So long as we are wishing

None of us get to decide anything, so one may as well make a statement of principle.

On the merits I prefer a single democratic state, or even better a federated democratic state. I respect and support anyone advocating for those, but the reasons to doubt that Palestinians & Israelis can build a shared polity from here are familiar.

I fall back to pretty conventional two-state thinking as the achievable minimum just resolution for the liberation of Arab Palestinians. So I proposed 2 November 2023:

1. Ceasefire.
2. Return of all hostages and political prisoners.
3. Israel within its Green Line borders and no more.
4. Full sovereignty for Gaza & the West Bank as a state (or two?) of Palestine, with free and fair elections.
5. Shared governance of Jerusalem.
6. Right Of Return for Palestinians where practical; reparations by Israel where impractical or unwanted.
7. Israel and Palestine disarmed, under NATO Article 5 protection.
8. Likud & Hamas leadership tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity (added later)

NATO?

Point 7 is the place where I break with convention in a crackpot attempt at cutting the Gordian knot of security & stability. (Update: Not so crackpottish as I thought! In 2014 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas suggested much the same thing, including having US troops on Palestinian soil.)

The last 55 years have shown that shown that the IDF is a threat to the rightful sovereignty of Palestinians and cannot even deliver security to Israelis. It should be evident why countering that with an armed state of Palestine threatens to produce an escalation spiral even worse that the one which has sabotaged any resolution for generations.

That suggests a need for radical disarmament. But how can both be secure against each other and their other neighbors? Palestinians would have to worry about neighbors other than Israel. Israelis will protest that they face existential threats from their neighbors, and though the wars against Israel ended in 1973 when it was clear that they had the Bomb, total disarmament is a lot to ask. They need a shared guarantor of their security.

It should be evident why the US cannot perform that function, and why the UN is inadequate. But NATO would want security and stability for both states ….

April 2024 restatement

Someone asked me “what’s your opinion on the region, morally and politically?” I have transcribed (and slightly refined) my answer:

Though Israel emerges from a bloody colonial history, that does not make it a wholly illegitimate imposition into the region; Jews in the Levant long pre-date the Zionist project, and we should understand the 1950s & ’60s as a partition and population transfer of Mizrahi Jews to Israel. More fundamentally, the state of Israel is legitimate because it is the only home which millions of Israelis have ever known.

By that same token, Gaza & the West Bank are rightfully sovereign because all peoples have a right to self-determination in the Westphalian order of nation-states.

Israel therefore has an minimum obligation to …

• end their attack on Gaza
• accept Gaza & the West Bank as fully sovereign no longer subject to military policing
• fully depart from West Bank settlements
• end de facto apartheid within the Green Line pre-1967 borders with true equal citizenship for all Arabs currently resident

On the merits I would prefer a one-state or mixed-sovereignty resolution, but I consider the kind of two-state solution this implies more plausible. The “western” powers of Europe & the US need — both morally and pragmatically — to underwrite the security of Israel and Gaza & and the West Bank.

Both the Likudniks responsible for the current horrors and the leaders of Hamas who precipitated them with the horrors of 10/7 belong in the dock at the Hague for crimes against humanity.

2002 Arab Peace Initiative

In February 2025 I was reminded of a letter authored primarily by the Saudis after a 2002 Arab summit which makes a not-so-different proposal:

Having listened to the statement made by his royal highness Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which his highness presented his initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel’s acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel,

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.
2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:
   1. Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.
   2. Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.
   3. The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:
   1. Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.
   2. Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.
4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.
5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighbourliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity.
6. Invites the international community and all countries and organisations to support this initiative.
7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.

One may have an understandable skepticism that all Arab nations would accept these terms, but I gladly add my tiny voice supporting it per Point 6.