Why is there neither two-state solution nor even one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Note: Just another piece of coursework I submitted a year or two ago. I felt stuck, as the more I read, the more I realised that Israeli society in general is not willing to make a choice on any solution regarding the Palestinian question, be it a two-state paradigm or a one-state paradigm. I suspect there is some belief that time is on their side. Following the same Jabotiskyâs Iron Wall strategy, if the Israelis can frustrate the Arabs and the Palestinians to the point that any resistance is futile and life inside the occupation zones is unbearable, the Israelis can impose whatever condition they want upon them. As Lustick argues, Jabotisky originally thought that it was the only way the Zionist movement could secure their place as their territories expanded in a hostile MENA region, and this would help them to discipline and negotiate with the Arabs. Now Jabotiskyâs Iron Wall strategy is so successful and the resulting Israeli state is so powerful that, as the political elites thought, Israel does not require compromise and negotiation regarding the Palestinian future, effectively turning the Zionist project into a zero-sum game. Crazy plans like throwing Palestinians to other MENA countries sound more like the Naziâs Madagaskarplan in the 1930s, when the German Nazis dreamt of kicking European Jews out of Europe out of desperation (c.f. Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. University of Nebraska Press, 2004). Today Israel has established itself as a sovereign state and a nuclear power. There is no point in advocating anything to turn the clock back. Yet Israelis may soon realise their (in)decision(s) over the Palestinian question will dramatically change the trajectory of what sort of a political project Israel will become in the future.
(1) Introduction
Why is there no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? This essay argues that the Two-State Solution (TSS) paradigm, which at best can only create a Palestinian state with no full sovereign attribute in historical Palestine, threatens Israel's ontological security, by exposing the inconsistency of its autobiographical self-narrative â a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel â that binds the Israeli Jewish nation together. To cope with such ontological insecurity in the face of binational reality on the ground, Israelâs self-identity narrative is increasingly anchored on the Jewish control and exclusive sovereign claim over Eretz Israel and actively tries to change the territorial and demographic realities on the ground in the OPTs to align with the Zionist visions, thereby obstructing the possibilities of a Palestinian state with full sovereign attribute and territorial congruity from emerging. I will utilize Edjusâs concepts of projection and introjection to illustrate how, on the one hand, Israel routinely resorts to the myth of security and the myth of Eretz Israel to resolve the inconsistency of its autobiographical self-narrative by attaching it with the Jewish control and dominance over lands, but to no avail, when it faces the binational reality on the ground. On the other hand, Israeli politicians across the political spectrum actively pursue policies that perpetuate Israelâs military control and increase Jewish presence in the OPT according to the two myths, in the hope that eventually the Jewish dominance on the ground and territorial fragmentation can frustrate Palestiniansâ national aspiration, negating the need for pondering upon a TSS. By doing so, these policies normalize and institutionalize the current dual democratic-military regime to blur and erode the national borders, allowing Israel to slowly but steadily maximize territorial gain in the OPTs while minimizing the absorption of the Palestinian Arab population into the state of Israel.
(1.1) Structure of this Essay
In the following, I will first discuss the ontological security theories and two coping mechanisms â projection and introjection to illustrate that first, states are willing to sacrifice physical security for the sake of ontological security; second, state can anchor their collective identity script into the material environment to cope with the collective anxiety caused by the delegitimation effort from within and without. I will then lay out the historical context of the origin of and current understanding of the TSS paradigm, as well as a brief account of the relation between Israel proper and OPTs. The dual democratic-military regime which has been in place since the 1967 war provides the necessary context of how Israel perceives the binational reality on the ground and what to do to address the discrepancy between Zionist visions and the reality in the OPTs. After that, My main analysis will be divided into two main parts. In the first part I seek to utilize Edjusâs concepts of projection to illustrate how, in the face of binational reality on the ground, and delegitimation attempts from within and without, Israel routinely relies upon the myth of security and Eretz Israel to bulk up its inconsistent autobiographical self narratives. These myths intend to legitimize the imperatives for military control, Jewish dominance and even exclusive sovereign claim over the OPTs to preserve the nation-state and to realize the true meaning of Jewish nationhood over the land of Israel/Historical Palestine. However unsatisfactory it is in effect, these myths become the routine responses for Israel to defy ongoing pressure to recognise Palestiniansâ national right of self-determination and to hang on to the current dual democratic-military regime on the ground. In the second part, based on the idea of introjection, I show that Israel continues to Judaise and de-Arabise the land within OPTs through various institutional arrangements and settlement policies to blur the national boundaries between the two people, allowing Israel to maximize land grab while minimizing intake of the Palestinian population into the nation-state. The continued fragmentation of Palestinian lands into enclaves and control over freedom of movement for people, goods and services effectively obstruct the emergence of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty and territorial congruity. The Allon Plan (1967) and the Drobless Plan (1978) are the two masterplans representing the routine rationale and practices of Israel in reality to handle the Palestinian question and to obstruct any TSS, which Israel has been obliged to pay lip service to. In the final part of my analysis, I argue that various âland for peaceâ proposals proposed by successive Israel governments are in essence no different from âland for securityâ â the necessity for Israel to exert control and Jewish dominance over the OPTs makes any TSS impossible to be realized. It is hard to conceive whether a demilitarized political entity, formed by fragmented population enclaves, whose economy and political functioning depend on its equally hostile but stronger neighbour, can still be categorized as a functional nation-state of the Palestinian people. In the conclusion section, I will briefly discuss the implication of this essay and suggest there is a need to go beyond the secular/religious binary to understand why Israeli society rejects any political resolutions regarding their entrenched conflict with the Palestinians when the necessary political compromises are specified.
(2) Theoretical Framework
Ontological security theory (OST) can be seen as a constructivist response to the security dilemma in explaining why states as rational security seekers repetitively opt for intractable conflict (Mitzen 2006 p. 343). This constructivist turn in the IR field is partly due to outbursts of identity-driven conflicts. The protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict is among one of them. Israel politics have routinely excluded the Palestinian question from political discourse while sustaining a dual democratic-military regime over historical Palestine until major Palestinian uprisings or terrorist attacks shock the nation-state (Grinberg 2009, p. 24; Tamar-Dahl 2016, p. 50). Why does Israel continue to endure a nearly permanent state of war since its foundation but not seek political resolution with the Palestinians based on a TSS paradigm, thereby exposing the polity and the Israeli Jews to physical insecurity?
