If Israel and Palestine Won’t Separate, Let Them Federate

Peter Beinart’s July 2020 call in Jewish Currents for a one-equal-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was heavily criticized for allowing Israel’s electorate to have a non-Jewish majority. However, the alternative advocated by most of Beinart’s opponents — the two-state solution — has major problems of its own. It is seen as a painful concession even by its staunchest supporters: former Knesset Member Einat Wilf (from the Labor Party) wrote in the Atlantic that it is “a divorce” that “would require both parties to make considerable compromises”; Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor” that the two-state solution was “a self-imposed wound on the Jewish people…doing violence to our most basic sense of Jewish history.”

Furthermore, powerful long-term efforts to build peace at the grassroots level, such as Roots or our own online forum Unity is Strength, are fundamentally based on creating an Israeli-Palestinian reality that is shared rather than separate. Since most peace efforts are based on relationship building, the two-state’s rhetoric of separation ultimately reinforces the perception on both sides that Palestinians are unwanted by Israel. In these venues, the preachiest two-state rhetoric is a call for a breakup even before the first date.

As early as at the 2017 J Street Conference in Washington, D.C., Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, argued that the two-state solution was dead. Palestinian obstructionism, he claimed, helped hasten its demise, as did successive Israeli governments. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed the two-state solution as a goal of Israel’s policy in a speech at Bar-Ilan University in 2009, his subsequent actions have blocked rather than cleared the way to it. Netanyahu and his supporters, most notably his own Likud party, lacked the political resolve to take the types of steps required for a two-state solution:

In order for an independent Palestine to be reasonably governable, Palestinians argue, the entire Palestinian part of the West Bank would need to be a single territorial unit well-connected with the capital. This would require keeping Jewish settlements limited. Instead, Israel and the United States greenlighted rampant settlement expansion in the West Bank during Netanyahu’s administration, fragmenting many parts of the Palestinian territories. Israel’s recent peace agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco merely delay rather than prevent annexation. After announcing the first Abraham Accords agreement, Netanyahu immediately reassured his base that there is “no change in my plans for annexation.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s once-dominant Labor party — and its entire political left — has become marginal. With a right-wing Knesset majority virtually assured in the upcoming election, the left is unlikely to gain a mandate to pursue a peace process based on two states. Yet even the far-left Meretz Party remains committed to two states along the lines of the Oslo Accords, rather than acknowledging this solution’s difficulties and exploring alternatives.

With a single state likely to be the inevitable reality, it is past time to start imagining how it could be best implemented. One of the main options is federation, regional governments under a larger federal body. The Israeli government is already inclined to grant regions greater autonomy. According to a recent government report, Israel’s excessive centralization, unusual for a developed country, is causing badly uneven growth across localities. The report’s proposal, supported by the current Minister of the Interior and Shas party founder Aryeh Deri, recommended creating and empowering regional authorities.

The West Bank, on the other hand, must rely heavily on regional authorities because of its extreme non-contiguity. Palestinians there may focus their advocacy efforts within the areas where they can easily coordinate, demanding –– and gradually receiving –– local empowerment, up to and including voting rights in Israel. This will nevertheless preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, even in the long term. Israel plus the West Bank is currently 65% Jewish, and birth rates for Jews and Palestinians in this area are almost identical.

The Federation Movement, an Israeli NGO, is one of the few groups currently exploring the political structure for a federation of Israel plus the West Bank. It has developed a detailed map in which this area is divided into 30 cantons, twenty with a Jewish majority and ten with a non-Jewish majority. The number and boundaries of the cantons are designed to reflect the demographics of the federation.

These cantons would have their own local governments, laws and directly-elected representatives to the federal government in Jerusalem, roughly based on the Swiss model of governance. The federal government would operate based on a written constitution, which Israel currently lacks. It would be bilingual (Hebrew and Arabic), with restrictions on the role of religion at the federal level. The constitutions of the cantons could be oriented toward the local majority culture while preserving freedoms of all religions and remaining within the bounds of the federal constitution. To stabilize the federation, the Knesset would become bicameral: a new parliamentary body representing the cantons would become the upper house, and the existing unicameral Knesset would become the lower house.

Although the Federation Movement’s proposal keeps two-thirds of the cantons predominantly Jewish, some Israelis will be uncomfortable with the reduction in Israel’s Jewish majority. However, there are advantages that may more than compensate for this issue. Settlements would integrate rather than be dismantled — an important benefit, since no Israelis would be displaced. The federation would also include a united Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. Jewish-majority cantons would cover the Jordan Valley as well. Major concerns of the two-state solution — such as the necessary withdrawal of settlements, the question of whether Arab-majority areas near the West Bank borders should be in Israel or Palestine and the geographic vulnerability of Israel proper at its narrowest point –– would be addressed. The borders of this federation model are more easily defensible than almost any possible with a two-state solution.

The borders of this federation model are more easily defensible than almost any possible with a two-state solution.

Palestinians will likely be concerned about leaving Gaza behind. To address this, Gaza could receive a port, airport and reasonable border and access arrangements. It would remain independent for as long as expedient. In the future, it could be integrated partly or wholly into the federation. One possibility for Gaza is a proposal related to federation, called confederation. Confederation includes elements of the federation model, such as shared Israeli-Palestinian governmental structures. However, it fundamentally preserves the existing national sovereignties, and so is considered a separate-state solution.

Inclusion of the diaspora is another important, if not essential, feature for Palestinians and Jews. Some individuals from both the diaspora and Gaza could be repatriated to the Federation immediately, based on economic or humanitarian criteria. Gazan Christians, for example, are vulnerable to the Islamic government of Hamas and number only a few thousand worldwide. Additional Palestinians could be permitted to enter the federation over time, and others could be accepted into third-party countries with financial compensation.

A federation requires the backing of both the Israeli and Palestinian populations. At the grassroots level, though, the federation proposal sends a more coherent message than classic two-state proposals — of Israelis and Palestinians as constituent groups seeking a larger shared experience. Confederation proposals capture part of this, and are currently supported by about one-third of Israelis and one-third of Palestinians. A recent study by the staunchly two-state advocacy group Israel Policy Forum strongly implied that confederation was the next-best change to the status quo after traditional two-state, but it did not discuss federation. A serious, well-funded campaign could reroute the peace discussions away from strict two-state rhetoric and towards openness to other solutions.

The Federation Movement’s proposal has real political, social and economic advantages to both sides. On the Palestinian side, it gives Palestinians the empowerment they have long sought. On the Israeli side, it opens the West Bank, develops Gaza for trade and improves Israel’s worldwide image. It even has the potential to inspire and rally parts of the Jewish Diaspora that are currently apathetic or polarized. Organic grassroots initiatives can help keep both them and Palestinians on board with the larger Mideast peace process. If we look beyond the failed Oslo peace framework, there are alternatives with the potential to succeed.

Emanuel Shahaf is co-chairman of the (Israel) Federation Movement www.federation.org.il, and a former senior intelligence official in the Prime Minister’s Office serving as head of station in Southeast Asia. Recently, he published “Identity, the Quest for Israel’s Future,” available on Amazon.

Rebecca Sealfon, a Reconstructionist Jewish writer based in New York, NY, founded Unity is Strength, an online discussion forum focused on cooperative solutions to Israel-Palestine that has received over one million views. She has published in the New York Daily News, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Daily Beast.