One State, Two States: Reviewed

In 2009, Israeli historian Benny Morris published a book called One State, Two States on the history of proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attitudes toward them on both sides, and possibilities for the future.

He paints both solutions as undesirable: the two state because the borders are unnatural and difficult to draw, the water and other resources in the West Bank are used for Israel proper, and based on past experience (the Barak and Clinton proposals of 2000), the Palestinians are not going to be satisfied with even the most generous offer. The one state because, in his summary at the end, it could either be (case 1) a Jewish state with an Arab minority or (case 2) an Arab state with a Jewish minority. In case 1, the Arabs would not be satisfied and there would be perpetual violence. In case 2, he says there is plenty of precedent for Jews living as a minority in Muslim countries, but they were persecuted and killed (he cites examples of this from medieval Spain, as well as the Farhud massacre in Baghdad in 1941).

In the end, the only idea Morris feels is worth pursuing is uniting the West Bank and Jordan as a Palestinian state, with some arrangement between the Palestinians and the Hashemite kingdom to share power, and relying on Jordan’s ability to rein in the extremist elements among the Palestinians who may try to attack Israel over the border.

But for our purposes here, let’s focus on the one state with an Arab majority and Jewish minority, since that is the option that satisfies Jewish law. Morris believes that Arabs would not tolerate the current Jewish population of Israel (7.75 million Jews) as a minority in their state. He bases himself on the Palestinian National Covenant, which excludes all but a tiny number of Jews from the right to live in Palestine.

The Palestinian National Charter as written in 1964 stated that Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinian. It was amended in 1968 to clarify that “only Jews who resided in Palestine before the Zionist invasion are considered Palestinians.” The term “Zionist invasion” could be understood to mean those arriving in Palestine after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, or perhaps the beginning of Zionist settlement in 1881.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Covenant

Yasser Arafat, in his 1974 speech to the UN General Assembly, said, “The Jewish invasion of Palestine began in 1881. Before the first large wave of immigrants started arriving, Palestine had a population of half a million; most of the population was either Muslim or Christian, and only 20,000 were Jewish.” Thus is it likely that those writing the amended charter had in mind 1881 as the cutoff point for Jews to be allowed to stay under a future Palestinian state.  

Morris argues that this charter was never amended again, despite the letters of mutual recognition exchanged between the PLO and Israel in 1993 as part of the Oslo Peace Process, and despite a vote of Palestinian National Congress in 1996 to amend it to reflect the 1993 letters.

Morris further predicts that the Palestinian state with a Jewish minority, whatever size that minority might turn out to be, would not be a democracy but an Islamic theocracy. In Morris’s words:

The Palestinian vision was never, as described by various Palestinian spokesmen of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, to Western journalists, of a secular democratic Palestine. It certainly sounded more palatable than, say, the destruction of Israel, which was the goal it was meant to paper over or camouflage. Indeed, a secular democratic Palestine had never been the goal of Fatah or the so-called moderate groups that dominated the PLO between the 1960s and the 2006 election that brought Hamas to power.

Rashid Khalidi has written that in 1969 the PLO amended its previous goal and henceforth advocated the establishment of a secular democratic state in Palestine for Muslims, Christians, and Jews replacing Israel. And Ali Abunimah has written in his recent book, One Country, “The PLO did ultimately adopt in the late 1960s or 1970s, the goal of a secular democratic state in all of Palestine as its official stance.”

This is hogwash. The Palestine National Council never amended the Palestine National Charter to the effect that the goal of the PLO was a secular democratic state in Palestine. The words and notion never figured in the charter or in any PNC or PLO Central Committee or Fatah Executive Committee resolutions at any time. It is a spin invented for gullible Westerners and was never part of the Palestinian mainstream ideology. The Palestinian leadership has never at any time endorsed a secular democratic Palestine.

The PNC did amend the charter in 1968 (not 1969). But the thrust of the emendation was to limit non-Arab citizenship in a future Arab liberated Palestine to “Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion,” that is, 1917. True, the amended charter also guaranteed in the future state of Palestine “freedom of worship and of visit to holy sites to all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion.” And no doubt this was music to liberal Western ears. But it had no connection to the reality or history of contemporary Muslim Arab societies. It was, like all hypocrisy, a tribute that vice pays to virtue. What Muslim Arab society in the modern age has treated Christians, Jews, pagans, Buddhists, and Hindus with tolerance and as equals? Why should anyone believe that Palestinian Muslim Arabs would behave any differently? (pp. 167-169)

Furthermore, Morris argues that Hamas does not recognize the PLO charter, and instead wrote their own charter in 1988 containing explicitly anti-Jewish language.

