Abstract
In this contribution to the World Affairs 2022 Special Issue, I engage Alon Ben-Meir’s proposal for an Israeli–Palestinian–Jordanian Confederation previously published in this journal and discussed in depth by scholars, diplomats, and policy practitioners in a panel at the March 2022 Policy Studies Organization Middle East Dialog conference in Washington, DC. Given that achieving such a confederation has been sabotaged over and again to date, a critical question is how do we get from here to there without upsetting the irrational passions of both sides? I suggest various practical steps and policies that might mitigate the conflict in ways that could inexorably lead to the final destination of Ben-Meir's confederation.
I confess I cannot be objective about Ben-Meir's (2022) proposal; I completely endorse its fundamental principles as well as most of its strategic and grand-strategic considerations—it is a decidedly thorough example of practical (as opposed to “pie in the sky”) political thinking. I also plead guilty to having conceived of something similar some decades ago—an Israeli Palestinian Federation joined with Jordan in what I then called the Canaanite Confederation (an appellation I later regretted, given its negative ancient and modern connotations for the Jewish population). When exploring the idea, I was shocked to discover that the original United Nations (UN) partition plan had, in effect, dictated the selfsame Israeli–Palestinian Federation (although not by that name). The partition plan had called for a common currency and infrastructure (water, sewage, roads, etc.). So actually the “Now” of the idea was, in point of fact, 1947. The “How” has been sabotaged over and over again by the inherent irrationality of human beings in general, and Middle Eastern players in particular, who, over the years, have found endless reasons to be offended by the particulars of any peace proposal. We must, therefore, employ a prudent strategy of the indirect approach in order to have any chance of at least mitigating, if not resolving, the conflict. No serious proposal can be debated in its entirety at some major well-televised international conference. That is a recipe for another colossal failure, even greater than the 2000 Camp David fiasco. The Palestinians have completely different interpretations of peace than the Israelis. The well-intentioned attempt by President Clinton at Camp David to achieve a final peace settlement seems to have intensified these differences rather than lessened them and contributed to the outbreak of the Second Intifada.
In light of this rather negative empirical evidence, I wish to suggest various steps and policies that might mitigate the conflict in ways that could inexorably lead to the final destination of Ben-Meir's Confederation. “Mitigate” is the operative word here, not solve, resolve, reinvent, or any other grand-sounding slogan proposed by politicians dreaming of a Nobel Peace Prize to put on their resume. A very wise old Palmach fighter once told me that if you do not acknowledge the irrationality of human beings, you cannot make rational policy or strategy. The real question, therefore, is “how do we get from here to there without upsetting the irrational passions of both sides?” This is because it is self-evident to anyone living in Israel that, if Ben-Meir's proposal is presented upfront as the final goal, it will outrage the vast majority of revanchist Palestinians as well as many “holy warrior” Israelis who will see it as a fundamental denial of their “God given rights to the entire land.” And, as we know, when God gets involved, it becomes very difficult to compromise. Following are some of the incremental steps I suggest (not in any particular chronological order) that will be difficult to oppose in and of themselves, but which, in aggregate, can lead us to the promised land of Ben-Meir's final vision. I will generally divide my suggestions into two categories—outside-in and inside-out—which can be pursued simultaneously on a multi-track basis.
Outside-in refers to continuing to diminish tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, thus creating a general Middle Eastern environment more amenable to civilized discourse, while serving as a foundation for further progress. Examples of this have been the Egyptian and Jordanian normalization agreements and, most recently, the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. This would include Israel's rather open but unofficial ties with Saudi Arabia and Oman as well as its working relationship with Qatar in regard to the Gaza Strip (similar to Israel's working relationship with Jordan decades before their peace treaty).
Inside-out refers to directly improving the ongoing Israel–Palestine relationship. This is exemplified by the Oslo Agreements, which I believe, despite its many detractors, has been a significant accomplishment for both Israel and the Palestinians—its present denigrators being essentially enemies of peace either ideologically or inadvertently. Below I make my argument for this view because unless we debunk “the failure of Oslo” narrative we will, in effect, be empowering one of the roadblocks to Ben-Meir's vision and to eventual peace.
