we feel about a single
state, it is time we begin to prepare ourselves conceptually
and programmatically for such an eventuality and for the
struggle an anti-apartheid campaign would generate. Following
are a few of the elements that would inform such an effort:
(1) In our framing of the campaign for a single state, we
should stress that as much as Israel might object, it is
its own settlement and incorporation policies that are responsible.
Since a Palestinian "state"-cum-bantustan, the
only alternative entertained by Israel, is totally unacceptable
and unworkable, Israel has brought the single state solution
upon itself. A two-state solution that leaves Israel intact
has been proposed by both the Palestinians and by the Arab
League through the Saudi initiative. Indeed, it is a basic
term of reference in the road map. As in the case of South
Africa, however, where apartheid was put in place by white
South African governments, Israel has only itself to blame
if it has created, through its own settlement and occupation
policies, a single state. Despite repeated warnings from
the critical peace camp, successive Israeli governments,
Labor as well as Likud, have locked the country into such
a dead-end situation. The Israeli public may not support
the vision of a "Greater Land of Israel" (recent
polls say 65% of Israelis would like "separation"
from the Occupied Territories), but its support of governments
pursuing such policies makes it complicit and ultimately
responsible. If the road map fails, it is in large measure
because of the indifference of the Israeli public to its
own leaders' subversion of the initiative. To turn around
and then complain that the demand for a democratic state
in the entire country is "anti-Israel" and "anti-Zionist"
is downright disingenuous. When the struggle for two states
becomes, as I believe it must, a struggle for one democratic
state, we must make it crystal clear that this development
arises exclusively out of Israel's refusal to countenance
a viable Palestinian state on even 22% of the country. Perhaps
the realization of where Israel is headed will finally impel
its Jewish public to reject policies, parties and leaders
that maintain the Occupation. In that case the two-state
option may be revisited. Until that happens, however, the
priority of a campaign for a single state has been dictated
by Israel itself.
(2) We must shift the focus of our efforts from ending the
Occupation (which, when the road map fails, we must all
admit will never happen) to achieving a democratic state.
The slogan "One Person, One Vote" should provide
a common mobilizing call for an international movement that
must reach the scope and effectiveness of the campaign against
South African apartheid. Indeed, the emergence of a single
state as an agreed-upon goal something we lack today will
make organizing much easier. On the way we must continue,
of course, to oppose the Occupation and all its manifestations,
including the ongoing repression of the Palestinian people.
We might even advocate certain intermediate steps, such
as an international protectorate over the Palestinian areas,
in order to freeze Israel's ongoing process of incorporation
while protecting the civilian population. We must prepare
ourselves nevertheless for the most likely upshot: a campaign
against apartheid and for a single democratic state.
(3) We should couch our campaign in the language and requirements
of human rights and international law. A campaign for a
democratic state is intended to secure the rights of all
the country's inhabitants; it is not against the Israeli
people or seeking in any way to delegitimize Israeli society
or culture. Upholding the notion that the security and well-being
of all the peoples of the region is guaranteed only through
a political solution that addresses every people's human
rights and that national self-determination will have to
find its expression through a regional Middle East Union
we must present the single democratic state as a vehicle
that will facilitate collective and individual rights rather
than posing a threat. The fact that occupation and apartheid
constitute fundamental challenges to a world ruled by human
rights and law should also be a central message. Since the
Israel-Palestinian-Arab conflict is emblematic to the Arab
and Muslim worlds, certainly the notion that the international
system will never find stability (including a response to
terrorism) unless this issue is resolved will help raise
wide concern over the effects of the conflict.
(4) We should call on the Jewish public Israeli and diaspora
to avoid the suffering witnessed in the struggle against
apartheid in South Africa and engage pro-actively in this
best-chance for a just, secure and positive resolution to
an otherwise irresolvable conflict. More than anything else,
Zionism was about Jews taking responsibility for their own
fate. A Jewish state has proven politically and, in the
end, morally untenable. It is time we salvage the good parts
of Israel its vibrant national culture, society, institutions
and economy and let go of that which cannot be saved: exclusive
"ownership" of a country in which the Jews will
soon be the minority.
(5) We must recreate an international movement similar to
the anti-apartheid one. This will be difficult; Israel has
far greater credibility and support than apartheid did.
But we find a way to link the many disparate NGOs and activist
groups into a coherent and coordinated network focusing
on the issue of the democratic state itself, then forge
them into a worldwide movement that goes far beyond our
various groups and networks.
The Unitary State of Palestine/Israel: Fears and Opportunities
Although the establishment of a single democratic state
in Palestine was long the program of the PLO, it is a truly
wrenching option for many Palestinians today. Even if it
acquires a Palestinian majority, a single state will have
to incorporate a strong Israeli-Jewish society, culture,
institutions and economy which, as in the case of the Europeans
in South Africa, will not merely disappear. Besides having
to share a state with others, thus not achieving full self-determination,
some Palestinians fear that they may become a subordinate
underclass in their own country. Thus, despite their grave
doubts over implementation, many Palestinians are reluctant
to abandon the road map or to contemplate the demise of
the two-state solution.
For the Israelis, too, the prospect of a single state is
obviously wrenching. Indeed, since a Jewish-Israeli state
already exists, its transformation into a single state including
a Palestinian majority is far more threatening to them.
It means the end of Zionism, the end of a Jewish state qua
Jewish state. But the Israeli public has only itself to
blame.
Despite repeated warnings from intellectuals in the critical
peace camp, it allowed successive governments, Labor as
well as Likud, to lock it into such a distressing situation.