The covenant defines the ongoing struggle as directed against “the Jews, they who have received the scriptures,” and defines them in the Quran’s terminology as “smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found because they slew the prophets. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. The prophet has said the Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, killing the Jews. When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!” (p. 158)

Hamas is a more significant organization, he says, because they (not the PLO or PA) were elected to power by Palestinians in 2006.  

Is Morris right?

There are in fact official statements by Palestinian leaders that they would accept more than just the pre-Zionist Jews as citizens, provided that they are peaceful and allow the Arabs to recover their property.  

Arafat in his 1974 speech to the UN said:

In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian revolution I proclaim before you that when we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination.

https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/9639/speech-yasir-arafat-unga

True, the charter was never amended after Oslo, but this refers specifically to the goals of Oslo – two states for two peoples, with mutual recognition. Perhaps with the eventual failure of Oslo, culminating with the 2000 Barak-Clinton proposals which were the most Israel was ever willing to offer, the PLO felt that the two-state solution might not be the way to go, and so they decided not to commit themselves to recognizing Israel in any particular borders.

Hamas amended its charter in 2017 (after Morris’s book was published), removing the objectionable anti-Jewish language and writing instead,

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project, not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish, but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas

It’s true that even in 2017, Hamas stated that it would never recognize Israel in any borders. They define Palestine as the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, and from Ras Al-Naqoura (Rosh Hanikra) to Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat). Part of Hamas’s extremism is that they are religious, and therefore must word things delicately. (Benny Morris, as a secular scholar, may not understand this fully.) Religious fundamentalists are sometimes constrained by their beliefs from recognizing or endorsing something openly, even while pragmatically you do. For example, Orthodox Jewish politicians in Israel, those who have decided to compromise on certain principles and participate in the Israeli government, often confront similar issues. They don’t want to put their stamp of approval on the state, but they see their participation as the way to get the most out of the situation. Hamas has stated that they would recognize a two-state solution if that were the will of a majority of Palestinians. In any case, that is beside the point, because we are discussing the one-state solution here, and the question of whether all Israeli Jews would be allowed to stay.

(By the way, it’s very interesting that the borders of Palestine, as defined by Hamas, just happen to be the exact borders of the State of Israel. Why would that be? Just as the borders of the modern State of Israel don’t necessarily correspond to Eretz Yisroel, the Holy Land as defined by the Torah and our Sages, and in fact the real Eretz Yisroel extends further north into what is today Lebanon, while it does not include the southern tip of Israel at Eilat, so too there is no reason to think that the sacred texts of Islam, written centuries ago, would define Palestine as an Islamic land along the exact borders of the modern state of Israel. Maybe the top 10 miles of Israel is really not Palestine, or maybe Palestine should have a claim on another 10 miles northward in the land now called Lebanon… Also, it’s interesting that until 1967, the PLO stated that it had no claims on the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, which then included the West Bank. Only after the Israelis conquered it did Arafat say that Palestine is “from the river to the sea.”

A Zionist would say this proves that there is no such thing as Palestine, and the whole thing is just anti-Semitism in disguise. I have a different take: Hashem created the Palestinian movement in response to the creation of an illegitimate Jewish state before moshiach. How else does one make sense out of the fact that these people give their lives and never give up hope of getting back “their country” which happens to occupy the exact space of the Zionist state?)   

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, said:

We just have a stolen homeland. I have a house and a land in Ashkelon. Others in Jaffa, others in Gaza, etc. Our land was unjustly taken from us. We demand our rights, nothing more than rights. We don’t hate Jews or fight them because they’re Jews. Jews are people of faith, just like us. We value all people of faith. My brother and I born to the same parents as me and practicing my faith, were he to take my home and force me out, I’d stand against him. I’d fight my brother. I’d fight my cousin if he takes my house and land and forces me out. So if a Jew claims my house and land and forces me out, I’d be willing to fight him. I wouldn’t fight America or Britain or any other country. I’d rather have peace with everybody. I love all people and want the best for everyone. Just like I want the best for Jews. We and Jews have always coexisted. We never attacked them. We never persecuted them. Eastern Jews achieved prominent positions in government and amassed wealth. Who persecuted them? But when they steal my land and house and homeland and turn me into a refugee… We have 4 million Palestinian refugees living in exile. Who is more entitled to his homeland? Those coming from Russia after 2,000 years of exile or those exiled just 40 years ago? We don’t hate Jews.

