Peter Beinart's One State lipstick on a pig

Peter Beinart, whose parents were Professors, graduated from Yale in 1993. Thus, he is an expert on the Palestinian people. He writes in the NYT-

I was 22 in 1993 when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn to officially begin the peace process that many hoped would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Sadly, neither Arafat nor Rabin first went to young Peter to shake his hands or even pull gently upon his leg before they started getting gay with each other on the White House Lawn. This is the number one reason why the two state solution failed. Thankfully, Beinart, who is all grown up now, can see this for himself-

I’ve been arguing for a two-state solution — first in late-night bull sessions, then in articles and speeches — ever since.

It must be nice to be able to make a comfortable living rehashing 'late night bull sessions' in articles and speeches for more than twenty years.

I believed in Israel as a Jewish state because I grew up in a family that had hopscotched from continent to continent as diaspora Jewish communities crumbled.

But this hopscotch stayed away from Palestine coz there was a risk of getting conscripted or getting shot or blown up there.

I saw Israel’s impact on my grandfather and father, who were never as happy or secure as when enveloped in a society of Jews.

Unless those Jews were under threat from Palestinian commandos.

And I knew that Israel was a source of comfort and pride to millions of other Jews, some of whose families had experienced traumas greater than my own.

That was true enough. Victory in the '67 War changed how Jews were perceived in Europe. Franco started to babble to any Darky he met about his own Jewish ancestors. Even the Americans started to support Israel militarily in the Seventies. Suddenly, the redder necked Evangelical element started gassing on about how the presence of Jews in the Holy Land was vital for the unfolding of the Rapture.

One day in early adulthood, I walked through Jerusalem, reading street names that catalog Jewish history, and felt that comfort and pride myself.

I suppose, as an American, this pride was legitimate. The US had replaced France as Israel's patron. But, America has a lot of client states. Few have turned into stable knowledge-economy Democracies under the Rule of Law.

I knew Israel was wrong to deny Palestinians in the West Bank citizenship, due process, free movement and the right to vote in the country in which they lived.

The problem here is that the international community, including the US till last year, held that Israel's occupation was illegal per se. It had no locus standi to offer citizenship. At best, it could administer local law in the region as, outside its own enclaves, a terra nullius over which no party had established sovereign rights.  This is not sound in law. However, it must also be said that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Golan have expressed a preference for Palestinian, not Israeli, citizenship. It seems the case of Jerusalem may be different but this is quite a recent development.

Is it really the case that Palestinians want to do what Liberal Zionists want them to do? Should they help the Liberals in their electoral battle against the Orthodox?

But the dream of a two-state solution that would give Palestinians a country of their own let me hope that I could remain a liberal and a supporter of Jewish statehood at the same time.

Surely, the Palestinians wanted their own State? This was always their dream. The maximalists may have wanted all the Jews to leave but most would have considered half a loaf better than no bread.

The problem with Beinart's cri de coeur is that it leaves the Palestinians out of their own story. Everything must be done to protect his tender sensibilities. The World will be greatly impoverished if Beinart can't remain a liberal as well as supporter of Jewish statehood. Small children will turn into werewolves and tear apart their own mothers. Elderly Tambram Beyonce impersonators will be forced to wear burqa and commit suttee. The future of all sentient life in the Cosmos is at stake.

Events have now extinguished that hope.

Name names Beinart. Say- 'Trump has extinguished all hope. He is a nasty nasty man.'

About 640,000 Jewish settlers now live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Israeli and American governments have divested Palestinian statehood of any real meaning. The Trump administration’s peace plan envisions an archipelago of Palestinian towns, scattered across as little as 70 percent of the West Bank, under Israeli control. Even the leaders of Israel’s supposedly center-left parties don’t support a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. The West Bank hosts Israel’s newest medical school.

The British realized over 80 years ago that a Palestinian state would not be economically viable. They hoped the Jews would subsidize their neighbors. But Israel too was very poor. Now, as a Knowledge Economy, Israel may indeed be able to, not swap land for peace, but a shared prosperity for peace. In this sense, there is something to be said for Beinart's hand-wringing. But, the problem of the West Bank can't be solved in isolation from Gaza or the refugees in Lebanon who can't inherit land or practice as a Doctor or Lawyer and whose ability to emigrate to the Gulf has been restricted.

