Israel's Three State Solution II

A while back, I proposed that Israel's best chance for security peace would be a three-state solution; separating Hamas' Gaza and Fatah's West Bank in terms of the peace process, so that Qassams from Hamas won't be a deterrent to Fatah's peace process with Israel.

Since then, of course, it has been clear that Netenyahu doesn't particularly care to make peace with Fatah. Still, if some electoral miracle brings someone genuinely interested in peace around, the three-state solution will still be the best way forward. And it doesn't seem so preposterous to me as it once seemed, especially once I saw this in the BBC:

What could be the impact [of the Aid ship events] on the peace talks?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said peace talks with Israel will continue. Proximity talks, mediated by the US, resumed in May after a two-year break.

At least from the perspective of the Palestinians, who I presumed would be the harder sell on the "three-state solution" idea, they're effectively acting separately from Gaza. If Abbas wanted to link their fates to the Gaza Strip, now would be the time to press forward, on their advantage -- maybe meet with Turkey, maybe withhold further talks until aid ships are allowed to progress.

Instead, Abbas is looking after his own people in the West Bank. His own incentive structure is to continue to serve his constituents, which are the people of the West Bank and it appears he's already making decisions with regards to them.

Israel I: Terrorball

I am an Israeli-American, holding dual citizenship in both countries. This has been nothing but grief for me, both in the narrower sense of my life not being made easier when I tell security people that I was born in Jerusalem, and in the larger sense of the stress and anxiety I have for my extended family which remains in Israel. And I am not Muslim -- I am an American Jewish citizen who has lived here since I was three months old. I cannot imagine how incredibly worse it is for Palestinians, who have to turn on the radio and hear bullshit like "All Young Muslims Should Be Strip Searched."

At any rate, one of the evidences of my heritage is that my mother and I now almost daily get into strongly worded debates over Israel and its future. My mother is a pacifist -- actually more of a pacifist than I am, since she favored immediate withdrawal from both Afghanistan and Iraq, and although I was against the war in Iraq, I believed that it was our responsibility to attempt to guarantee some functional stability before we left -- but she doesn't understand how I am against the Israeli incursion into Gaza.

This debate has been going on and on and in the end, the difference in our beliefs, both in Gaza and in Iraq/Afghanistan, boils down to Terrorball.

My mother is not happy about 1300 people killed in Gaza by Israelis. But from her perspective, how can Israel not respond to rockets falling on her country? Even the Israeli Government admits that in the year leading up to the Gaza War, only a handful of people have been been hurt or killed. The issue my mother is skirting, and which the logical problem at the heart of Terrorball rests on, is the issue of proportionality. More specifically, it deals with the One Percent Doctrine. If there's a 1% chance of terrorism, Cheney says, we have to use force. Irregardless of what the bait is, when it comes to terrorism, we have to respond with force.

Anyways, that's one aspect of the dispiriting personal conversations I've had around Israel. Most of it boils down to the fact that Avigdor Lieberman is the face and power-broker of my country.

On Suicide Bombers

Just a short thought: part of the reason youth in Palestine in particular or Iraq might be willing to give up their lives for a cause is because of the scale of death in their own personal lives. After all, if you surround a human being by so much death and destruction, they're going to come up with some sort of rationale that protects them from mental harm. One being that whoever did this is monstrously evil, two being that it's not so important because the virtuous dead find themselves in a better place, and three being the quickest way back to the ones you've lost and assuring your place among the virtuous dead is to attack whoever did this, the monstrously evil.

Yet another reason why this bombing in Gaza is utterly counterproductive.

Arabs Stripped Of Representation

Well, I've been saying that a country founded on religion will always have problems with democracy, with the even-handed treatment of its citizens. Israel has, of course, not been very bad with the treatment of its Arab minority... not a very good relationship, but good enough to avoid major social unrest.

That appears to have changed.

The idea that political parties will be rejected based on the religion/ethnic group it seems to represent is a major, major step backwards in a democracy. As Americans, we have an innate protection of this in the First Amendment ("Freedom of Assembly" and also "Freedom of Worship") and in the Fourteenth Amendment ("equal rights and immunities.")

In related news, one of my grandmothers in Israel has been forwarding me email from pro-government sources (not Haaretz; often IDF websites). I don't read them, because I already know what they say. Today's email, however, came from ArabsForIsrael.com. Do they know that they don't get to represent themselves anymore?

