The one-state solution, post-Oslo

No room for discussion of a one-state solution from either leaderships.

By DAN DIKER
oslo accords 88 (photo credit: )
oslo accords 88
(photo credit: )
Over the past months, Israeli and Palestinian officials have been urging the completion of a final agreement on a "two-state solution" as quickly as possible to avoid a "one-state solution." Israeli officials have spoken of it as a warning, while Palestinian officials have used it as a threat. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz less than a year ago, "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights [also for the Palestinians in the territories], then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished." Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni similarly hinted on August 21, 2008, "We decided that time is against us, that time is against the moderates and that stagnation is not an option for the Israeli government." Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei also told Palestinian lawmakers in Ramallah recently that if Israel opposes Palestinian demands, "then the Palestinian demand for the Palestinian people and its leadership [would be] one state, a binational state." Despite the dire warnings by both sides, the threat of a "one-state solution" has no place in Palestinian Israeli negotiations. Oslo ended the notion of a one-state solution. It is perhaps Oslo's only success, both for Israelis and Palestinians. THE ONE-STATE solution has two historical points of reference, one Israeli and the other Arab. The PLO program to create a secular democratic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is rooted in the 1968 PLO National Charter and was officially adopted following the eighth Palestinian National Council in 1971. It replaced earlier ideological formulations that rejected the creation of the State of Israel and empowered the Arab "right" to reverse that decision that had been unanimously approved by the United Nations in November 1947. The Jewish-Israeli historical reference point for a one-state solution came from the opposite direction, arising in the aftermath of the capture of Gaza from Egypt and Judea and Samaria from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. Labor coalitions led by prime ministers such as Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin advocated territorial compromise west of the Jordan River along the lines of the security plan drawn up by Yigal Allon. Their fear and concomitant warning to Israelis was that territorial compromise - not Palestinian statehood - was a painful but necessary measure to avoid the risk of a binational state in the event military administration of the territories continued indefinitely. Alternatively, if the country annexed Gaza and Judea and Samaria, as the argument went, it would have no choice but to offer citizenship to their Arab residents, threatening the Jewish character of the state. There is some irony in the fact that today, 15 years after the Oslo agreements were signed, talk of the one-state solution has been reinserted into the diplomatic lexicon. One of the founding strategic goals of the Oslo Accords was to end any possibility of a one-state solution by recognizing the Palestinians as a political entity via the PLO with which Israel signed a binding agreement establishing the Palestinian Authority in 1994. That act legally ended the military administration of Gaza and the West Bank and resulted in the division of the disputed West Bank into areas A, B and C. That action also ended the possibility that Israel could annex all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and face the threat of a one-state solution. MANY OF the legal and diplomatic issues deriving from and following Oslo are rooted in the dispute over how much territory each party retains, while formally recognizing that each party has claims to West Bank territory. If - and some say when - Annapolis fails, there are other options available to create a more viable pathway to Palestinian society building and perhaps someday peace. However, under any circumstances today, there is no room for any discussion of a threat of a one-state solution from either the Palestinian or Israeli leaderships. The Fatah leadership of the Palestinian Authority signed on to Oslo and thereby conceded claims to a binational state. And practically, Fatah will almost certainly not dissolve the PA and pursue the one-state option. Billions of dollars from international donors continue to line the pockets of PA leaders and political elites. Business monopolies and multibillion dollar ventures are controlled by Fatah and PA leadership and are too rich to concede. Hamas, for its part, will never accede to a one-state solution as it wants to disconnect completely from Israel. FOR ISRAEL, Oslo achieved the objective of territorial compromise short of statehood as envisioned by Eshkol, Meir and Rabin, and ultimately accepted by Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. At the same time, Oslo still maintains Israel's rights and claims to West Bank land and security requirements for defensible borders that were central to Allon's security plan for the disputed territories. These were endorsed in a presidential letter from US President George W. Bush to Sharon on April 14, 2004. Israel and the PA may move slowly or briskly along the path of peace. However, the principle of bilateral negotiations over the future of Jewish communities and Israeli security presence in the West Bank was agreed to by both sides at Oslo and therefore eliminates any justification for Palestinian threats of a one-state solution. Israeli leaders should also avoid invoking the doomsday scenario of a binational state as a scare tactic to accelerate a peace agreement. Oslo took that off the table. The writer is director of the Institute of Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.