Israel, Jordan, and Palestine

The Two-State Imperative

Asher Susser

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781611680409
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Since 1921, the Zionist movement, the Hashemites, and Palestinian nationalists have been vying for regional control. In this book, Asher Susser analyzes the evolution of the one- and two-state options and explores why a two-state solution has failed to materialize. He provides an in-depth analysis of Jordan's positions and presents an updated discussion of the two-state imperative through the initiatives of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Susser argues that Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians have cohesive collective identities that violently collide with each other. Because of these entrenched differences, a single-state solution cannot be achieved.

1 BETWEEN BINATIONALISM AND PARTITION

The debate on partition and, in its present reincarnation, the discourse on the pros and cons of the one-state or two-state solution go back to the earliest days of the conflict in British Mandatory Palestine. Some of the original assumptions of the Zionist founding fathers were flawed. The first was that with the issue of the Balfour Declaration by Great Britain in support of a Jewish national home in Palestine, in November 1917, and the conquest of Ottoman Palestine by the British in the closing phases of the First World War, the Jews of Eastern Europe would choose in great numbers to immigrate to Palestine. On the eve of the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann envisaged a land that would be made available for the settlement of “four or five million Jews.” In their “immediate post-1918 euphoria” Zionist leaders anticipated “70,000 to 80,000 immigrants annually.”¹

Such a pace of immigration would have made the Jews the majority within a decade in the sparsely populated land of Palestine, whose indigenous Arab population at the time hardly reached seven hundred thousand. The territorial desiderata that the Zionists initially put forward to the British were determined far more by geography, resources, and perceived natural boundaries than by demography, which they apparently assumed was not going to pose a real problem.

Not only did they demand all of what became Palestine of the British Mandate, but they also set their sights on southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, and eastward across the Jordan up to the line of the Hijaz Railway, and even beyond. Indeed, in the early years of the Zionist enterprise after the First World War, the Zionists claimed both banks of the river for themselves. Even after the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan on the East Bank, the Zionist right continued to demand the creation of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority on both banks of the Jordan River, ² a demand that they only “quietly buried” in the mid-1960s.³

However, the Zionists were soon to find out to their profound dismay that the great majority of Jews leaving Eastern Europe preferred immigration to the affluent, liberal democratic West, in Europe and especially in North America. This was far more attractive than the trials and tribulations of settling in the rugged terrain of the uncertain and potentially dangerous frontier of Palestine.

Another flawed assumption was that the Arabs of Palestine would eventually acquiesce to the Zionist project. After all, so the Zionists really believed, it would bring the Arabs the material benefit of Western-style modernity and the capital and progressive enterprising spirit of the Zionists, which would raise the standard of living of the indigenous Arab population. Ben-Gurion was stunned when, in his first meeting with the Palestinian leader Musa al-Alami, in March 1934, Alami gave short shrift to Ben-Gurion’s exposé on the benefits of Zionism to the Arabs. Alami retorted to the effect that he would rather have the country remain poor and desolate for another hundred years, until such time as the Arabs would be capable of cultivating and developing it themselves, than to have the Zionists take it over.⁴

The First Binationalists

The failure to rapidly establish a Jewish majority and the force of Arab opposition drove some on the Zionist left (Brit Shalom and subsequently the Ihud and Hashomer Hatza

ir movements) to support a binationalist solution, that is, a state that would be equally Jewish and Arab. First voiced in the mid-1920s, the idea, though never supported by more than a small minority, remained a disproportionately influential part of the internal Zionist debate⁵ until the UN partition resolution of 1947. Palestine, the binationalists argued, was a country of two nations, and therefore, it should become “a bi-national state, in which the two peoples will enjoy totally equal rights as befits the two elements shaping the country’s destiny, irrespective of which of the two is numerically superior at any given time.” Majority status was not essential for Brit Shalom. On the contrary, they argued, striving for a Jewish majority only instilled fear in the Arabs and exacerbated the conflict.⁶

In 1930 Brit Shalom published a memorandum calling for “the constitution of the Palestine state … composed of two peoples, each free in the administration of their respective domestic affairs, but united in their common political interests, on the basis of complete equality.” Some in Brit Shalom even urged the Zionists to restrict Jewish immigration and assuage the Arabs by declaring their “desire to remain a minority.”⁷