The "two-state" solution envisioned by all Israeli
governments since 1967 a cantonized Palestinian mini-state
affiliated or not with Jordan is simply unacceptable, not
only to Palestinians but also to the international community.
Not only does it fail to address fundamental Palestinian
needs, thus leading to continued conflict, but also as an
apartheid system involves by its very nature massive violations
of human rights and international law. Although we, as members
of the international civil society must be prepared to fight
Israeli apartheid, just as we led the struggle against apartheid
in South Africa despite support for the regime from the
US and other governments, we must proceed from the assumption
that a new apartheid situation will not be countenanced
by the international community and cannot serve as a political
"solution."
As an Israeli, I must say that the prospect of a single
state encompassing our two peoples challenges rather than
threatens me. Even without the Occupation, the notion of
a Jewish state is demographically impossible, and Israel
faces a fundamental transformation. Most Jews some 75% of
them never came to Israel. Wherever they had a choice, most
Jews preferred to migrate elsewhere. The Jewish majority
stands at only 72% and is dwindling in relation to the growing
Palestinian-Israeli population, the influx of some 400,000
non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and
large-scale emigration (it is estimated that up to a half
million Israeli Jews live permanently abroad). Maintaining
a "Jewish" state on such a narrow base is becoming
increasingly non-sustainable. The measures Israel must take
to ensure its "Jewish character" are becoming
progressively more repressive. By law "non-Jews"
are forbidden to buy, rent, lease or live on "state
lands" 75% of the country. The Palestinian citizens
of Israel, almost 20% of the population, are confined to
2% of the land. Only a few weeks ago the Knesset enacted
a law preventing Palestinian citizens of Israel from bringing
their spouses from the Occupied Territories to live with
them in Israel. An Israel belonging to all its citizens
and beyond that, a democratic state of Israel-Palestine
will finally release us from the preoccupation with the
"demographic bomb" and lead us into a productive
involvement in the wider region. This "homecoming,"
after all, was a cardinal aim of Zionism, as was the creation
of an Israeli culture and society that will only flourish
under conditions of regional development. The Saudi offer
of regional integration indicates that such an eventuality
is indeed possible.
As cultural Zionists like Ahad Ha-am, Martin Buber and Judah
Magnes argued, Jewish national identity does not require
a state of its own, only a cultural space where it may develop
and flourish. For all its shortcomings, the state of Israel
provided that cultural space. The vitality of Israeli culture,
society, polity and economy is no longer dependent upon
a state structure, a kind of political "greenhouse."
"Israeliness" has reached a stage of maturity
that it no longer needs the protection of a state and, indeed,
is being held back by it, since the conflicts that state
generates prevents healthy social and cultural development.
A true homecoming in which Israeli "natives" engage
with their neighbors in a peaceful and prosperous Middle
East marks, if you will, the ultimate triumph of Zionism
("triumph" in its own terms, not over anyone else).
Still, two major reservations of Jews to a single state
must be noted and addressed. First, the issue of self-determination.
For nationalist Jews, the issue of cultural development
was subordinated to the perceived need to control their
destiny, to never again be dependent upon others given the
Jews' history of persecution. Since the vast majority of
Jews chose to settle abroad and not in Israel (including
a considerable portion of Israeli Jews themselves), this
issue seems to be moot. It is doubly moot given the fact
that the Jewish majority in Israel is dwindling, and that
exclusive control cannot be reconciled with democracy. For
better or worse, the internal contradictions between control
of one's destiny and living as a minority among others become
too great to reconcile. Those of us in the Israeli peace
movement would argue that Jewish security is best protected
in an inclusive world order based on the enforcement of
human rights and international law. The other objection
to a single state revolves around the issue of refuge. Where
could Jews find refuge in a time of need a pertinent question
given the Jewish experience (including recent ones of Ethiopian
Jews). If the vision of a single state is founded on the
belief that Israeli Jews and Palestinians can live together
in peace and mutual respect, then this concern could be
addressed by an article in the new state's constitution
specifying that both Jews and Palestinians possess the right
of return to the country, and that members of both peoples
in need of refuge will be automatically accepted. The very
enactment of such a law would go a long way towards assuring
each people of the good intentions of the other.
For Palestinians, too, the prospect of a single state need
not appear a concession to the idea of self-determination
in a state of their own. A single state would give Palestinians
access to the entire country and would resolve absolutely
the issue of refugee return. Since the Palestinians will
become the majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean
within a decade, they will exert a considerable measure
of self-determination and will, to a large extent, set the
tone for the country. The issue of Palestinian national
expression still remains outstanding, however. Since 1948
the very character of the Palestinian people has been changed
from a people living on its native land to a diaspora nation
comprised of refugees, the "internally displaced"
and those who have made new lives abroad. The vital Palestinian
Diaspora will certainly play a key role in developing the
Palestinian sector as well as the state as a whole, and
will provide a counterweight to internal Israeli hegemony.
Although the failure of the road map marks the end of two
nationalisms Israeli Jewish and Palestinian the prospect
of a unitary democratic state offers integration, security,
development, a mode of life far more conducive to the modern
world than narrow sectarian states. If the road map fails
and with it the two-state solution, it is hoped that Israel
will finally realize the futility of pursuing the path of
domination and apartheid, and will pro-actively seize the
opportunity to create for itself and its neighbors a peaceful
Middle East in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians together
will be among the leading forces for democratization and
development.
(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions and the author of An Israeli in
Palestine (Pluto Press: forthcoming))