To understand this puzzle, Scholars of OST urge us to also consider the state's ability to maintain their self-identity narratives (Ejdus 2020, p.1). Ejdus (2020) proposes two fundamental claims for understanding the state's need for ontological security:
(1) âstate, just like individuals, are often ready to sacrifice their physical security in order to maintain a healthy sense of self and hence fend off anxiety;
(2) States need stable self-identity scripts to keep cognitive control over their environment, define their interests and maintain a sense of purposeful agencyâ (p. 1-2).
The first claim defines the state as the unit of analysis, what ontological security-seeking behaviour is, and its relation with the pursuit of security claim assumes the motivation behind the ontological security-seeking behaviour of a state. This nexus between identity and security posits identity as the referent object to be secured and threatened (Lupovici p. 810, 812).
As for the source of ontological insecurity, Ejdus refines the idea of critical situations and proposes that ontological insecurity is a result of critical situations (p. 16). Critical situations are radical disjunctions that threaten or destroy the certitude of institutionalized routines. These routines allow the ontological security seekers to âbracket outâ fundamental questions that may disrupt the constancy of their relations with the social and material environment, thereby fending off existential anxieties and maintaining a sense of agency. One of the fundamental questions that every polity has to address through public discourses is that of the consistency of collective autobiographical narratives, in which the continuity of self-identity of sovereign states and imagined communities are hinged. In such a critical situation, as Rumelili (2015) argues, existing social and political processes can no longer contain such anxieties (p. 12). Such anxiety outbursts are performed through a public discourse on fundamental questions (Ejuds p. 18). Steele (2008) also proposes that analysis of political discourse can reveal âhow state agents justify a policy by reasoning what such a policy means or would mean about their stateâs respective sense of self-identity.â it can also specify when considerations of self-identity lead to a certain policy decision (p. 12).
I propose that any political resolutions that touch upon the demographic issue and give up control over historical Palestine can be seen as critical situations that undermine the consistency of Israelâs autobiographical narratives, provoking ontological anxieties and dividing Israeli society. As Amar-Dahl (2016) argues, Israeli politics is unable to grapple with the discrepancy between the Zionist vision and the bi-national reality in historical Palestine by political means (p. 16). The raison dâetre of the Zionist project â to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel, has been based on myth rather than reality in historical Palestine ever since the founding of Israel in 1948, considering nearly half of the population in historical Palestine is non-Jews (p. 16). The territories which Jewish nationalists consider as âthe land of their forefathersâ were also settled by another collective, who also see themselves as a nation and claim nation statehood on the same territories (p. 18, p. 50). Sucharov (2005) argues that the existence of Palestinians living on the territory of Eretz Israel poses a triangle dilemma of democracy, Greater Israel, and the Jewish character of the state, which exposes the inconsistency of Israelâs autobiographical narratives, since âIsrael could have any two, but not all threeâ (p. 114). Naturalising Palestinians in Israel proper and the future annexed territories by offering equal political and civil rights will undermine the Jewish sovereignty within a few generations, to preserve the Jewish majority Israel will cease to be a democratic state, creating an ethnocracy at best, apartheid state at worst by denying the Palestinians equal citizenship. Recognise Palestinianâs right to self-determination in historical Palestine can preserve the Jewish and democratic character of Israel by separating the two people, but it will also shatter the historical-religious myth of Eretz Israel as the land of the Jewish people, which serves as the ultimate justification of Political Zionism (Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 186; Abulof 2014 p. 515). This can result in an ideological and identity crisis within Israelâs society that intensifies the internal polarisation among Israeli Jews, as exemplified by the assassination of Rabin in 1995 for his willingness to push for a TSS, however faulty it is, that entails potential land concession for the preservation of the Jewish and democratic character of Israel (Grinburg 2009 p. 153).
To cope with collective anxieties, states may be rigidly attached to old routines, selectively use identity narratives to mitigate anxiety, and resort to avoidance or denial when multiple identities are simultaneously disrupted (Edjus p. 24-25). Edjus also proposes that states may try to anchor their collective identity script, which is essentially contested, fragmentary and plural in nature, into the material environment, making the collective identity appear more firm and real in space (p. 26). However, as Edjus argues, no anchor can fully protect polities from an unavoidable tide of change, as âthe link between the self and the material environment is inherently unstable and in need of continuous monitoring, maintenance, repair or reinventionâ (p. 29). To do so, states may resort to what Edjus categorizes as introjection or projection. Introjection refers to the act of absorption of the material environment into the project of the self. states can delineate a space and ascribe it to a special status as a place where important imaginary or real national-forging events occur (p. 27). The example Edjus uses is the special relation of Jerusalem and the Holy Land with the Jewish people in the Jewish religious narrative as well as in the Zionist identity narratives, and how these narratives have strengthened the emotional attachment of Israeli Jews to historical Palestine. Projection can be understood as politiesâ attempt to extrapolate the self onto the material environment by erecting and designating sites of great symbolic importance or reshaping the landscapes and external environment to secure the continuity between the past, present and future of a nation. The example I will discuss in detail in the Analysis is the religious significance of settlements, especially in Judea and Samaria, the biblical correspondence to the West Bank assigned by Religious Zionists like Rabbi Kook and the early Gush Emunim settler movement (Farasakh 2005 p.47)
As mentioned, The binational reality in historical Palestine is always the Achilles heel for the realization of the Zionist vision. Both the binational state through annexation and the TSS paradigm are equally unpalatable to the Israel society. As any political resolutions will put into question the autobiographical narrative of the Jewish democratic state and the self-perception of a unique, ahistorical relation between the Jewish people and Eretz Israel (Amar Dahl 2016 p. 62-63), Lupovici (2011) argues that avoidance can become an attractive option for states in dealing with situations when multiple seemingly contradictory identities are simultaneously under threat (p. 831). This echoes the polling results conducted in Israel and Palestine to measure their support for a TSS. OâMalley (2015) observes that when compromises for realizing the TSS are spelt out to both Israelis and Palestinians, their support for TSS falls rapidly (p. 90). Young (08 Jan 2024) even concludes that the majority of Israelis appear to oppose any realistic compromise based on a one-state or two-state paradigm that is palatable to the Palestinians, clinging on to the status quo. In the analysis section, I will demonstrate how Edjusâs ideas of Introjection and Projection can help illustrate how Israel tackles its ontological insecurity that arises from the discrepancies between the demographic and territorial realities on the ground and its autobiographical narratives, and by doing so, adding nails to the coffin of the TSS.
