Fania Oz-Salzberger, Professor Emerita, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa

Memo

The Israeli-Palestinian 120-years’ war is the most mutually radicalising and emotionally convoluted conflict in modern history. 

What began as a real-estate conflict became heavily theologised in recent decades, with both Jewish and Islamist extremists developing a zero-sum game approach to their conflicting entitlements to the land. Ultra-nationalists have recruited both religions – against their more moderate legacies and potentialities – to assert full ownership ‘from the river to the sea’, entailing the ethnic cleansing or mass annihilation of the rival nation.

Both sides have longstanding historical, moral and legal claims to the Land of Israel/Palestine or to part of it. Attempts at partition and compromise have repeatedly been thwarted. The conflict developed from a long chain of violent assaults (initiated, prior to 1967, mainly by the Arab side) and civilian settlements on militarily occupied land (post-1967 by the Jewish side). Both peoples are deeply, multi-generationally traumatised – one by the holocaust genocide and recently by the 7 October 2023 massacre, and the other by the Nakba and its ensuing Palestinian refugee crisis and post-1967 Israeli occupation.

This unique set of circumstances has exacerbated polarisation and repeatedly hindered moderate leaderships, diplomatic intervention attempts and plans for compromise. 

Global perspectives on this conflict, especially the intellectual ones, tend to deepen the chasm. In recent decades, the false equation of nineteenth to twentieth century Zionist migration with western colonialism has kindled anti-Israel feelings among progressives, raising the expectations of many Palestinians that Israel not only should, but can, be annihilated. On the other side of the spectrum, the global reawakening of a conservative-nationalist right wing, newly fuelled by the sophisticated populism and advanced demagoguery of the digital media, is feeding and backing the Netanyahu regime’s assault not only against the Palestinians but also against Israel’s own democratic values, the rule of law and the separation of powers. The ultimate aim for sacrificing democracy is not only the establishment of autocracy (as in Putin’s Russia and Orban’s Hungary) but, in the specific Israeli-Palestinian context, demolishing the human rights of minorities, liberals and the occupied people. This is Netanyahu’s quid pro quo with the Jewish ultranationalists.

Following 7 October and the war in Gaza, the emotional pitch of fear, hate and desperation has reached a new level among both Palestinians and Israelis. One potentially positive outcome of the last 11 horrific months is a new global resoluteness to bring this conflict to an end. 

Both parties to the Israel-Palestine zero sum game are fanned by the two-decade-old appearance of global digital conversation – all too often a vile exchange of hostile platitudes more reminiscent of the Tower of Babel – and the social networks. Throughout history, conflicts and wars were kindled, heightened and sometimes resolved by words. Humankind always developed lexicons of war and peace. In our digital age these linguistic aspects of conflict have seen a globalisation and acceleration pace which is unprecedented, the internet being a full player in the field. Words can kill much faster than before; but healing through words is still slow and tenuous. 

In lexical terms, the Israel-Palestine zero sum game is underscored by the ‘River to Sea’ discourse on both sides. The mutual incompatibility of Greater Israel and Greater Palestine is geographically and politically obvious. ‘River to Sea’ still allows a possible horizon for one binational state, or for a Palestine peacefully harbouring a Jewish minority and vice versa. 

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There are five conceivable futures to the 120-years’ war: 

1. the Israel-only solution
2. the Palestine-only solution
3. the one-state solution (binational) 
4. the two-states solution (Israel and Palestine) 
5. an ongoing bloodbath. 
   
   

I will skip options 1, 2 and 5, because it is unlikely that the two exclusivist ‘solutions’ can be brought about without multi-generational war. Neither side can be eradicated or totally defeated without the Armageddon scenarios of a world war or a nuclear war involving Iran and possibly the superpowers. One exception, though: the current erosion of Israeli democracy by Netanyahu’s government can feasibly lead to the destruction of Israel without any Palestinian or Iranian intervention.

Nor can one state ‘between the river and the sea’ be a ‘Palisrael’, as some advocates suggest, namely a civic egalitarian binational state. Demographically, this state might begin as a roughly fifty-fifty binational society, but it will have an Arab majority within a generation. Moreover, both Islamist ideology and Palestinian ultra nationalism would not allow such a state to be liberal, secular or indeed binational. Nor would such a model be initially accepted by ultra-religious and messianic Israelis. Even secular and liberal Jewish Israelis would adamantly refuse to dismantle the State of Israel. Two relevant questions: Why should the Jews, of all nations, be forced to give up their hard-won and internationally recognised nation state? Also: No Arab state in the world has managed to become liberal and secular; why would this be any different? The ‘one state solution’ may become relevant in future generations, especially if the nation state model is globally replaced by federal and confederal models. 

Psychologically, Israelis and West Bank / Gaza Palestinians are not ready to become fellow citizens. Fear, hate and deep suspicion between the two nations are inherited traits, exacerbated by the 7 October 2023 massacre and the Gaza war. They will be far too strong in the foreseeable future, perhaps for generations, to allow a shared civil society. 

Hence, as many Palestinians and ‘pro-Palestinians’ intend, the one state would be wholly Palestinian, and probably Islamist. Jews, Christians and other religious minorities are likely to be ethnically cleansed or savagely oppressed.

It is crucial to spell out that – especially following 7 October, but also preceding it – the ‘one state’ is a dialogical non-starter for a vast majority of the Israelis, because it necessitates the eradication of Israel as the nation state of the Jews. It is a non-starter for many or most Palestinians, including all Islamists, insofar as it demands a liberal democratic and probably secular regime. It does not address the practical repercussion of the Palestinian ‘Right of Return’, almost universally understood among Palestinians as a reclaiming of the long-lost family home rather than a national home. This means millions of individual claims and counterclaims for every piece of land and every home in the country, and does not bode well for the ‘one state’. Perhaps in a future era. Perhaps when the rest of the world has put the problematic idea of the nation-state to rest. 

