A Palestinian Political Solution

Part 1 – Can a Western Style Nation State Work?

Anthony Blinken and the US State Department are obsessed with the Palestinian Authority and a “unified” State of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza.  I fully understand the idea of a ‘two state’ solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, as it is the most logical solution to what ought to be an argument over territory.  It could be that if they had never formed UNRWA and had Jordan and Egypt agreed to form Palestinian states on those territories (united or not) in 1949, we would not be on the situation we are now in.  

Leaving aside the whole historical question of a Palestinian people – for before 1948 if you said “Palestinian” you meant a Jew living in British Mandatory Palestine and if you spoke about Arabs living in the same region you meant those from the Arab nation who lived in British Mandatory Palestine – is the nation-state the proper solution in this case?    Although Israel is the country the global progressive left likes to condemn as “colonialist”, in truth, nearly all Arab states in the Middle East are colonialist creations.   Egypt is the exception to the rule.

The Arabs themselves called nearly the entire Levant by the name Greater Syria – lands that include today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and parts of Saudi Arabia.   When TE Lawrence initiated and fought with the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in WWI he fought with the Great-Grandfather of Jordan’s current King Abdullah – the former Sherrif of Mecca.   When the British double crossed him and gave Mecca, and Medina, Islam’s holiest sites to the Ibn Saud’s (from the other side of the Arabian Peninsula) the Hashemites got two states the colonialist British created – Jordan and Iraq.   Jordan is 77% of what was British Mandatory Palestine (which is why a majority of Jordanians are Palestinian).  Iraq was a majority Shiite region, so the British did the smartest thing and gave power to the Hashemite Sunnis who were not even native to the land. Various coups later the Baathists - also mostly Sunnis, were in control.  The French , after the war, took present day Syria and  carved out Lebanon, so that the Christians would have a power base.  Syria, after independence and numerous coups ended up with a dictatorship controlled by the minority Alawites – also Baathists.  The Baath Parties were Arab adaptations of Fascist and Communist ideas of Europe.  They were nationalist, socialist (national-socialist?) and secular dictatorships.

It is safe to say that all these creations intruded on the local culture and forced the Arabs to rule under European standards of the nation-state, erasing 1,000 years of Arab political tradition.   Arab political tradition is familial and tribal.   There was no concept of a “nation-state” in the western sense of the word. While the nation-state was critical for the introduction of modernity into Europe and much of Asia, it has not served the Arab peoples well (nor has it served Africans well).   That is not to say that Arabs cannot enjoy the fruits of modernity.  The United Arab Emirates is a good example of the adaptation of Arab political tradition to the modern world.  While far from being a free country and far from being a productive country, the various tribal powers that make up the UAE have managed to avoid the terror, strife and poverty of the failed Arab states.  True enough, oil wealth has been the greatest contributor to this, but Libya, Algeria and Iraq also have great oil wealth and are failed states by any measure.

If there were to be a successful Palestinian State though, there would have to be a number of pre-conditions.  The first and most important is the abandonment of the so-called “right of return”.  The “right of return”, as the Arab world sees it, says that all descendants of refugees from the 1948-49 war between Israel and the seven Arab armies that invaded after the British left, have a right to return to the cities, towns and villages where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived.   There were approximately 700,000 Arabs that left.  Some left due to being evicted by Israeli forces and others due to being encouraged by the invading Arab armies, who promised they would return after they wiped out the Jews. However, there were also approximately 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands who, from 1948 and through the early 1950’s were forcibly thrown out of their homes and made to emigrate to Israel (with some going to the West).  All their property and money was confiscated.  In many of the countries Jews were massacred.   

The first step in the abandonment of the right of return is to admit that there was an exchange of populations between Israel and the Arab world.   The second step would be the closure of UNRWA  (United Nations Work and Relief Agency)- the only UN refugee agency that was formed to deal with refugees from one specific country.  Every other refugee issue since the UN started has been dealt with by UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).  The existence of UNRWA allows host countries to refuse citizenship to these descendants of the actual refugees and it removes the responsibility of the Arab host countries for their health, education and welfare. In places like Gaza and the West Bank, UNRWA has been taken over by the most radical elements in the community.  In Gaza its workers are almost exclusively Hamas members.  Interestingly, instead of disbanding the refugee camps after the establishment of the PA and considering all residents of PA controlled territory as equals – the PA continues to treat some Palestinians as refugees. 

Once UNRWA has been closed, the refugee camps will need to be dismantled and its residents given full citizenship in the countries that have “hosted” them for the last 75 years (in fairness, Jordan has granted citizenship to most of the refugees in the country).  One of those new countries would be the new State of Palestine. 

Only after the entire Arab world – or a good part of it – along with the Palestinian people and its government accepts that the era of the refugees is at an end can a Palestinian state be established.  There is no getting around this issue.   Once the Arab world accepts that Israel is permanent and that the refugee issue is over, can the Israel-Palestinian conflict become a territorial issue that can be solved.  

After we have solved this issue but before a true state on Western values can be established, there needs to be a demilitarization of the entire area of the Palestinian state in West Bank and Gaza.  Police can and should be established but not the para-military police they like to have – a true, old fashioned police force with handguns, a few rifles and police cars – no armored personnel carriers and certainly no tanks.  No air-force – even no armed drones.

For the Blinken State Department though the main issues are not the refugee or even the terror issue but Israeli towns and villages on the West Bank and the blood libel they like to call “settler violence”.  For Blinken and the Obama groupies who work with him the fault and therefore the compromise must always be Israel.   Therefore, they will never press the Palestinians or the Arab states to abandon their absurd demand to return Palestinian Arabs to the homes of their great-grandparents – something not done in any other part of the world.

A second obsession of the Blinken crew is their demand for one unified Palestinian State on the West Bank and Gaza.   This surprises me because Blinken should be old enough to remember that there was once an East and West Pakistan where there is now Pakistan and Bangladesh.  The bloody and horrible civil war that led to the formation of Bangladesh was the fault of the colonialists who insisted that there be one Moslem state in the Indian subcontinent – even if the two parts were over 2,000 kms away.    Why would he want to repeat that colonialist disaster here?   What, I wonder makes him, or anyone think that what does not work in any other part of the world would work here, where internal strife is rampant and where it failed just a few years ago?

But the main question still goes back to what works best for the Palestinian and Israeli people.   Does a western style nation-state, or two, serve the interests of the Palestinian people?   Will the Israeli people be able to live in peace next to a Palestinian State?  Will we have another Iraq on our hands, a country that can remain unified only under the terror of a viscous dictator that needs to attack its neighbors to stay in power?   Would Hashemite Jordan be safe from attack or civil war?  Will Egypt be brought into a conflict?

I admit that I thought Iraq might be able to form a stable Western style nation-state – even a democracy.    But a short while after the American occupation started it was clear that there needed to be at least three autonomous, if not sovereign entities – one for the Druze, the Sunni and the Shiites.    Maybe even more autonomous entities would have worked better.  

Will one or two independent states work for the Palestinians?   Or for the Israelis?   Or the rest of the Arab world?  Without the end of the refugee delusion and demilitarization it is a non-starter.  But even with it – can it work?

I think a non-Western solution needs to be proposed that will follow the Arab political tradition.  This will be the topic of our next essay.