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fulfills his pledge to impose Israeli sovereignty in parts of the West Bank, he will just formalize a decades-old reality: In practice, Israel annexed the West Bank long ago.

So Israel will prefer an ambiguous course. Trump's plan was supposed to be about stakeholders getting pay-offs- i.e. wampum for Big Chiefs- but the true stakeholders are the young. You can't buy them all off with shiny shiny baubles. The fact is Jewish Israel is already a 'dual' economy with a shambolic Education system. Liberals should fix a broken system which is failing Israelis. Then, by all means, let it offer largesse to the Palestinians who, it must be said, have nurtured a very good pedagogic culture free of bureaucratic nonsense.

Israel has all but made its decision: one country that includes millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights. Now liberal Zionists must make our decision, too. It’s time to abandon the traditional two-state solution and embrace the goal of equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. It’s time to imagine a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state.

Sadly, imagination was not the quality which was lacking on the Israeli side. Nor were Palestinians lacking in pragmatism. But for there to be a positive sum game, mechanism design is necessary. Lachrymose sentimentality is in plentiful supply across the Levant. If you can show farmers that their sons and daughters are going to have well paid jobs and that new technology will bring them the water they need, then- sure- you have a deal. Israel benefits as bright young Palestinians rise up in high value adding industries. It gets rich exporting water conservation technology to a thirsty part of the world. Sure, if they want to have Trump type luxury Condos- there is space enough for that sort of vulgar trash. What is important is that Palestine goes off the geopolitical chess board as a place where rogue Nations can try to make mischief.

Equality could come in the form of one state that includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, as writers such as Yousef Munayyer and Edward Said have proposed;

conditional on a right to return for 6 million Palestinians which would render the Jews a minority.

or it could be a confederation that allows free movement between two deeply integrated countries.

Which stop being integrated with the first suicide bomber.

(I discuss these options at greater length in an essay in Jewish Currents).

Beinart writes- ' After all, it is human beings—all human beings—and not states that are created b’tselem Elohim, in the image of God.' This is quite true but it is equally true that Nation States protect human beings from those with a different conception of God. At Sinai, the Jews were called to be a 'kingdom of priests and a holy nation'. This is one strand in modern Zionism.
As for votes, God has none. Indeed, rumor has it, the Almighty doesn't even have a passport, a driving license or Social Security number.
Beinart thinks he is distinguishing form from essence when he writes 'The essence of Zionism is not a Jewish state in the land of Israel; it is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that both offers Jews refuge and enriches the entire Jewish world. 
This was certainly the view of some aristocratic British Zionists. The Jews would have a home and the British Navy would protect them. But that proved impossible after the War. Like other former colonies and mandated territories, Israel had to fend for itself.
It’s time to explore other ways to achieve that goal—from confederation to a democratic binational state—that don’t require subjugating another people. It’s time to envision a Jewish home that is a Palestinian home, too.
Let us look at some other 'binational' or 'consociational' states. How are they doing? What about Belgium? They must be really happy what with all the delicious chocolate they produce. Yet, the Economist ranks them as a 'flawed democracy'. On the other end of the scale is Myanmar- the country for which the word 'pluralism' was coined.
The fact is, Israel is not located in Northern Europe. It exists in a tinder-box of a region. Either there is a strong Israeli State or there is anarchy.

The process of achieving equality would be long and difficult, and would most likely meet resistance from both Palestinian and Jewish hard-liners.

What about the Iranians? Qatar by itself has enough money to keep plenty of terrorists in business. Anyway, who exactly is the interlocutor in Gaza supposed to be? Surely, that is the more difficult question?

But it’s not fanciful. The goal of equality is now more realistic than the goal of separation. The reason is that changing the status quo requires a vision powerful enough to create a mass movement. A fragmented Palestinian state under Israeli control does not offer that vision. Equality can. Increasingly, one equal state is not only the preference of young Palestinians. It is the preference of young Americans, too.