(3) Historical background
The two-state solution paradigm as currently known today can briefly be described as the establishment of a Palestinian state along the line of the 1967 borders, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as its territories, with East Jerusalem as its capital (OâMally 1; Farsakh 2005 p. 63). Based on the Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), Israel agreed to trade lands occupied in 1967 in return for the Arab states to recognise its right to peace and security. This land for peace principle was later accepted by the PLO in 1988 (Lustick 2019). The PLO, by accepting resolution 242, has also de facto recognised Israel on 78 per cent of historical Palestine (Farsakh 2005 p. 63). This paradigm assumes that through negotiation, a land-for-peace deal can be arrived at, and a geographical partition of historical Palestine can be made possible after Israel withdraws from enough of the territories occupied in 1967. These occupied territories include the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. By doing so, it is hoped that the TSS can serve as the basis for legitimizing the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East and forging a new and peaceful political status quo (Lustick 2019, p. 99).
Various diplomatic efforts were indeed guided by the explicit commitment to a TSS as the key element in a final status agreement, like the Oslo process, and the Camp David Summit 2000 (Lustick 2019, p. 99). However, the current TSS paradigm and its foundation, the UNSC resolution 242, do not entail the recognition of Palestinian national rights (Roy 2012 p. 72). As Young (23 Jan 2023) explains, in 1970 and 1972 the United States under the Nixon administration affirmed that Israel need not commit itself to a full withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 as part of any interim agreement with the Arabs in compliance with the UNSC resolution 242. That means, as Young puts it, â[Israel] could enter into negotiations without their ultimate outcome being set beforehand, leaving the Israelis with a wide margin of diplomatic manoeuvreâ (23 Jan 2023). By emptying resolution 242 of its content and by setting the precedent that the final outcome of Arab-Israeli peace talks must be negotiated between the parties, not set beforehand (Young, 08 Jan 2024), this allows Israel to continue its military control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip and makes any negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian representatives extremely difficult. Roy (2012) argues that as the US-Israel interpretation of UNSC resolution 242 ultimately prevails, the TSS paradigm that arises from it denies the Palestinian national right in territories that Israel does not agree to relinquish (p. 72). This means, firstly, Israel does not need to return all the occupied territories, noting that Israel never officially settles its final border, nor does it accept the pre-June 1967 lines as its boundaries (Navon 2020 p. 180). Secondly, the status of Israeli Arabs living in Israel proper is also excluded from any comprehensive settlements. Finally, the right of return and compensation to Palestinian refugees who have been expelled or fled their homeland in 1948 is also sidelined (p. 72-73). Although the resolution has called for âa just settlement of the refugee problemâ as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the formulation is equally vague and unenforceable (Navon 2020 p. 181).
The reality on the ground in the occupied territories today is characterized by some as a dual military-democratic regime (Grinberg 2009 p. 18) or by others as the one-state reality (Barnett, Brown & Telhami 2023 p. 12-13). Both terms indicate the complex institutional buildings by Israel that âhave put the Israelis and the Palestinians together inside the same political territory enfolding each other not only on an ideological superstructural level but also in the daily confrontations and interactionâ (Farsakh 2005 p. 64). Grinberg argues that historical Palestine is incorporated into the state of Israel through multiple institutional settings, given the fact that Israel has no officially recognised border since its foundation. The territories captured in 1948 are institutionalized as Israel proper under a democratic regime, whereas the territories captured and occupied in the 1967 war are under the rule of a military regime. One of the peculiarities of such categorisation is that East Jerusalem, a supposedly occupied territory as a result of the 1967 war according to international law, has been annexed by Israel and unilaterally placed under Israeli domestic jurisdiction. Although Palestinians under both regimes do not enjoy equal rights as the Israeli Jews, only those who live inside the Israel proper were awarded civil and political rights. This does not even account for the institutional arrangement after the Oslo peace process that multiple administrative bodies and arrangements coexist in governing occupied territories. The Palestinian Authority was established as the administrative body in what has been defined as âArea Aâ in the West Bank, while the Gaza Strip was under Hamas rule after 2006 (Grinberg p. 18). But it does not change the fact that Israel continues to exercise effective control, especially over Gaza, notably by restriction the of movement people and goods (HRW, 17 Dec 2019). As for the term âone-state realityâ, it is to emphasize that in reality, Palestinians do not have control over their affairs and institutions that have met the standard of modern sovereignty, despite being recognised by 138 out of 193 states as of 2019 (Barnett, Brown & Telhami 2023 p.12). Many of the stateâs functions or attributes have been integrated into the Israel state and economy, such as tax collections, security, water supplies and trade.
