Steve Harris
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  • Condemned to Repeat It

Three-State Solution

5/28/2021

1 Comment

 
The latest round of violence in Israel and Gaza has revived debate about the feasibility of peace processes in the Middle East; that perennial epitome of futility. Jesus’ admonition has not prevented the casting of stones (much less rockets and smart bombs); despite the robust accumulation of sin on all sides.

Among the many distinctive attributes of this dispute is its reliance on history as a justification for claims of territory as well as of self-righteousness; much of which is nonsense. Not factually nonsense, of course. Jews have been in the neighborhood for thousands of years, although not particularly so in the five hundred years leading up to the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 (and they haven’t been a majority since the 4C). As late as the start of WWI, they comprised just over 5% of the region’s population. Muslims arrived in the 7C and dominated the population since the 12C.

The larger question is what this might mean. What do the actions of my ancestors some generations back entitle me to? They moved (under a variety of circumstances and degrees of choice). Have Jews (or Hispanics, for that matter) established a right of permanent interest in various neighborhoods of Manhattan just because their ancestors lived there thirty or 130 years ago? Most Anglo-American legal systems have a concept called “adverse possession,” under which, if someone lives on “your” land for 30 or so years, they extinguish your claim. But law is one thing, and culture is another.

Historical resonance certainly was essential to the Zionist movement of the late 19/early 20C. European Jews, continually excluded/discriminated against felt that they, too, were entitled to their piece of the nationalist pie that led to the creation of Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, etc. What better place to send them than where they had “come from” (even if it had been a while)? Thus, the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which the British (by then having taken over the region from the Ottomans) accelerated a process of recognition, if not of right. European guilt over the Holocaust locked things in and a branch of Europe was set up to spread liberal democracy amid the benighted heathens.

Jewish claims are, therefore, a bit patchy, to put it kindly. On the other hand, the so-called “Palestinians” have comparably-sized holes in their own historical claims, even if based on a stronger record of continuous residence. The biggest one is that there is no “Palestine,” at least not in any meaningful sense until the local Muslims fled/were pushed out in the middle of the 20C when Israel was created. The Ottomans controlled the areas, using various configurations of administrative districts from their conquest in the 16C, until their empire collapsed in WWI. Claims of the locals to any sort of ethnic coherence (the usual starting point for any “national” status) below the level of “Arab” seem pretty much post-hoc, especially since many nearby folks happily became “Jordanian,” “Egyptian,” or “Lebanese” as borders shuffled around.

So, who are “Palestinians”? The ~700k people who were ousted/fled the territory occupied by Israel in 1947-8? Some went east (to the “West Bank”) others to the south-west (to “Gaza”). How about their 4.5M descendants today (only about 75K actual refugees are still alive)? Do they have anything in common otherwise (other than being abused by Israel and their own Arab confreres)?

To say that there is no “Palestinian” nation is, however, not to say anything about the fact that these people have been oppressed and abused. And that they are as entitled to peace, justice, security, and opportunity as anyone else. Israel has thrown away much of its moral stature in its treatment of Arabs both within in boundaries and those in the West Bank and Gaza. The record of Arab countries is (only marginally) better. People without power have been cruelly used by established elites on both sides. It’s no wonder that their anger boils over. It’s no wonder that they seek the status and apparent security of their own state.

The resort to history on all sides is a result of their status and behavior in the current environment and recent (since WWII) past. But it is, as we have seen, no panacea; it’s just a distraction.

We live in a world of nation-states and, despite the historical dubiousness of the concept or its lack of utility in the future, such statehood seems a necessary attribute of societal organization/growth in the early 21C. Israeli Jews have a (not unreasonable) fear that they would be ‘drowned in a sea of Arabs’ if all the refugee/descendants were combined into a larger Israel (the “one-state” solution). Israel, itself isn’t going away. As Secretary of State Kerry said a few years ago to Israel: “You can have a democratic state, or you can have a Jewish state; you can’t have both.” Thus, more-or-less officially on all sides since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the hopes for peace have rested on a “two-state” (Israel + Palestine) solution.

It won’t fly. I doubt it would have worked even before the Fatah/Hamas split of the past 30 years has embedded an animosity in some ways deeper than that between Arabs and Jews. Once Hamas took over the government of Gaza in 2007 and Fatah continued to govern in the West Bank, the chances of reconciliation have dimmed. Nor is there any particular reason (other than this dubious claim of commonality), why there should be one “Palestinian” state. All their connections would find Israel in the middle; Arab-oriented cultural and economic ties would push them outward, towards Jordan and Egypt, respectively. It is reminiscent of the creation of Pakistan in 1947, two Muslim-dominated regions on the flanks of India. That fell apart in a messy war in 1971.