In the immediate aftermath of the 1929 disturbances, which culminated in the destruction of the Jewish community in Hebron, when the Jews of Palestine were still reeling from shock, even Ben-Gurion gave some consideration to a version of the binational idea. These were most trying times for the Jews, when the entire future of the Zionist enterprise seemed to be hanging by a thread. In the face of mounting Arab opposition, Britain was on the verge of adopting a far more hostile and restrictive policy toward the Jewish national home. To preempt the imposition of an undesirable British plan, Ben-Gurion proposed that in the longer run a federal state should be established in Palestine, based on a formula of parity in government, national cantons, and the end of the British Mandate. His ideas were unpopular even in his own party, Mapai, and they were rejected. Even so, general ideas on eventual parity in government with the Arabs still remained in the party’s platform until 1937.⁸

The fortunes of the Zionist enterprise improved dramatically with the largescale immigration from Europe in the 1930s. The resultant regeneration of the power and self-confidence of the Jewish community washed away any remnants of binationalist thinking among mainstream Zionists. Mainstream thinking was by then predominantly in favor of independent statehood and partition.

By the mid-1930s Brit Shalom had essentially ceased to exist, but a few years later, in 1942, the Ihud Association was founded as its ideological successor.⁹ Like Brit Shalom, Ihud was willing to accept perpetual minority status with special constitutional protection for the Jews of Palestine. The catastrophic predicament of the Jews in Europe forced the binationalists onto the defensive in the face of mounting criticism by mainstream Zionists, who condemned their conciliatory position on immigration. In response, the binationalists adapted their program to correspond with both the Jewish tragedy in Europe and newly prevalent ideas in Britain and the Arab world on Arab unity. They proposed a binational state in Palestine as part of a regional federation that would enjoy the protection of the Western powers. The binational state would be based on demographic equality at first. It could eventually become a Jewish majority state, with the agreement of the Arabs of Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs, the binationalists believed, would be less concerned about being engulfed by the Jews if and when they were part of a greater Arab federation. Binationalism, they argued, was preferable to partition. A small Jewish state established in part of Palestine against the wishes of the Arabs “would be forced to live by the sword,” and its long-term survival would always be in doubt.¹⁰

The problem with binationalism was obviously not its well-intentioned drive for fairness and peace, but its feasibility. There was something fundamentally naïve about the idea. It did not enjoy much support among either the Jews or the Arabs. “This was an instance of the idealist’s hope for the abstract … without much regard for the concrete tendencies.”¹¹ As Jewish immigration increased and tension and violence mounted in the 1930s, it became abundantly clear that the Jews and Arabs of Palestine simply did not have the elementary common political interests to make binationalism a reality. As Alexander Cadogan, a British Foreign Office official concluded at the time, the dream of binationalism was “pure eyewash.”¹² Those who were willing to commit to a permanent Jewish minority were unable to find a mechanism that would ensure the security and well-being of the Jewish community in the Arabmajority state. Nor did they know how to finesse the problem of Arab-Jewish power sharing as equals, when the Jews were only a minority.

Some suggested that the mandatory power serve as an indefinite protectorate to ensure that the majority would not subjugate the minority. Thus in the name of protecting the rights of both Jews and Arabs, they produced the unintended consequence of denying national independence to both peoples.¹³ Others believed in the gradual creation of a Jewish majority but could not find Arab partners who would agree to any Jewish immigration at all. With the passage of time, matters only got worse as immigration continued and Arab political consciousness developed and deepened and with it emerged an ever more determined and well-articulated rejection of the Zionist enterprise.

Even so, the Marxist Hashomer Hatza

ir movement did not lose faith in their version of binationalism, seeking throughout the 1930s and 1940s to establish a “bi-national socialist society in Palestine.” But they believed simultaneously in the unhindered advancement of the Zionist enterprise, the eventual achievement of a Jewish majority, and governmental parity irrespective of the numerical ratio between the two peoples. Indeed, for Hashomer Hatza

ir, a Jewish majority was a precondition for the creation of the binational socialist society that they envisaged. In due course, they believed, the class solidarity of the workers would overcome the national alienation between Jews and Arabs.¹⁴ These ideas, needless to say, had virtually no Arab takers either. Two Arabs, Fawzi Darwish al-Husayni and Sami Taha, neither of whom had any substantial political or intellectual standing, were assassinated (Husayni in November 1946 and Taha in September 1947) for apparently exhibiting a readiness to cooperate with Jewish binationalists.¹⁵