(4) Analysis
(4.1) The Israeli myth of Eretz Israel and its impact in shaping a more exclusive self-identity narratives and the security dilemma
My first argument is that Israelâs self-identity narratives are increasingly anchored on the Jewish control and exclusive sovereign claim over Eretz Israel over time, especially after the Six-Day War in 1967. Both responses make territorial concessions to the Palestinians divisive within Israeli Jewish society, if not impossible. This is because the Palestinian question has evoked the fundamental question and anxiety as to what it means for the state of Israel to be Jewish. That is, as Yadgar (2021) suggests, what are the unique qualities â be it some normative, ethical or constitutive worldview â that determine the stateâs âidentityâ or constitution as Jewish, and not just merely a sovereign nation-state of the Jews (×××× ×Ş ×××××××) (p. 3). As mentioned, Edjus proposes that states can try to anchor their collective identity script that is under contested and challenged into the material environment through introjection, that is by delineating a space and ascribing it a special status as a place where important imaginary or real national-forging events occurred (p. 26-27). Whenever Israel has to deal with the binational reality on the ground that exposes the inconsistencies of its autobiographical narratives, Israelâs political discourses either evoke the myth of security or the myth of promised land to legitimize competing relations between the state, the peoplehood and Eretz Israel (the land of Israel/historical Palestine). (Amar Dahl 2016, p. 178, 187). The myth of security delineates that Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) should be placed under Israelâs security apparatus for the sake of the survival of the state of Israel and its Jewish sovereignty. Both the physical and ontological security of the state with a Jewish majority is non-negotiable and a prerequisite for any land and demographic arrangement with the Palestinians. In contrast, the myth of Eretz Israel â the promised land of the Jewish people â on the contrary, sees the land of Israel rather as an end of itself beyond compromise. The expansion of the state of Israel only serves as a means to fulfil the messianic goals and the historical continuity of the Jewish people â to inherit and to settle Eretz Israel (Brenner p. 275; Shafir p. 54-55). In other words, it is this fulfilment of this religious mission that makes the state of Israel Jewish, and not merely a state of the Jews.
The myth of security legitimizes the necessity to place the OPT under the control of Israel's security apparatus. This may leave some room for a demilitarized Palestinian state with no full sovereignty to emerge at best, and legalize the continuation of the current dual military-democratic regime at worst (Hellyer, 24 Jan 2024). It is true that the security myth claims Israel has a willingness for land concessions to ensure the survival of the state and the Jewish demographic majority in the polity, but it is the ill will from the Arab world and the Palestinians that renders any form of reconciliation or TSS impossible. It also legitimizes Israelâs military dominance over the OPT as necessary so long as the Jewish majority and the nation-state are under the constant threat of annihilation (Amar-Dahl 2016, p. 160). Under the security myth, military control over the OPT and the Palestinians minimize the threat to the nation-state, so that Jews do not need to fight in the wars that are imposed on them against their will and to secure peace (Grinberg 2009 p. 60). The survival of the nation-state is essential for the secular Zionist project and the modern Israeli Jewish identity. As A. B. Yehoshua, the prominent secular Zionist intellectual argues, it is only under a nation-state that Jewish identity can be expressed as nationalism under the sovereignty of Jews and separate from its religious component. It is only by complete sovereignty that Zionists can demand the right of unrestricted immigration and colonization of historical Palestine (qtd. from Yadgar 2017 p. 207, 256). It is also only through the nation-state that Israeli society can manufacture and maintain a collective identity that excludes non-Jews, i.e., Arab Israelis, and a Jewish majority in its population (Yadgar 2017, p. 184; 2021, p. 5-6). Hence, âSecurityâ has become the key code and lens of Israeli society and shapes the way how Israeli Jews perceive the possibility of a TSS and land concessions, especially during the crisis.
Behind the security myth reflects Israelâs mistrust of goyim (non-Jews) (Abulof 2022, p. 133) and a deep-seated fear over the future survival of the ethnic identity and the national polity (Abuloff 2014 p. 243-244) in the face of the binational reality on the ground. That means, the Palestinian state that can emerge under the current TSS paradigm would be the one that is demilitarized and with no full sovereign attribute, so that Israel has the right to militarily enter the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at will without Palestinian consent, as for Israel, it is its military strength, not its goodwill that guarantees the survival of the nation-state (Hellyer, 24 Jan 2024; Amar-Dahl 2016, p. 188). But for the Palestinians, a demilitarized Palestinian state only amounts to the continuation of the occupation policy and arrangement. An article written by Gadi Taub, an Israeli Jewish Historian and conservative, titled âSorry, but There is No Two-State Solutionâ (2024 Feb 3) succinctly captures the ethos of security among Israeli Jews in assessing the possibility of reconciliation based on a TSS paradigm, after the surprised Hamas attack on Oct 7, 2023. Taub evokes the security myth to reiterate that the everlasting hostility of Goyim (gentile) towards peace-seeking Jews and the state of Israel can never be resolved and the necessity of military control over the OPT and the Palestinians. Taub acknowledges the partition of historical Palestine can solve many contradictions and conflicts that arise from the discrepancy between the self-conception of the state of Israel and the demographic reality in historical Palestine. The end of occupation can stop all the ongoing human violations towards the Palestinians. A TSS can end the delegitimization effort from the adversaries in associating Zionism with settler colonialism and the IDF as an army of occupation. But Taub argues that the TSS is merely a dream as the Palestinian is the one who refuses to recognise the Jewish sovereignty and they never cease to give up their ambitions to recapture the whole historical Palestine âfrom the river to the seaâ by military means. Taub asserts that another similar attack like that of Oct 7 will only happen again even when Palestinians have their own nation-state with full sovereignty established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, judging how Palestinians are pleased with the massacre of Israeli Jews and the huge amount of International aid âwas harnessed to one overarching cause: the destruction of the Jewish stateâ. To grant the Palestinian state full sovereignty is to â[turn] Judea and Samaria into another Hamastan to satisfy those who see the massacre as an inspiration and its perpetrators as role modelsâ.