Outside-in and inside-out are not mutually exclusive, they are complementary and each track reinforces possibilities in the other. For example, Egypt's peace with Israel created a dynamic that eventually led to Madrid/Oslo and de facto diplomatic relations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). This development frightened Jordan, which suspected that Israel would use this to turn the Hashemite Kingdom into Palestine (Arik Sharon's vision). As a result, it decided to formalize its decades-long working relationship with Israel and conclude a peace treaty with Israel. These developments, in tandem, led half a dozen other Arab League states to develop informal economic and quasi-diplomatic relations with Israel decades before the Abraham Accords. Over 50,000 Israeli tourists a year had been visiting Morocco before the Accords (expected to grow to over 200,000 a year post-Accords) 1 and, according to the Manufacturers Association of Israel, about 200 Israeli companies were already doing business in the UAE before the Accord 2 —primarily in the fields of medical equipment, telecommunications, and security. It was the Iranian threat that prompted the Gulf States to formalize the already existing de facto relationship. This development gave both Morocco and Sudan a good excuse to do the same for their own economic and development policy reasons. As we see, in the Middle East, the political/economic hipbone is indeed connected to the economic/political thighbone. But first, we must debunk the “Evil of Oslo” myth and demonstrate how it benefited both Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel
The architects of the Oslo Accords were branded “Oslo Criminals” by Israel's right wing because of subsequent Palestinian terror. But casualties do not determine the historic success or failure of political initiatives. According to the Israeli Knesset website, “The War of Independence caused heavy Israeli losses: More than 6,000 dead including almost 4,000 soldiers—almost 1 percent of the total population” (in other words over 2,000 civilian deaths).
3
In the six years following the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit and the outbreak of the Second Intifada, approximately 1,100 Israelis (military and civilian) were killed out of a population of over six million.
4
By using casualties as a measure of success or failure the War of Independence was a bigger failure than the Madrid/Oslo process. This is not a conclusion that any serious person can come to. Israel's benefits actually began with the Madrid Conference in 1991, the prologue for Oslo.
The Soviet Union reestablished diplomatic relations. Subsequently, Russia enabled over one million Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel. China and India established diplomatic relations in 1992, introducing an explosion of mutual economic activity. East Asia is now Israel's second biggest trading partner, after the European Union (EU), having surpassed the United States. Trade with China has increased from 50 million U.S. dollars a year in 1992 to twelve billion dollars a year in 2020.
5
Trade with India grew from 200 million a year in 1992 to eight billion dollars a year in 2020. The resultant economic dynamism enabled Israel to absorb the one million Russian Jews whose engineering and scientific skills contributed substantially to Israel becoming Startup Nation and Silicon Wadi. Seventy-one countries established (or reestablished) diplomatic relations with Israel between 1991 and 2000, including 30 African and six Muslim countries. These countries felt that if the Palestinians were talking to the Israelis why shouldn't they? The Vatican established relations in 1993. On the face of it, this seemed a rather banal diplomatic step, but really constituted a theological earthquake of historic import. There are well over one billion Catholics in the world and their Church just declared that a Jewish state was officially kosher. Considering that, for millennia, official Catholic doctrine preached that Jewish statelessness and suffering were God's punishment for not accepting Jesus, this recognition was a momentous historic event. Israeli trade offices opened in Morocco, Oman, and Qatar, and the Gulf States canceled the Arab Boycott in 1994. The wave of foreign investment that followed Oslo can be partly attributed to both these developments. Formal peace was established with Jordan in 1994; the second Arab League member to do so. This reinforced the decision of many of the above-mentioned 71 countries to restore or establish relations with Israel. Israel's free trade agreement with the EU was upgraded, thereby significantly improving Israel's competitiveness in EU markets. Israel's population increased by 35 percent from 4.7 million to 6.3 million during the 1990s (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2010). The UN General Assembly's Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism was revoked by General Assembly Resolution 48/49. Many Israeli sports branches, having been barred by Asian Sports Associations due to the Arab boycott, were accepted into European Sports Associations.
Critics of my analysis of Oslo have claimed that all of the above would have occurred in the course of time and that I have confused correlation with causation. I have no defense against this kind of accusation other than to refer to the justifications for these steps by the interlocutors themselves. It seems to me that unsubstantiated speculations about what might have happened in any case are not as robust an argument as the chronologies of what actually happened.
Palestinians
Many self-appointed guardians of the purity of the Palestinian cause have condemned Oslo as a Palestinian Versailles or a Palestinian Munich, rather than as a major achievement of international legitimization which could have served as a foundation for further progress in the fight for Palestinian nationhood but for the corruption and incompetence of the PLO and the revanchism of Hamas. Major, not insignificant, Palestinian achievements since Madrid/Oslo have included:
The creation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which was internationally recognized as having Palestinian self-governance over the vast majority of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip. This could have enabled the Palestinians to begin building robust national institutions. Regrettably, this has not yet occurred. The absence of effective Palestinian institutions has become one of the biggest obstacles to any peacemaking progress. The inherent inability of the PNA to be a serious interlocutor in any negotiation, let alone being able to embrace something as nuanced as Ben-Meir's proposal, is another reason to apply my strategy of the indirect approach. The internationally recognized diplomatic status of the PLO as the exclusive interlocutor with Israel regarding permanent-status negotiations. In effect, this grants the PNA state-like status; i.e., juridical (if not de facto) equality with Israel. Initial massive financial aid from the EU and the United States (some of which had since been discontinued because of Hamas terror and PLO corruption). Inclusion in the EU's European Neighborhood Policy along with Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—further strengthening its international status. By 2000, 138 of the 193 UN members had established formal diplomatic relations with the Palestinian “state-on-the-way”—up from 94 before Oslo. As a consequence, Palestine is now recognized as having observer status in the UN. The direct and indirect benefits to Jordan (and by extension to its predominately Palestinian population) consequent to the Oslo process were well documented in Ben-Meir's (2022) article.