Ali Abunimah writes:

It is widely acknowledged that much of the Hamas vote was a protest against the endemic corruption and defeatism of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which had neither provided good government nor made any progress in liberating Palestinians from Israeli occupation. Voting for Hamas, which pointedly excluded its objectionable charter language from its election platform, was a way to defy what Palestinians saw as a corrupt peace process, whereby foreign aid was traded for political concessions while Israel continued to expand its settlements. It did not signal a change in underlying Palestinian attitudes, which remained remarkably open to peaceful coexistence with Israelis. Within days of the election, a survey by the Ramallah-based Near East Consulting Institute found that 84% of Palestinians in the occupied territories still wanted a negotiated peace, and three-quarters thought Hamas should change its policy on the elimination of Israel. Even among Hamas supporters, 77% said they wanted a negotiated settlement.

After the election, Hamas leaders stated their readiness to end the armed struggle if Israel withdrew to the 1967 lines. Khaled Mashal, the senior leader based in Damascus, wrote in The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times: Our message to the Israelis is this: We do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony. They are in our religion the people of the book, who have a covenant from G-d and his messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him, to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political.”

In what was a major step in terms of Hamas’s historic position, Mashal told the BBC that his organization would talk to Israel and come to terms if it recognizes the rights of the Palestinians and acts to show and confirm its willingness to withdraw to the 1967 borders.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Musa Abu Marzook, another member of Hamas leadership, addressed Israelis directly: We ask them to reflect on the peace that our peoples once enjoyed and the protection that Muslims gave the Jewish community worldwide. We will exert good faith efforts to remove the bitterness that Israel’s occupation has succeeded in creating, alienating a generation of Palestinians. We call on them not to condemn posterity to endless bloodshed and a conflict in which dominance is illusory. There must come a day when we will live together side by side once again. (One Country, by Ali Abunimah, pp. 164-166)

A few final points about Benny Morris’s book.

Point 1: One possibility he doesn’t explore is a non-Jewish majority state with a minority of Arabs and a minority of Jews. If my impression is correct that Palestinians, more than wanting their own state, are chiefly upset about the Jews having a state, this might actually satisfy them. Of course, they would demand an assurance that the new government would make some arrangement to right the wrongs of 1948 when many of them lost their homes and land. And Jews would want an assurance that the new government would be fair to them as well.

Point 2: Even Morris, with all his pessimism about the workability of the one-state solution with an Arab majority, does not say what many of today’s frum Jews say, which is that such a state would mean an immediate Arab massacre of the Jews. In his words:

The achievement of a Jew-less land of Israel through murder or expulsion or a combination of the two by the Arabs would in all likelihood be stymied by the international community or at least the United States, which might well intervene militarily. Given Arab actions and inaction regarding recent events in Darfur or during earlier decades regarding similar events in Southern Sudan, Yemen and Syria among other places, it is doubtful whether Palestinian Arab society or Arab societies around Palestine would have inhibitions about destroying Israel’s Jews or at least standing aside and allowing others to carry out such destruction. But Western intervention or fear of Western intervention would most likely inhibit such mass murder. So the destruction or expulsion of the country’s millions of Jews is at present inconceivable. (p. 190)

Indeed, should such a unitary state ever emerge, its Jews or as many of them could, would in all likelihood emigrate to the West, leaving behind only the ultra-Orthodox, bound to the land out of a deep religious conviction, and those incapable of finding new homes elsewhere. Most Israeli Jews without doubt would prefer life as a minority in the West, where they would enjoy that world’s openness and freedoms to the stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Arab world and its treatment of minority populations. (p. 193)

I think he is wrong about the ultra-Orthodox, if by that term he means the non-settler Litvishe yeshiva communities and Chassidim. These communities do respect the kedusha of the land, but they are not bound to living there. Their goal is merely to live in large, strong religious communities where they and their children can study in the best yeshivas, under great roshei yeshiva. Chassidim strive to live near their rebbes. All of this can be relocated in other countries, and in fact for many groups, the epicenter already is in other countries. If Morris’s prediction turns out to be correct and Muslims do make life difficult for Jews, or if there is constant internal fighting, Yeshiva and Chassidic communities would be the first to leave. So would Modern Orthodox Jews who made aliyah from Western countries. Danger trumps ideology, even for them. Only the hard-core settlers might remain and stick it out.

In summary, the book is a great source for information, but some of its conclusions must be reexamined.