The myth of security has tied the survival of the whole political zionist project with the military control over OPT and the Palestinians to stall any political resolution that may result in ontological insecurity, which is triggered by a conflict between Israelâs conception as a democratic state of the Jews and its ideal of Greater Israel in the face of the binational reality on the ground. In contrast, the resurrection of the myth of Eretz Israel is an all-out rejection of any political reconciliation with the Palestinians, the TSS paradigm and Arab Israelis' rights, by tying the Jewish character of the state with Jewish supremacy over the whole historical Palestine. This is what the myth of security has failed to achieve. The security myth only stresses the necessity of the physical and ontological survival of a sovereign state for the Jews as a nation, which is based on the principle of national self-determination and popular sovereignty (Abulof 2014, p. 517). Judaism is evoked only as a resource by political Zionists to evoke the national aspiration, rather than as the source of the legitimation of the modern nation-state (p. 520). As such, the security myth and secular political Zionism have failed to address why the same universal principle of self-determination can apply to the case of the Jews but not extend to that of the Palestinian Arabs, who have already resided in historical Palestine for centuries. That is why secular political zionists are willing to accept a downsizing of their territorial claim to preserve both the Jewish majority and the democratic character of Israel (Abulof 2014 p. 523), even though Laborites never denied the claim that the West Bank (Israel called it Judea and Samaria) were part of the Eretz Israel. (Peleg 2005 p. 144). Yet, the myth of Eretz Israel, by advocating a Halakhic solution to uphold the Jewish supremacy and the commandment to inherit and settle Eretz Israel, seeks to Judaise nationalism through diffusing the Halakhic doctrine, turning the state of Israel from merely a state with the majoritarian rule of the Jews to a Jewish state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel, at the expense of the democratic character of the state, Palestinian national right of self-determination and equal rights for Arab-Israelis (Shafir 2022, p. 58, 66).
The myth of Eretz Israel rejects any political resolution to the Palestinian issues, be it a one-state or a two-state solution, because it seeks to alter the binational reality on the ground according to Zionist visions by exerting Jewish supremacy and complete sovereignty over historical Palestine. Without these conditions, the Zionist demand for unrestricted immigration and unrestricted colonization of the land of Israel would be impossible (Yadgar 2017 p. 207). Under this myth, the self-conception of Israel â a democratic Jewish state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel â depends on the negation of Palestiniansâ political, civil and national rights, whether it is the national claim to establish a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, or the assimilation the Arab Israelis as members of the Jewish nation. So long as half of the population living in historical Palestine is non-Jew, Israelâs self-concept of the state remains a myth (Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 16). Not only the existence of Palestinian Arabs and their demands for the political and national right of self-determination within Israel proper and in the OPT are seen as existential threats to the Jewish and democratic character of Israel, but the natural population growth of the Palestinian Arabs is also seen as a demographic threat to the Jewish sovereignty (Yadgar 2020 p. 47). As such, the Palestinian Arabs become the ultimate Other that has to be separated from Jews, Jews must also outnumber them (Yadgar 2020 p. 55-56) as well as enjoy preferential treatment from the state to differentiate âthe core nationâ, the popular sovereign of the nation-state. That is why, as Taub argues, to recognise the Palestiniansâ right of return, which is the basis of the Palestinian identity, is to reject the TSS and âden[y] the legitimacy of any form of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the land of Israelâ as the state of Israel will no longer be able to hold on its Jewish majority and the Jewish sovereignty. Not only will the right of return undo the Zionist project by annulling the Jewish sovereignty, where Arab-Israelis are given equal political rights, but this will also defeat the purpose of the TSS. As Palestinian Arabs will become the majority in both the states of Israel and Palestine, this will undo the TSS â a Jewish majority state alongside a Palestinian majority state to maintain the ethnic conception of national membership (Shelef p. 168). This âdemographic demonâ (Abulof 2014 p. 397) is one of the reasons why Ariel Sharon, the then-prime minister of Israel, rejected the proposal from the Arab Peace Initiative (API) in 2002 based on a TSS paradigm â the exchange of occupied Palestinian lands, including the annexed East Jerusalem, and âa just resolution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in accordance with resolution 194â for the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia (OâMally 2015 p. 140).
This âdemographic demonâ becomes an unresolvable problem for any TSS to realize because Israeli political culture does not offer Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel a path of âsocial conversion into the Israeli in-group, like what Israel has offered for the non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (Yadger 2017 p. 184; 2020 p. 60). The national identity of the state of Israel being a state of Jews is reserved for Jews only. Non-Jewish minorities cannot partake in such national identity (Yadgar 2020 p. 27). To continue to produce and reproduce the Israeli nation as Jewish, in the face of the sizable Arab-Palestinians in Israel proper, means oneâs place of birth, being a citizen in a Jewish state or proficiency in the Hebrew language does not make them Jewish in Israel (Yadgar 2020 p. 75). The âCitizenship and Entry into Israel Lawâ, passed on 31 July 2003 under Sharonâs tenure and renewed on March 24, 2024, seeks to preserve the Jewish majority by restricting Palestinian migration from the OPTs, thereby curbing the birth rate of Arab-Israeli populations. The law prohibits the naturalization of Palestinian spouses married to Israeli citizens and their children, effectively separating Arab Israeli citizens and Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza Strips (Benn 2008 p. 51; Nikfar 2005 p. 2; Jewish News Syndicate 2024 March 4).
Apart from attempts to bring the Arab-Israeli population in check through legal means, the nation-state also seeks to enforce the boundary between Jews and Non-Jews. Instead of coming up with a national identity, The nation-state has to rely upon the conservative Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis and politicians to decide âwho is a Jewâ according to a conservative interpretation of what a Jew should believe and practice according to religion â Judaism, and to manage the Jewish citizensâ personal matters of marriage and divorce to prevent interethnic marriage, thereby reinforcing the distinction between Jews and non-Jews (Yadgar 2020 p. 27). That means, the sheer existence of the Palestinians within Israel proper makes the state of Israel impossible to be Jewish and democratic at the same time. Either Israel has to expel Palestinians physically from the nation-state to be both Jewish and democratic, or it has to establish the collective inferiority of Palestinian-Arabs in the nation-state to commit to Jewish supremacy at the expense of its democratic ideal, turning into a de facto apartheid regime or ethnocracy. This is not even considered the political status of the Palestinians living in the OPT under Israelâs military control. The legislative initiative of the basic law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People (××֚ק ×Öˇ×Ö°Öź××Öš×â) in 2018, as Yadgar (2020) argues, is one such attempt to negatively construct the Jewish-Zionist nationhood by refuting the Palestinian claims to nationhood, and to buttress the preference of Jews over non-Jews within Israel proper (p. 83). This inherent antimony between Jewishness and Arabness within the Zionist national-racial logic (p. 2), thus, creates an irreconcilability between the Jewish nationhood and the Palestinian nationhood, prompting Israel to rather maintain the facade of status quo â a dual democratic-military regime â while allowing Judaisation and de-Arabization through settlements and immigrations to slowly changing the demographic and territorial realities on the ground in the OPT.