After all, from the Arab point of view, why should they share a land they believed was entirely theirs as equals with a minority of foreigners, particularly if these new immigrants strove to become the majority under the protection of the binational idea? After the Second World War, Hashomer Hatza

ir accepted the inevitability of partition, and though they never formally relinquished binationalism as an ideal, in practice they joined the Zionist consensus on Jewish statehood.¹⁶

A variation of the binationalist theme was cantonization. According to this idea, the country would be divided into autonomous Arab and Jewish cantons united in one federal state under the British Mandate. Cantonization was thoroughly discussed by the Peel Commission, which rejected the idea as impractical, as it went nowhere to satisfy the intense desire of both Jews and Arabs for national self-government. Moreover, the commission noted, the old uncertainty as to the future destiny of Palestine would remain to intensify the antagonism between the parties. The commission concluded that cantonization presented most, if not all, of the difficulties presented by partition, “without Partition’s one supreme advantage—the possibility it offers of eventual peace,” based on two states”.¹⁷

After Britain’s decision in early 1947 to hand the Palestine question over to the UN, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) set out to study the problem and to recommend a solution. The binationalists presented a written statement to UNSCOP calling for a UN trusteeship for an agreed transitional period, under which an undivided binational Palestine would be established. During the period of trusteeship, Jewish immigration would continue until numerical parity was reached with the Arabs. Thereafter immigration would be agreed upon by Arabs and Jews, in terms of their binational constitution.¹⁸ The only thing that united the Zionist mainstream and the Arabs on these ideas was their total and unremitting rejection of the binationalist proposals.

UNSCOP also considered this and other varieties of the binational solution (including cantonization, federation, or confederation) and rejected them all as unfeasible. The Zionist position presented to UNSCOP dismissed the alternatives to partition, arguing that none of them had the advantages of partition, “which is final, clear-cut, and well-formed.”¹⁹ Essentially this was the view adopted by the UNSCOP majority. The new reality that emerged in the wake of the 1947 UN partition resolution and the establishment of Israel in May 1948 brought an end to the discussion of binationalism, which had been trumped by the two-state solution, at least for the meantime.

The Triumph of Partition

For the mainstream Zionists, the quintessential issue was not binationalism but to create a majority community in all, or at least part, of Palestine. It made no sense for the Zionists to have a so-called “national home” in a territory where they would be just another Jewish minority the likes of which already existed all over the diaspora. After all, from the Herzlian political Zionist point of view, the solution to the Jewish problem could only come about if the Jews would finally escape their deplorable minority predicament through Jewish sovereignty in a state they could call their own. But the Arabs had no intention of passively agreeing to become a minority in a country where they had been the majority for centuries. They did not feel any compulsion to have that change because Jews were being oppressed in Europe. As they made clear very early on, they would resist the Zionist enterprise to the bitter end. The Arabs were prepared only to grant the Jews minority rights, but no more. As Arthur Ruppin, one of the Zionist enterprise’s key figures, explained, what the Jews really needed from the Arabs, they could not get, and for what they could get, they had no use. “For minority rights the Jewish people would not invest its blood and capital in the building of Palestine.”²⁰

Unable to muster a majority in all of Palestine, faced with relentless Arab resistance, and opposed to binationalism as both undesirable and unrealistic, the Zionists were forced to finally acquiesce in the partition of the country into two separate political entities. In fact, even before the country was partitioned territorially, it was governed by the British on the basis of a de facto ethnic partition due to the incapacity and unwillingness of the Arabs and the Jews to cooperate. From the outset, disagreement between Jews and Arabs prevented the British from creating a unified political community in Palestine embracing both peoples.

The administration of Palestine foreshadowed ethnic partition. Each community had its own governing institutions as the communities also develo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Between Binationalism and Partition
• 2 The Palestinians and the Two-State Idea: A Guide for the Perplexed
• 3 Israel and the Two-State Paradigm: From Reluctant Acquiescence to Self-Interest
• 4 The Alternative: The Promotion of the One-State Agenda
• 5 The Evolution of the Jordanian Role
• 6 The Revival of the Two-State Imperative
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index