One of the odder features of human nature, behavioral psychologists observe, is that we judge an idea as much by its proponents as by its merits. When President Trump suggested the United States no longer saw separate Israeli and Palestinian states as its preferred outcome, his supporters nodded along while his opponents had theatrical fainting fits.
Quite a reversal, in some cases, of their previous positions. Leftists around the world were suddenly shocked – shocked – by what the New York Times called Trump’s “nonsensical statement.” Yet the same people were generally relaxed when Hamas and Hezbollah backed the idea. Indeed, the PLO always wanted a one-state solution: “A Palestine for all Palestinians whether they be Muslims, Christians or Jews.”
But I am playing the same game – discussing the advocates of an idea rather than the idea itself. In fact, there are some respectable arguments for a one-state solution. The location of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and of Arab villages in Israel makes it difficult to trace a realistic ethnographic border. Single statehood might solve the otherwise intractable issue of the status of Jerusalem. The infrastructure of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan – water supplies, highways, external borders – is already integrated.
In any case, successive attempts to build a two-state solution, pushed by the U.S. quietly since 1993, and officially since 2001, have gone nowhere. The Palestinian-American activist Edward Said used to argue that peace would come only with “sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way with equal rights for all citizens.”
It’s true that, over the past five years, as Palestinians have accommodated themselves to a two-state outcome, some Israelis have moved away from it. This is partly because of the palpable failure of the disengagement from Gaza, and partly because the demographics of the region have been reassessed. Israelis used to fear that incorporating the West Bank would lead, in time, to Jews becoming a minority. New census data have convinced several Israeli Rightists that the number of Palestinians is smaller than used to be thought, and that any difference in birth rates could be more than offset by continued Jewish immigration.
It’s an extremely dangerous argument. Even if Jews were to constitute a numerical majority in a unified state, it would be a slim and jumpy majority. A one-state solution would solve the border question, but it would do so by internalizing every other dispute. Think about it. A unitary state would make the people of Gaza Israeli citizens. Either they would get the right to travel freely within their own country or else that country truly would become what critics absurdly call the present-day Israel: an apartheid state, with different categories of citizenship determined by race.
There would be constant unrest. Indeed, it was precisely because of the chronic inter-communal violence during the last “one-state solution” – the British Mandate – that partition was proposed in the first place. Israel’s relations with Arab neighbors, now arguably at their warmest since 1948, would freeze again.
The truth is that multinational states almost never work as functioning democracies. They can be held together by force; but as soon as their peoples are given the option, they tend to choose self-government. Yugoslavia and the USSR worked as police states; the moment democracy came, they unraveled.
Israel is a democracy – a gloriously loud and disputatious democracy – in a region where autocracy is normal. Could it retain its democratic character if its citizens lacked a shared sense of patriotism? That patriotism presently has an intensity that few others can match. Israel, after all, exists because Jews had been forced to the conclusion that only self-determination could guarantee their safety. Why swap that self-determination for again being one group in a multi-ethnic state, Habsburg-style?
In fairness to Trump, he says he will accept whatever position Israelis and Palestinians agree on. So be it, then. Opinion polls show clear majorities for some form of two-state outcome among both Palestinians and Israelis (with, admittedly, huge differences over where the border should be). It seems that the ordinary people of that part of the world are more sensible than some of their leaders. Trump, of all people, should grasp that concept.
Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.