There is certainly something to be said for this proposition. But, the devil is in the detail. The other side of the equation is Israel's own slide into a type of middle-income trap with declining educational outcomes for the majority and a 'talented tenth' creamy layer of tech geniuses and artists and intellectuals of world stature. Some Palestinians can join this elite. But will the majority be content to sell their birthright for a job delivering Pizzas?

Critics will say binational states don’t work. But Israel is already a binational state.

Which one nation feels is a prison and the other considers under siege.

Two peoples, roughly equal in number, live under the ultimate control of one government. (Even in Gaza, Palestinians can’t import milk, export tomatoes or travel abroad without Israel’s permission.) And the political science literature is clear: Divided societies are most stable and most peaceful when governments represent all their people.

Sadly, this is not the case. Divided societies are most stable when the State kills or incarcerates those who challenge its monopoly of legitimate coercion. United countries can turn into failed states if this does not happen.

That’s the lesson of Northern Ireland. When Protestants and the British government excluded Catholics, the Irish Republican Army killed an estimated 1,750 people between 1969 and 1994.

The British were not enforcing segregation. But one big reason for the 'Troubles' was foreign money and logistical help. Only when this decreased could a settlement be worked out. Even so, Sinn Fein still won't take their seats at Westminster. If Ulster is the model Beinart thinks is applicable to Israel, then woe unto Israel. There is plenty of money for terrorism and no countervailing US pressure for peace.

When Catholics became equal political partners, the violence largely stopped. It’s the lesson of South Africa, where Nelson Mandela endorsed armed struggle until Blacks won the right to vote.

Again, this is a bad example. We don't know if the Whites in South Africa might not go the way of the Whites in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the US had a role in pushing the Brits (who were never enamoured of Ian Paisley) and the South Africans to doing a deal. The end of the Cold War was another factor. Both are absent from Israel's situation now. The Saudis are telling the Palestinians to shut up because the Iranians are the real enemy. What's more, Trump might just win if Biden screws up his Veep pick.

That lesson applies to Israel-Palestine, too. Yes, there are Palestinians who have committed acts of terrorism.

Palestinians have been thrown out of Jordan and Lebanon and Iraq and Kuwait because of Arafat's addiction to violence. Even Libya, under Gaddafi, expelled them. During 'Black September' Pakistani pilots flew Saudi planes to bomb Palestinians on behalf of the Hashemite King of Jordan. The Palestinians returned the compliment by supplying Bhutto's sons with missiles to bring down President Zia's plane. There is a good reason Arafat had to make peace but, being Arafat, of course, the peace deal came to nothing.

But so have the members of many oppressed groups. History shows that when people gain their freedom, violence declines. In the words of Michael Melchior, an Orthodox rabbi and former Israeli cabinet member who has spent more than a decade forging relationships with leaders of Hamas, “I have yet to meet with somebody who is not willing to make peace.”

Making peace is not the problem. It is preventing the other guy snatching stuff off your plate when you are looking the other way. Hitler and Stalin made peace. Much good it did either of those gangsters.

Rabbi Melchior recently told me that he still supports a two-state solution, but his point transcends any particular political arrangement: It is that Palestinians will live peacefully alongside Jews when they are granted basic rights.

The fact is, Palestinians live peacefully and industriously wherever they can be found. But, there will always be some who can be radicalized. Unlike Israel, which successfully curbed its hot-heads and established a monopoly of legitimate coercion, Palestinians have yet to develop a legitimate apparatus of this sort. Gaza, it is true, was gravely handicapped in this matter but so parlous is their economic condition that it is difficult to see how that entity can attain sufficient cohesiveness to make peace. In the South African Case, the Intelligence Chief did the groundwork for the peace deal between Mandela and De Klerk. Is there something similar happening in Israel? I doubt it. Palestinians feel that Intelligence work is done by junior officers who think they are playing 'whack-a-mole'. Under Obama, even the CIA was muttering against Israeli spooks and their hamfisted methods.