A Cogent Comment On War

One of Andrew Sullivan's many surprisingly astute readers responds to the Gaza War with an interesting philosophical discussion:

The problem with the doctrine of Just War, I would submit, is that it can only be applied in retrospect. In prospect, it is at once too restrictive and overly permissive. It requires an unachievable degree of certainty. But when leaders or their population nevertheless convince themselves that a conflict meets its standards, even though it cannot, it tends to grant them a sense of moral absolution that leads to callous indifference to the loss of human life.

No, the Israeli assault on Gaza cannot be said to be Just. Declaring it to be so is a manifestation of moral cowardice, of an unwillingness to face up to its awful price. It is merely a war: a messy, dirty conflict that injures all who are involved. It will exact a terrible toll on soldiers, militants and civilians, and there is no possible set of justifications which should blind us to that fact.

But that does not necessarily mean it merits moral condemnation. It does not mean that Israel was necessarily wrong to launch it, nor wrong to finish it. Those judgments tend to become clear only with the virtue of hindsight.

Take Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In its first week, many saw that invasion as justified. By the time it ended, it was widely viewed as a catastrophic, destructive, and unnecessary fight. Now, after two years utterly devoid of violence along the northern border, some are more ambivalent. If the conflict resumes where it left off, it will reconfirm its futility. But if Hezbollah and Israel arrive at a modus vivendi, it will be seen as having been the necessary precursor to peace. How are you supposed to know such a thing before you commit to fight, when years after the last shot, the consequences of the conflict remain unclear? Think of it, if you will, as a morality of doubt.

I am equally suspicious of the rectitude of those who unequivocally support this conflict as I am of those who sweepingly condemn it. The future is uncertain. The four conditions of the Catechism each point us in the right direction, and correctly suggest that the burden of proof must always rest with those who would resort to force. But three of the four demand absolute certitude: that the damage be "certain"; that "all means" be shown to be ineffective; and that it "must not" produce greater evils. Anyone who pretends to be able to answer these questions in the affirmative in advance of conflict is either a liar or a fool. No damage is ever certain, all means are never exhausted, and we never know in advance what toll a conflict will exact.

You have eloquently expressed your skepticism that the Israeli assault on Hamas will be seen, in retrospect, to have crossed these thresholds. I continue to believe that, if it meets its objective of clearing the way for a renewed ceasefire that is viable over the long term, it may well prove to have been justified. But I would be the first to admit that I am uncertain. I simply do not know what will happen.

The rhetoric that you and I find most abhorrent is spouted by those who experience no doubt, who see no uncertainty. It is dangerous. It lowers the threshold to initiate conflict, and leads to brutality after its onset. But the answer is not to identify a standard that would endow us with certainty; it is to recognize that certainty is always elusive, and to humble ourselves before that conclusion.

This post has calmed me down in a strange way. The certitude beforehand, the knowledge of right and wrong, is what is objectionable.

My own moral guidance has come from a passage of Albert Camus' The Plague:

The narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to the praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy and the general rule. The narrator does not share this view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.

The IDF fancies it knows everything, and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. Hamas fancies it knows everything, and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.



The reason I bring this up is not so much to comment on Israel-Gaza, but rather to comment on how Bush's legacy may one day be restored by what happens in Iraq.

The way this standard examines responsibility for war (namely: its effects) may be kind to Bush. After all, now that we have this war, everyone is working their asses off to figure out how to salvage it. If, twenty years down the line, a mixture of our policy, international aid, and the hardwork of Iraqis manages to salvage the current levels of insanity, then President Bush will have been judged of having the foresight.

To a certain extent, you can argue that this is true. At the same time, you do need to judge the quality of the choice at the time. But I suppose President Bush is different than this, because even knowing what we knew at the time, we didn't have even a reasonable amount of evidence to go into war. And yet it was put forward with that same damaging certainty that the reader talks about.

It reminds me of why I told my suitemate I don't carry a gun for self-defense: because carrying a gun means you're going to make a choice at some point whether another person lives or dies. And I don't think I'll ever be that certain.

I've talked previously about the standards for war. The Powell Doctrine's strength, I believe, is that it gives an excellent benchmark to remain certain about war. After all, Clinton's interventions in Somalia and in Kosovo had roughly the same rationale--a few important practical elements were different, though, and that proved to be the difference between failure and success.

First Rumsfeld-Bush Award

In a stunning lack of any human dignity, Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard says:

But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions.