So, why not a three-state solution? Assuming both groups of Arabs could agree on who got to use the term “Palestine,” it might work. Hamas and Fatah could go their own separate ways (no different than Jordan and Syria). People could look to the future and build some peace and prosperity. All that would be lost is the chance to argue over history (best left to academic conferences) and the myth of a coherent “Palestine” which has fed so much hate, anger, and pain for the past 75 years.
1 Comment
Trevor
5/28/2021 09:17:35 am

Lowenthal points out that heritage projects need to claim originalism. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole of using history to justify claims to territory , this list of questions was sent to me by a colleague:

1- Was the original conquest/take-over of Jerusalem and surrounding Palestine by the Arab Muslim armies in 636-7 clearly, unquestionably a ‘just war’ so that the conquest resulted in rightful claim to possession and rule of the land? Or was it a form of (pre-modern) imperialism subsequently resulting in a form of (pre-modern) settler colonialism?
2a- Define clearly what is meant by ‘Arab’. Who qualifies to be considered an ‘Arab’? And particularly an ‘Arab Palestinian’? Is this an ethnic (i.e., kinship/genealogical/tribal-based) identity, a linguistic-based identity (i.e., Arabic speaker), a religious-based identity (i.e., a ‘Muslim’) and/or an identity based in historical residence in the land and, if so, how many years of residence establishes that identity?
2b- Historically when and how do ‘Arabs’, according to a clearly defined notion of that construct, become a majority of the population of Palestine? And does ‘majority’ even matter? Or can a ‘minority’ population lay claim to rights of the land? On what basis? And if so, what implications does that position have for other ‘minorities’ historically residing in the land?
3a- Did the conquests of the land by the Seljuk Turks (1071-73), the Fatimids (1098), the Ayyubid Kurds (1187), the Mamluk Turks (1250) and Ottoman Turks in 1516-17 result (in the same manner as the original Arab Muslim conquest) in rightful claim to possession and rule of the land? If so, then why should the Arabs retain rightful claim to the land as well? Did the land not transfer to rightful possession and rule to these non-Arab peoples via these developments? Or no, did the Arabs somehow retain right to rule over the land, whether by autonomy or sovereign independence?
3b- What role do the Crusader conquests play, particularly that of Jerusalem and Tyre (1099)? Were they legitimate conquests resulting in Crusader rights to rule of the land? Or should we argue that the Crusades were illegitimate, so that the subsequent transition(s) in power which caused the Arabs to lose control to the Ayyubid Kurdish, Mamluk Turkish and Ottoman Turkish powers were also illegitimate, making at least these territorial portions of their empires illegitimate?
4a- Did the conquest of Palestine by Mohammed Ali (1831-1840) result -- in the same way as the previous conquests (see above) -- in rightful claim to possession and rule of the land by Arabs? If so, should this be viewed as a restoration of their former claims dating back to 1187 (or another period), or a brand new claim, with no connections to their past history? If it did not result in the right to rule, why not?
4b- Did the subsequent regaining of Palestine by the Ottomans in 1840 via the intervention of European powers, particularly Britain, result in legitimate restoration of Ottoman Turkish rights to rule over Palestine and, thus, loss again of Arab rights? What are the implications of Ottoman Turkish rule being restored via European, particularly British, power? Did this serve to de-legitimize Ottoman claims? Why or why not?
5a- Did the conquest of Palestine by the Western imperial powers in WWI result -- in the same way as the previous conquests (see above) -- in rightful claim to possession and rule of the land by the British? If not, why not? Was it not a ‘just war’? Did not the Ottoman’s freely choose to enter the war on the side of Germany over against the British, French, Russian and (eventually) American forces and thus loose the war, and with it also lose possession and rule of the land, ‘fair and square’? Or no, was it illegitimate Western imperialism subsequently resulting in illegitimate settler colonialism by the Jews?
5b- Why should Western imperial promises to certain select groups of non-Palestinian Arabs (i.e., the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, 1915) be the basis for Arab Palestinian claims to rights of independent, sovereign political rule of the land? If Arab Palestinian claims to the political rule of the land are based in Western imperial authority, is this not a tacit/implicit acknowledgement of Western rights to the land (i.e., Western rights to decide the fate of the land)? If Arab Palestinian claims to politically rule over the land are not based in Western imperial authority, then what are they based in historically? Did they not lose the rights to political rule over the land in 1099, 1187, 1250, 1517 or, at latest, 1840?
6a- On what grounds, if any, do we distinguish all the various conquests and resulting rights to rule over the land by the various Muslim powers versus those of the Western powers and/or their allies (Crusaders, British, Jewish/Israeli, etc

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    Condemned to Repeat It --
    Musings on history, society, and the world.

    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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