On the national level, unlike the existing, albeit flawed and strained, co-citizenship of Jews and Palestinian Israelis, there is no current scope for creating a new civil society incorporating Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under a shared liberal democratic roof. Not after 7 October. 

I strongly believe that any realistic Israel-Palestinian dialogue today must use the two-states model as a horizon, indeed the only feasible bloodless horizon. This would require a long and complex process involving international players, not mere brokers (as in the partially failed Oslo Accords) but hands-on participants. But the conversation, the initial lexicon of peace we must reclaim and rebuild to jump-start such a process, is essentially a two-party one, a feasible Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

This is where two concepts currently seen as highly problematic are in fact helpful and mutually compatible: ‘free Palestine’ and ‘Zionism’. If the mission of the present meeting is indeed, as I understand it, to build a linguistic bridge for the dialogue, both these concepts are utterly vital. They are the bedrock of future-oriented realism. 

I will concentrate on Zionism, which basically means the right of the Jewish people to a state in its ancestral land. This is the only core definition of Zionism, its historical (Herzlian) base. Moderate Zionism, including Herzl himself, Ben Gurion, Rabin, most of the historical Labor and liberal Zionists, and Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) is committed to the above definition with two built-in notions: that the state is a liberal democracy, and that “in its ancestral land” means “within”. Core Zionism does not claim the whole land, nor does it oppose the claim of another people to the same land. Core Zionism is fully compatible with the two states model, as has been demonstrated in the nascent Israel’s acceptance of UN Resolution 181 in November 1947.

Israeli ultranationalism was not a staple of the early decades of Israel’s existence, but it grew from the life-or-death war and “messianic” deliverance of 1967; this ideology grew to affect about one quarter of the Israeli constituency, until it openly took over the country’s government in November 2022, when Netanyahu allowed far-right fascists into his cabinet (after years of transitioning his party, Likud, into similar positions). 

The ensuing constitutional coup d’etat that begun in January 2023 preceded the 7 October Hamas massacre by ten crucial months, weakening the fabric of Jewish-Israeli society and decimating civic solidarity across ideological lines. The Netanyahu government’s push to un-democratize Israel is continuing today on an almost daily basis, though its onus has shifted from legislation to senior-level appointments and policies on the ground. Israel’s police, most notably, is led by Ben Gvir towards full scale violence against civilians and open hostility toward minority groups. 

This radicalization and bastardization of historical Zionism may spell the end of Zionism, if Israeli moderates do not win the next elections and proceed to rebuild the country’s political culture and open a door to peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

While historical narratives are painfully contradictory, the present meeting need not delve into them too deeply. Unlike South Africa, Israel and Palestine cannot begin their peace process with “peace and reconciliation” discussions of the past. I will, however, make the following point: the 1948 war, which achieved Israeli independence (albeit killing 1% of the Jews) and caused the Palestinian Nakba, is not a result of core Zionism. It did awaken, as wars often do, a brutal violence and greed for more territory than stipulated by the UN partition plan; but core Zionism was the opposite of greed and brutality; it was the acceptance of Resolution 108 and the liberal peaceful language of the Declaration of Independence.  

We Israelis, and Israel’s friends, must therefore reclaim core Zionism and fight its brutalization by the Netanyahu regime. Because the concept is – at this phase in Jewish history – irreplaceable. Much it is demonized by self-defined pro-Palestinians, and often equated to Nazism in social media – is not going away any time soon. 

The Zionism which is compatible with a free Palestine is still held by about a half of the Jewish-Israeli constituency, although not all of them would vote for a Palestinian state in the immediate future. According to recent polls (the latest on 19 August 2024), about 25% of Israelis are ready for this horizon even at the present anguished time. Our stance is humane and justice-seeking. It is neither genocidal nor racist nor apartheid-promoting. Its core is a liberal democratic state for the Jews and all its other citizens (Herzl, 1896), existing in peace with its neighbors, including a peaceful and stable Palestinian state, on part – not all – of the ancestral homeland.

This was the ideology of the mainstream Zionist movement in 1947, when Jewish leaders accepted, and Arab-Palestinian leaders rejected the two states principle (UN Partition Plan, Resolution 181). It remained the Jewish policy during the war of 1948, as stated clearly in Israel’s Declaration of Independence (May 1948). It remained the declared policy of the Labor parties (admittedly, not always in good faith, because Labor governments allowed and nourished the first wave of West Bank settlements) up to and including the Oslo Accords of 1993, led by Prime Minister Rabin and supported by a majority of Israeli voters. 

The two states solution – presumably along the 1949 truce lines (the pre-1967 map of Israel, known as the “green line” with mutually-agreed amendments) is the only bloodless solution on the table. Specific solutions will have to be found for the Palestinian ‘right of return’ into Israeli territory and for the Jewish settlers’ status if they remain within Palestinian territories. Being the only bloodless solution that maintains both Israel and Palestine as nation states, this solution – and indeed the very existence of a free Palestine next door to a secure Israel – is an eminently Zionist goal. 

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This is my bid for the conceptual foundations of a peace-seeking dialogue. I am eager to see whether Palestinian moderates are able and willing to reclaim the concept of ‘free Palestine’ for peaceful a two states solution. If both concepts can be judiciously balanced on the respective sides, there is a chance we can de-demonize them in the global public sphere.