Good. Let's start wiping out people's families, shall we?

Congrats, Mr. Goldfarb. You've got a Rumsfeld-Bush Award nomination.

Note: when I quote a writer whose publication I disapprove of, I link to someone who quoted it. I'm not going to increase The Weekly Standard's circulation just for being jackasses.

"Separation Between Church And State"

It's all been said. It's pointless and it'll kill people. It is incredibly disheartening. The only ray of light for me is it has drawn attention to J Street, a "pro-Israel, pro-Peace" lobby group seeking to displace AIPAC as the voice of Israel in America (and, according to a writer at Commentary Magazine, is therefore "anti-Israel"). J Street, which has the backing from the sorts of people as to make it at least seem credible, looks like a glimpse at a future in which there will be hope for the Peace Process.

My personal belief, as an Israeli who loves Israelis (no matter how hard they make it for people to like them), who also loves human beings and think they shouldn't have to die--come to after a long time of personal struggle--is that the Jewish-Muslim conflict in the Middle East (not just Israel-Palestine but Israel-Syria, Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Iran, and the upcoming Israel-Iraq which this current war is starting) will only be abated when the concept of "separation between Church and State" becomes the way--both in Israel, and in all of the Arab countries. Note: Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have secular leadership, and they have peace with Israel. Of course, they don't have peace with their own people b/c they have no democracy.

Can Democracy coexist with separation between church and state in the Middle East? It could, one day, but we can't force it. Turkey, for instance, is an example of divorcing Islamism and state--they did it voluntarily, for purposes of stability. It still is a hotly debated political issue. But it hasn't rent their society apart the way that it threatens to rip Egypt apart.

So if you had a bunch of secular republics that were built on the principle of representation, and representing everyone--not just a "democracy" that turns into leadership by whichever mob wins elections--they could come together.

What would this mean? It would mean no "Jewish" state in the Middle East.

Major sticking point of the Camp David and subsequent accords? Right of Return for Palestinians. Why can't we grant the Right of Return? It's not economic--if such an accord were granted, the international community would trip over itself from excitement to bankroll that peace process. No question. Maybe it's a security issue. But most of all, it'd a demographic issue.

If the Palestinians return to Israel, Israel will no longer be majority Jewish. And then it would be forced to choose between Democracy and between "The Jewish State." B/c the only reason it can be a Democracy and a Jewish State is because Jews are the majority. Granted, the Jewish population is shrinking, and they make it incredibly easy for Jews to immigrate and incredibly difficult for Arabs or other Muslims to immigrate. But add in several million Palestinians returning to Israel? No question. No more Jewish majority--and therefore, no more Jewish state.

Would it become a Muslim state? Probably not. Because Jews would still be a significant voting bloc. What it would become, most likely, is a secular state.

Right now, no one wants that. the Palestinians say they want an Islamic State, the Jews want a Jewish State. So they're fighting over a two-state solution with an impossible number of conflicting demands.

You want an answer to this crisis? A one state, pluralistic, representative Democracy--built along the lines of Turkey, perhaps--that would allow Palestinians and Jews some measure of equal power. And nobody wants that. So it's not going to happen.

Is there another route? Maybe. It is less implausable, but still well into the "impossible" column. If Israel decided to ignore Gaza completely--let humanitarian aid in, keep it separated from Israel, let Egypt do what Egypt wants to do--and then negotiate a separate peace with Fatah in the West Bank--including a full scale withdrawal from the West Bank.

The West Bank is much more moderate; the West Bank has not taken any military actions against Israel. It can clearly be worked with. Abbas may not want a separate peace, and Israelis might not want to withdraw from the West Bank if Gaza is still firing on them.

This is basically a three state solution--but that makes sense, because our current reality is basically three states (Gaza, Israel, West Bank). In fact, the West Bank and Gaza are basically at a state of war--whereas Israel and the West Bank are not. So let's create a separate peace between the West Bank and Israel.

What happens after that? Well, the West Bank sees economic growth. It becomes a prosperous partner to Israel. Hamas-run Gaza probably remains a place of strife and chaos. Eventually, they'll want to know why they're being shut out. People in Palestine will turn on Hamas. They will lack the traction. Because Hamas only gains in popularity when Israel attacks. If Israel refuses to let Hamas bait it, and demonstrates that it can come to peace with a Palestinian neighbor, Hamas' legitimacy will vanish.

But what am I talking about. Looking at Israeli politicians, it's clear that that's not happening.