The problem with well educated Liberals like Beinart is that they imagine that Israel has some magical quality which means it preserves 'institutional memory' and keeps forging ahead in terms of the quality of its manpower. This creates the belief that Israel can afford to be generous. The reverse is the case. Israel has gained three separate manpower windfalls and though it has excellent Research Universities and an Army which is a good tech incubator, it is still a fundamentally divided society which stupid politicians can screw up. It is this yawning division which should concentrate 'Liberal' minds. It exists among Israelis, among Americans and, sadly (because of privation) increasingly among Palestinians who, I must say, are the most ardent and committed of scholars- if given the opportunity.

What makes that hard for many Jews to grasp is the memory of the Holocaust. As the Israeli scholar Yehuda Elkana, a Holocaust survivor, wrote in 1988, what “motivates much of Israeli society in its relations with the Palestinians is not personal frustration, but rather a profound existential ‘Angst’ fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust.” This Holocaust lens leads many Jews to assume that anything short of Jewish statehood would mean Jewish suicide.

In that particular part of the world, yes- the thing is a tautology and plenty of neighboring countries have said so at one time or another.

Beinart thinks States just magically appear. The truth is, there are plenty of failed states even in the vicinity. Look at Syria or Lebanon or Yemen. What happened to Lebanon as a Christian redoubt in the Levant? What happened to the Assyrian or Chaldean Christians in Iraq? Even the Copts in Egypt don't feel safe.

But before the Holocaust, many leading Zionists did not believe that. “The aspiration for a nation-state was not central in the Zionist movement before the 1940s,” writes the Hebrew University historian Dmitry Shumsky in his book, “Beyond the Nation-State.” A Jewish state has become the dominant form of Zionism. But it is not the essence of Zionism. The essence of Zionism is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that can provide refuge and rejuvenation for Jews across the world.

Jews had a home in Baghdad and Cairo and Isfahan and so forth. Some had a home in Jerusalem. Would they still retain those homes had there been no Israel? No. Sooner or later, there would have been a Mawza type extermination. There has always been a virulent anti-Judaic substrata in Arabic and Persian literature. The Jews were dealt with like the Zoroastrians and Yezidis and the Hindus and so forth which is why their numbers decreased from century to century.

Nazism and Stalinism both contributed to a 'modern' form of an endemic disease which featured cartoonish 'Elders of Zion' type conspiracies. Turkey may have been different. India was actually quite partial to Jews. But even in Turkey and India one could find vicious anti-semitic literature painstakingly translated into the vernacular.

That’s what my grandfather and father loved — not a Jewish state but a Jewish society, a Jewish home.

But this is what the Zionists built for themselves- a Jewish society, Jewish homes and a Jewish State which could protect that Society and protect those homes. The Palestinian diaspora, under horrible conditions, nevertheless came up through hard work and education and thrift and enterprise. At one time, Arafat appeared a Messiah who could charm all the despots of the East- but also the democratically elected leaders of South Asia- and endow the Palestinian cause with a jet-set glamor unique amongst dispossessed people. But, like Husseini, Arafat played for the highest stakes and lost again and again. Now he is gone, we curse him but where else can we find an interlocutor like him? Who else has the autocritas to clinch the next 'deal of the Century'? Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The time is not yet ripe for any sort of deal. Bleating 'one state' may salve the Liberal Conscience but what does it cash out as? Surely, it is that alongside whatever is happening some other cosmetic stuff should happen and if it doesn't the pretence must be kept up that once the pig has put on the lipstick, then it will win Eurovision as the representative of a single binational State which abhors swine.

Beinart ends thus-

Israel-Palestine can be a Jewish home that is also, equally, a Palestinian home. And building that home can bring liberation not just for Palestinians but for us, too.

If Beinart moves to Israel and practices what he preaches, then what he says is indeed possible. Jews and Palestinians working together in Israel can indeed build up a common home and a common state. But to work in Israel, you first have to move to Israel. Your kids are liable to be conscripted. You will see at first hand that Israel has some of the stupidest politicians and bureaucrats in the world. There's a lot of work needs to be done just to repair what exists and to ensure Israeli youth does not get trapped in a 'dual' economy. After that, by all means, extend largesse to the Palestinians. They are more than capable of matching your effort with a greater effort. Peace is not tranquility. It is working constructively, if not always in harmony. Israel may be the 'Holy Land'. It is not Paradise. That's a good thing. The pleasures of the after-life soon pall because work is absent.