While it is hard for Israel to exclude or expel Palestinians already living within Israel proper because of the commitment it professes to âensure the complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race and sexâ (Israelâs Declaration of Independence, 1948), what the myth of Eretz Israel offers regarding the binational reality on the ground in the OPT is the Judasiation and de-Arabization of historical Palestine through settlements and immigration, thereby inhibiting the emergence of a Palestinian state with sovereign attributes. As later explained, the territorial and demographic fragmentation of the OPT (Roy 2014, p. 74) as well as the blurring of the national border between Israel proper and the occupied territories (Grinberg 2009, p. 51) allow Israel to incorporate the territory and labour force from the OPT. This makes Palestiniansâ social, economic and political life dependent on the state of Israel while excluding the Palestinians under the military occupation regime from being part of Israel proper (Faraskh 2005 p. 27). As Yiftachel argues, the Judaisation of the land through the expansion of settlements and immigration and the expropriation and displacement of the Palestinians is already underway ever since the establishment of the state of Israel in an attempt to facilitate the demographic change and ethnic-territorial control (qt from Amar-Dahl p. 57). It is this state practice â âthe Judaisation of the land of the forefathersâ â that binds religion, territory and ethnicity together (Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 8) and serves as âa common denominator for the extremely heterogeneous exile communities that were mostly alien to or alienated from each otherâ (Zuckerman 2002 p. 68). Under the myth of Eretz Israel, the relationship between land, identity and the state has completely flipped around. Land no longer, as the security myth argues, a means to preserve the physical survival and self-conception of the nation-state for the Israeli Jewish majority, i.e. the Jewish sovereignty. On the contrary, Land becomes the end of itself Eretz Israel is part and parcel of the national identity of Israel. As Ram (2009) argues, Jewishness in Israel has transmuted into a nationalist territorial cult (p. 69).
Although one can argue that the myth of Eretz Israel has its Halakhic origin â the commandment to inherit and settle Eretz Israel â as what it is called aliyah in Judaism, an âascentâ to the Promised land, a one-way pilgrimage without return (Diner 2002 p. 52), both secular and religious Zionist political leaders have supported immigration through the law of return and settlement policies in the OPT (Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 8). In the cultural sphere, the Israeli poet and playwright Nathan Alterman sees that the annexation of East Jerusalem and the occupation of WB and Gaza after 1967 has eliminated the temporary distinction between the state and land of Israel, between the biblical territory and the modern secular state (qtd. from Brenner 2018, p. 195). Not to mention, across the political spectrum, political leaders from the Zionist left like Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres still pursue settlement policies and keep existing settlements intact despite the Oslo peace process for security reasons (Grinburg 2009 p. 131; Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 175). But it is largely the national-religious Jews and haredi Jews who embrace the settlement movement. They view themselves as the new spearhead of Zionism to hasten the immediate redemption and to fulfil the messianic goals to inherit and settle Eretz Israel. The obligation, of these religious groups, is to keep the promised land and not to return to strangers, with the hope that eventually, Palestinians will evacuate as Jewish settlements expand (Brenner 2018 p. 192; Ram 2009 p. 70). More importantly, contrary to the TSS paradigm, Orthodox Jews of all creeds have a strong consensus that the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) has to be annexed, East Jerusalem should not be conceited, Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel, and Arabs from Israel should be expelled or transferred (Brenner 2018 p. 278). Given the high natural birth rate of the Haredim, which is three times more than the average growth rate of Israeli society, by 2039 they are projected to constitute close to 20 per cent of Israelâs total population. At the same time, Haredi cities are also the fastest-growing settlements in the West Bank (Lintl 2020 p. 32). This makes the Israeli Jewish society more religious and more hardline in terms of land concession (Brenner 2018 p. 273). Studies show that young Israeli Jews are increasingly right-wing than the previous generations, and they would rather preserve the Jewish rather than the democratic character of Israel (OâMalley 2017 p. 7). As more recruits of IDF combat units are from the settler communities, which is eighty per cent higher than the rest of the country, the Israel government which wishes to evacuate settlements in the future as concessions to realize the TSS may face resistance from the soldiers themselves on the ground. Will these more religious soldiers, many of whom originated from West Bank settlements, be loyal and enforce the state order to evacuate settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem? What would they do if some of the prominent Rabbis again called on them to disobey the state order that contradicts the laws of God, as they proclaimed, during IDFâs operation to evacuate settlements in Gaza in 2005? (OâMalley 2017 p. 7; Don-Yehiya 2014 p. 253)
(4.2) Judaisation and de-Arabisation in the OPT as means to anchor Israel's exclusive, yet inconsistent identity narratives in the physical space
The second argument of this essay is on how Israel anchors its inconsistent autobiographical narratives to the land of Israel to cope with the collective anxieties through routine state practice. Relying upon Edjusâs idea of projection, I argue that the attempts of Judaisation and de-Arabisation in the OPT are regular Israelâs state practices to extrapolate its identity narrative into historical Palestine to align the demographic and territorial realities on the ground with the Zionist vision, thus create more obstacles for a TSS to realize. The blueprints or frameworks that such attempts of Judaisation and de-Arabisation in the OPT can be traced back to the Allon Plan (1967) and the Drobless Plan (1978). As Farsakh (2005) argues, both plans provide the territorial framework to establish Israelâs control over Palestinians' land, labour and demography in OPT, maximizing the de facto Jewish presence in occupied territories captured in 1967, integrating these territories into its 1948 borders, while minimizing the Arab population intake, with a particular focus on the West Bank (p. 43, 48).
