Earlier this week, European Union foreign ministers gathered in Brussels and discussed yet another plan for the “day after” in Gaza, which suggested a pathway to a “Palestinian state.” In Washington, President Joe Biden likewise insisted that a Palestinian state was the way forward. When confronted with the reality that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the very notion of a Palestinian state, Biden insisted that Netanyahu didn’t reject all two-state solutions with the Palestinians—and in Biden’s persistence lies the rub.
Netanyahu’s engagement on a Palestinian state represents a continuation of a long-standing tactic: to position himself before the Israeli public as the only leader who will be able to stand up to pressure from the United States to establish such a state. But, as has been abundantly clear, there is no such American pressure; it’s simply a case of Washington expressing its preferences. Pressure would mean using the tools that Washington has as leverage, whether aid to Israel or other forms of support. None of that is remotely in question.
Yet Biden has continued to present a Palestinian state as viable, because the alternative, recognizing that there is already a one-state reality in Israel/Palestine, is unpalatable to Washington. Thus, the U.S. president has begun to outline other forms of “statehood” that might have more of a chance of persuading Israel, including a demilitarized state. In one of his recent comments, for example, Biden remarked there were UN members that didn’t have standing armies.
Biden was right in this regard, there are such UN members. But they all share certain characteristics. Usually, another state has agreed to defend them against aggression. For instance, Andorra has no standing army, but has defense pacts with Spain and France. Micronesia, another example, is under the responsibility of the United States for its defense. Nauru depends on Australia. Around a dozen or so countries have such arrangements. A variation on these defense pacts is when there is a regional defense relationship—probably the most famous of which is the Regional Security System in the Caribbean and South America. This depends on close ties among member nations and a strong external backer.
Some might argue that these are all precedents for a demilitarized Palestinian state, with compromised sovereignty as a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, none of them apply. Israel insists on “security control over the entire area west of the Jordan,” in other words over any territory that might come under Palestinian self-rule. That means Israel would have the right to militarily enter those territories at will, without Palestinian consent. That’s not comparable to any UN member state, or the Caribbean and South American regional security pact. The main security challenge for Palestinians is Israel itself. It’s like claiming Ukraine should have a regional security agreement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
So, none of these precedents hold. But there are two precedents that do have some familiar characteristics. One is Ukraine, the other South Africa. In 2014, Russia created “states” in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, while annexing Crimea. On the structural level, this is quite similar to what Israel is trying to do—annex territory in parts of the West Bank and allow “self-governance” elsewhere in the occupied territories. To the international community, Russia’s steps in Donetsk and Luhansk looked suspiciously like efforts to legitimize an illegal land grab. But the reality is that the vision Israel and the United States have for an eventual Palestinian state is little different. Creating a Palestinian statelet without sovereignty doesn’t seem to be anything else than the legalization of occupation.
The second precedent is Bophuthatswana. It used to be in South Africa and was one of the Bantustans ( “homelands,” or what may be called “reservations” in the U.S. context) accorded self-rule by the apartheid regime in South Africa. The South Africans retained sovereignty, but Bophuthatswana (which was territorially fragmented) represented a solution to providing “self-rule,” while still maintaining the apartheid system in the rest of South Africa.
The Venn diagram of what Netanyahu might be willing to voluntarily accept as a “state,” which Biden clearly sees as an option, is something that takes elements not of existing member states of the UN, but of components of discredited schemes from Putin’s Russia and apartheid South Africa. This might work for officials in the United States and Israel, but it’s unlikely to work for the Palestinians, who are the occupied population, nor for Arab countries with which Israel is keen to normalize.
More than 20 years ago, Saudi Arabia put forth the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed by the entire Arab League in 2002. The Arab states vowed to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for an end to its occupation of Arab lands and the establishment of a Palestinian state. They have since repeated that normalization is on the table, and for much less than what it was 20 years ago. Now, only a “pathway” to a Palestinian state is required.
But perhaps the quiet part was said out loud by the EU’s own foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrell. The Biden administration’s navigations are convoluted because they seek to accomplish something in partnership with the Israelis, with Israel deciding “what is the best way to ensure Israel’s security.” Borrell, on the other hand, quite bluntly stated that a Palestinian state might need to “be imposed from the outside,” without Israel’s agreement.
The likelihood of this is dubious at present. However, a population that is seeking sovereignty and removal of military occupation is even less likely to be pacified by arrangements that Israel might accept voluntarily. Meanwhile, Israel continues to turn Gaza into a no-man’s land, and is governed by a coalition that includes far-right elements that are openly seeking the departure of as many Palestinians from Gaza as possible. The United States may disagree with such policies, but unless it is willing to use its leverage to force Israel to change direction, any discussion of a Palestinian state will rather quickly become moot.
