by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen
In order to think outside the box, one has to be familiar with the structure of the box and its intricacies, especially with the lid.
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 748, February 21, 2018
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A
creative solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must start with
appreciating the advantages of the hybrid spatial model that has emerged
in the West Bank, notably the governmental powers granted to the
Palestinian Authority as far back as January 1996 in Areas A and B, and
discarding the stillborn paradigm of total separation.
In a recent lecture on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, New York Times
journalist Thomas Friedman wondered how the highly creative state of
Israel had not found a creative solution to the conflict beyond the
quest for the best way to separate from the Palestinians.
In order to think outside the box, one has to be
familiar with the structure of the box and its intricacies, especially
with the lid. As far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned,
four basic assumptions, firmly endorsed by the EU and the US
administrations since the days of President Clinton, have kept the box
tightly closed:
- The solution to the conflict must be geographically confined to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
- The solution requires the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state.
- The border between Israel and Palestine must be based on the 1967 lines with minor revisions.
- The West Bank and the Gaza Strip must constitute a single political entity.
Leaving no room for negotiations, these four
assumptions have led time and again to a dead end. Gaza’s economic
plight, for example, could have been substantially relieved had Egypt
been prepared, with extensive international assistance, to expand the
strip into the open spaces of the Sinai desert in the direction of
al-Arish.
The prevailing, conventional Israeli and
international discourse has placed Israel at a conceptual crossroads
between only two possibilities: preserving the Jewish-democratic state
by withdrawing to the June 4 lines with small adjustments (that is,
retaining the settlement blocs) or ending up with a conflict-ridden,
binational state leading inevitably to an apartheid regime. Creative
thinking of the kind sought by Friedman should be able to salvage Israel
from the trap of having to choose between these polar and impossible
alternatives.
The creativity of Einstein’s theory of general
relativity could provide inspiration for escaping this conceptual
fixation. Einstein did not offer new laboratory discoveries. He simply
proposed a different general theory in which the invariance of the speed
of light becomes a law of nature. In comparable fashion, creative
thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict entails recognizing that
the narrow landmass between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River
cannot be divided into two fully-fledged states.
It is not only the Jewish settlements in the West
Bank that make it difficult to partition the Land of Israel. The
difficulty stems from a range of geophysical factors: communal,
ecological, transportation-related, economic, and those involving water,
sewage, and electricity infrastructures. The difficulty also arises, of
course, from the security aspects of partitioning the land.
Since the time of the September 1993 Oslo Accord,
two different models have emerged. In one, situated in the West Bank,
the territory in question has been organized – through its division into
Areas A, B, and C – into a kind of Palestinian-Israeli coexistence
marked by varied forms of governance. The second model, situated in the
Gaza Strip, entails a binary division: “They are there, we are here,”
with a fence, a rigid and uncompromising boundary, between Israel and
the Hamas-controlled territory. The path to creative thinking begins
with pondering the different patterns of security activity that have
emerged in Gaza and the West Bank. In the Gaza model of total
separation, Israel’s use of military force requires considerable
resources: tanks, warplanes, and, from time to time, high-intensity
military operations, along with huge investments in counteracting the
extensive tunnel network. In the West Bank model, by contrast, security
is organized in a hybrid spatial balance with daily meeting points
between Israelis and Palestinians, as a dynamic of economic cooperation
that includes an Israeli civilian presence makes the massive use of
military power unnecessary. When it comes to quality of life, the West
Bank model turns out to be far more beneficial to both sides.
A creative solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict must thus start with appreciating the advantages of the hybrid
spatial model that has emerged in the West Bank, notably the
governmental powers granted to the Palestinian Authority as far back as
January 1996 in Areas A and B. Thinking out of the box, then, means
discarding the stillborn paradigm of total separation in the West Bank.
This article was first published in Hebrew in Israel Hayom on February 5, 2018.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for forty-two years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-palestinian-conflict-thinking/
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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