The Allon Plan (1967) can be seen as a settlement program framework that reflects the logic of the myth of security and a more pragmatic compromise over the myth of Eretz Israel. This has become the reference point of various âland for peaceâ proposals regarding the status of the occupied West Bank. One can even argue that the Oslo peace process is not so much a proposal of âland for peaceâ, but instead recycles the idea of âland for securityâ rooted in the Allon Plan formulated by the Zionist left leader Yigal Allon (Young, January 08, 2024). Although the Allon Plan has never been officially adopted, it introduces a few directions and ideas dictating how the Israeli government handle territorial and sovereign claims in the OPT (Farsakh 2005, p. 44). It first introduces the idea of âsecurity bordersâ, which is subjected to Israeli unilateral definition and serves as a justification for land confiscation (Farsakh 2005 p. 44; Roy 2012, p. 73). This means, Israel must retain direct control over parts of the OPT using a continuous chain of settlements parallel to the Jordan River, which conferred a clear strategic advantage over security and water resources, adding strategic depth to its 1948 border (Efrat 2006, p. 36; Young, January 08, 2024). This framework also establishes the principle of Jewish settlement construction, which seeks to maximize the Jewish presence using financial incentives in parts of the West Bank where there are fewer Arab populations, thereby minimizing the addition of Israelâs Arab minority on the annexed lands (Young, January 08, 2024; Efrat 2006, p. 38). This territorial framework advocates for the separation of East Jerusalem from the West Bank to appeal to the religious sentiment after the capturing of Kotel (the Western Wall of Jerusalem), the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron after the 1967 war. Although the Allon Plan leaves room for unannexed OPTs, which are densely populated by the Palestinian Arabs, for some form of self-government or autonomy, by no means does it advocate for an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty. As Israeli military and Political leaders like Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon believe, it is only through Israelâs control of land that would force the Palestinian Arabs into accepting their existence, thereby achieving peace (qt. from Farsakh 2005 p. 43). As the Israeli military leaders and politicians learnt from their retreat from Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, giving up control over land and the Palestinians will be perceived as a weakness and a win of Palestinian armed resistance.
The Drobless Plans (1978), or âMaster Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria, 1979-1983â takes the idea of the Allon Plan one step forward, for its adherence to the myth of Eretz Israel by entrenching settlements and Jewish dominance over lands in West Bank. It embraces the messianic goal of religious settler movements like Gush Emunium, which seeks to establish Israelâs de facto sovereign claim over the West Bank, and potentially the Gaza Strip, by expanding and enlarging settlements within and around Palestinian population centres (Arieli 2017 p. 11; OâMalley 2017 p. 170). One peculiarity of the Drobless plan is its deliberate intention to fragment the OPT and isolate densely Palestinian-populated enclaves so as to overcome the demographic reality on the ground and obstruct the congruity of Palestinian territories, thereby obstructing the emergence of a Palestinian state (Farsakh 2005 p. 48; Roy 2012 p. 73). Another peculiarity of the plan is its attempt to erode the 1967 borders, by making territorial retreat a politically divisive, if not impossible task, through normalizing and institutionalizing land expropriations (Roy 2012 p. 73). The Sharon Plan (1981), one such modification of the Drobless plans, offers urban settlements the status of an Israeli city and provides extra funding, and they were built on expropriated Palestinian lands (Issac p. 135). Natayahuâs âsuper zone planâ in the 2000s also follows the same rationale to increase the numbers and connectivity of settlements and Jewish presence in the West Bank (Arieli 2017 p. 67). Trumpâs Middle East Plan in 2020 also follows the same logic as denying Palestinian sovereignty over the OPT by promising Israel not to have their settlements evacuated, thereby obstructing the congruity of the Palestinian territories. As Drobles put it bluntly, Jewish settlements are a means to cut off the land between the Arab population centres and their surroundings, so that âit will be hard for the minority population to create territorial contiguity and political unityâ (qtd from Shaul 2020 February 11).
As mentioned, It is a myth itself rather than the reality that the â(giving up) land for peaceâ formula enshrined in the Oslo peace process and later the Clinton parameters can lead to a TSS. In essence, it is no different from the idea of â(control over) land for securityâ as formulated in the Allon Plan and the rationale to obstruct the congruity of Palestinian lands and political entities in the Drobless plans. Arieli (2017) argues successive settlement expansion has failed to secure Jewish dominance in the West Bank, as in 2016, the Palestinian population density was still eight times higher than that of the Jewish in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) (p. 67-68). Nevertheless, Israeli political leaders across the political spectrum have never intended to curb settlement expansion and evacuate settlements systematically to address the fragmentation of Palestinian territories. The most iconic âland for peaceâ political leader, Yitzhak Rabin, sees settlements as bargaining chips for the final status negotiation over the border issue, such that a final border agreement that to reached, allowing Israel to annex the lands beyond the Green Line that are occupied by settlements (Grinberg 2009 p. 98). In this sense, Rabin is more of a realist than an idealist on the Palestinian issue, especially on the issue of settlements (OâMalley 2017 p. 143; Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 167). He knows that there was no military solution to the intifada from the security perspective (Grinberg 2009 p. 71), but he never embraces the principle of an independent and viable Palestinian state (Lustick 2019 p. 90). As Lustick (2019) argues, at best Rabinâs words and policies were consistently directed towards a subservient Palestinian protectorate, with Arafat functioning as a bribable dictator and ruthless enforcer (p. 90) â an administrative arrangement perpetuates to these days by treating the weak PA and Hamas as the auxiliary administrative body of the OPTs under the Netanyahu government. Oslo did not halt the construction of settlements that were already underway, as he promised in 1992, to gain the trust of the more pragmatic settler leadership of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (OâMalley 2017 p. 249; Grinberg 2009, p. 132). Rabin also allows the construction of bypass roads for settlers to reconcile themselves to the Oslo peace process, which has resulted in a road system that not only separates Jews and the Palestinians in their daily interaction but also fragment the territories in the OPTs into enclaves that with no territorial congruity, restricted movement of people, goods and services (Grinberg 2009, p. 132). Palestinian properties and lands are confiscated and cut off by the construction of bypass road networks, which are further expanded and developed under Natayahuâs âSuper Zone Planâ in the 2000s (Arieli 2017 p. 36, 59).
The Successor of Yizak Rabin from the âpeace campâ, Shimon Peres, also seeks to blur the border. He overturned Rabinâs proposal to build a separation fence for both security and economic concerns of Israel proper in 1994, for fear that such a separation fence may send the wrong signals that the Green Line was the legitimate border of the sovereign state of Israel, thereby going against Israeli dominance over the OPTs (Grinberg 2009 p. 137; Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 182). Peres also followed Rabinâs footsteps, appeasing the Jewish settlers to consent to Oslo II in return for the expansion of settlements and upgrades of bypass road networks in 1995 (Amar-Dahl 2016 p. 181). Ehud Barak, the last Labour leader who can form a coalition government and promises to return to Rabinâs path in front of his grave (Grinberg 2009 p. 209), also disregards the congruity and territorial size of a potential Palestinian state. Like Rabin and Peres, he believes Israel should not retreat to the 1967 borders and insists on keeping the settlement blocs, viewing them as âstrategic assetsâ for military control over the Palestinians (Grinberg 2009 p. 217-218). Barak tries to hold on to Israelâs military control over the border between the West Bank and Jordan by proposing control over air space, early warning stations and their associated bypassed roads (Golan 2021 p. 6). Despite a halt over settlement building settlement activities except for those located in designated âclusters of settlementsâ under his tenure, Barak has no political will to initiate massive evacuation and intends to keep 80% of the settlers in place (Golan 2021 p. 6; Billig 2015 p. 334). The âoutpost agreementâ with the Yesha Council of Settlements allows the vast majority of outposts to remain, thereby allowing many remaining settlements to enlarge in size within their municipal boundaries (Billig 2015 p. 334-335). Surprisingly, between 1993 to 2001, it is during the tenure under Barak that the number of housing units in the OPTs (except East Jerusalem) has the most significant increase (Tenenbaum and Eiran 2005 p. 174). The attitude and policies by successive Labour left coalitions, or the âpeace campâ, towards Settlements, borders and Palestinian territorial congruity only show that despite their willingness to compromise over the myth of Eretz Israel â the land of Israel for the Jewish people â to preserve the democratic and Jewish character of the state of Israel, the prerequisite of any political resolution with the Palestinians to enable a TSS is Israelâs military control over Palestinian lands and people. Settlement blocs, for the peace camp, also serve as tools to continue to blur the borders with the OPTs and, when possible, create the territorial and demographic reality as such that maximizes the size of annexed territories while minimizing the Palestinian intakes as much as possible. The biggest obstacle to realising a TSS is Israel's routine attachment to the control and dominance over the OPTs driven by the myth of security and the myth of Eretz Israel. It is hard to conceive whether a demilitarized political entity, formed by fragmented population enclaves, whose economy and political functioning depend on its equally hostile but stronger neighbour, can still be categorized as a functional nation-state of the Palestinian people.
(5) Conclusion
This essay addressed the puzzle: Why is there no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I argue that the TSS paradigm threatens Israelâs ontological security by exposing the inconsistency of its autobiographical self-narrative â a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel â that binds the Israeli Jewish nation together. As a result, to cope with such ontological insecurity, Israelâs self-identity narrative is increasingly anchored to the Jewish control and exclusive sovereign claim over Eretz Israel and actively tries to change the territorial and demographic realities on the ground in the OPTs to align with the Zionist visions, thereby obstructing the possibilities of a Palestinian state with full sovereign attribute and territorial congruity from emerging. I utilized Edjusâs concepts of projection and introjection to illustrate how, on the one hand, Israel routinely resorts to the myth of security and the myth of Eretz Israel to resolve the inconsistency of its autobiographical self-narrative, but to no avail, when it faces the binational reality on the ground. On the other hand, Israel politicians across the political spectrum actively pursue policies that perpetuate Israelâs military control and increase Jewish presence in the OPT according to the two myths, in the hope that, in the long run, the Jewish dominance on the ground and territorial fragmentation can frustrate Palestiniansâ national aspiration. By doing so, these policies normalize and institutionalize the current dual democratic-military regime to blur and erode the national borders, allowing Israel to slowly but steadily maximize territorial gain in the OPTs while minimizing the absorption of the Palestinian Arab population into the state of Israel.
Re-examining the inconsistency and contradictory natures of Israelâs self-identification as a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel allows us to have a clear understanding of the motivation and what is at stake behind Israelâs stance towards reaching a political resolution and compromise with the Palestinians in such an entrenched ethnonational conflict. It also clears some popular myths over some false binaries when it comes to the meaning of Israeli statehood and Jewish sovereignty. First, a secular-religious divide over land concessions and political resolution is not a useful lens to explain why the âland for peaceâ formula fails repeatedly, because, in essence, the âland for peaceâ formula is just âland for securityâ in disguise. Rather than simply shifting blame to the ultra-orthodox or religious Zionists for the demise of a TSS and Natayahuâs electoral success, one should acknowledge the shared aspiration over security and lands across political spectrums. One should not overstate Israelâs willingness to recognise Palestinian national rights and the establishment of a Palestinian state before specifying all the political compromises Israel is going to make. Second, it is often a myth than reality that political Zionism is a pure secular nationalist movement as its advocates and founders claimed. The aspiration for land expansion in historical Palestine has its origin in Judaism, and it is a matter of pragmatism and practicality that early Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion did not secure approval from his cabinet for the conquest of the West Bank (East Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Jericho) in 1948 (Navon 2020, p. 136). It is also Ben-Gurionâs decision to deliberately keep its legal border ambiguous, opening rooms for further expansion of Israelâs territories, at a time when Israelâs de facto borders have already extended beyond the one that is recommended by the UN partition plan (p. 138). It is worth researching in the future on the genealogy of Zionistsâ aspiration of territorial expansion and how it contributes to the meaning of Jewishness, and Jewish sovereignty beyond the binary of secular/religious Zionism.
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