As with my claims regarding how Israel benefited from Oslo, Palestinian purists will claim I have confused correlation with causation. Once again, I have no defense against this accusation other than to refer to chronology and expert analyses at the time.
What We Can Do
Events in Ukraine in 2022 present us with two immediate opportunities to reinforce the positive geopolitical trends generated by the Abraham Accords as well as create a multitude of opportunities for unmediated contact between Israelis and Arabs.
A natural gas pipeline from Saudi gas fields, through Jordan, to hook up with Israel's existing pipeline to Ashkelon. The EU (preeminently Germany) would be responsible for building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility off the coast according to the most rigorous environmental standards. Prominent American environmentalist Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute has calculated that LNG shipped from Qatar to Europe is one-third as polluting as piped gas from the Siberian gas fields—a 4,000-mile distance through poorly maintained and leaky gas pipes. One might assume that LNG derived from gas through high-quality pipes and shipped from Israel would be, at the least, one-fourth as polluting as Russian gas. A geopolitical benefits multiplier might be to build the LNG plant off of the coast of Gaza, but that would depend on another proposal I will make shortly. Israel's High-Tech sector is chronically short of engineers, computer scientists, and programmers. Israeli companies employed up to 20,000 Ukrainian remote working techies before Russia's invasion. Some 1,000 Palestinian engineers and computer scientists in the West Bank and Gaza are also employed by several Israeli companies; these Palestinian techies have provided services even in the middle of the various conflagrations with Israel. The Israeli companies have not met their employees in Gaza but report that, when hosting their West Bank colleagues in their homes in Israel, the mutual fears and hostilities quickly evaporate. INTEL, which just invested another ten billion dollars in Israel, has been hiring engineers and other techies in Jordan to service its various Israeli installations and research centers. A member of my extended family in the Galilee (who runs his business out of his home) employs techies as far away as Nigeria. (A Nigerian entrepreneur has recently set up offices in Israel to promote the use of Nigerian techies in Israel.) Israel's need for non-Israeli techies and the potential to leverage this need into a real geopolitical winner and instrument for peacemaking are enormous. Given the collapse of the Ukrainian human resources (HR) pipeline, Israeli Hi-Tech is in HR hell. At the same time, Jordan and Egypt, as well as the Palestinians, have droves of skilled, underemployed people. The UAE has been investigating ways to invest in Israeli Hi-Tech. One way would be to finance the establishment of comprehensive Hi-Tech Human Resource Centers in Ramallah, Amman, and El Arish employing 10,000 Arab techies in each center (30,000 overall). They would be dependent for their European standard of living on the economic dynamism of Israel while interacting with Israelis on a daily basis in a professional and unmediated way. This would be building the psychological, cultural, and human foundations for peace more than all the well-televised visits of heads of state. Given that the Abu Dhabi Ports Company manages numerous ports and industrial zones, they might also be persuaded to build a port in El Arish, similar in size to the one at Ashdod, to service Israeli importers and exporters. Another geopolitical benefits multiplier might be to build the port off of the coast of Gaza, but that would depend on the proposal I referred to previously regarding LNG and detailed below.
Further Steps
Because of the war in Syria and the inability of Jordan to access Lebanese and Syrian ports, Haifa has become Jordan's de facto Mediterranean port. Israel's Red Sea port in Eilat has tremendous territorial limitations while Jordan's Red Sea port at Aqaba has room to become a major international one. A Red Sea Port Authority, coordinating the traffic and environmental challenges of the Aqaba and Eilat ports, could become an integral part of an Aqaba/Eilat Development Authority that would develop the ports and regional tourism, with mutual development of Arava agriculture—turning the Arava into the Imperial Valley of Europe. An outgrowth of this would be a comprehensive Red Sea Development Authority, which would include Egypt and Saudi Arabia, guaranteeing the peaceful development of the entire Red Sea. The seeds for this authority already exist. In 2018, Saudi Arabia created the Red Sea Development Company, ostensibly to construct a gigantic project—initially as a unique tourist destination but ultimately a super modern city at the mouth of the Red Sea. It seems to me they should be ready to play a central role in promoting all the developments noted in this section. Their concern to get Israel's approval for Egypt's return of the islands in the straits of Tiran to them is an indication of their vital interests in this regard. Indeed, this kind of on-the-ground Saudi/Israel cooperation could be one of the levers for Saudi Arabia to formalize its relations with Israel as the UAE did.
Establish a Dead Sea Development Authority—including Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian representation—that would coordinate mineral extraction and tourism while ameliorating the environmental challenges of the rapidly shrinking water level. This authority could be the first seed of Ben-Meir's ultimate confederation concept. It would entail Israel foregoing some of its present relative economic advantages at the Dead Sea in favor of a greatly increased overall economic benefit—not to mention the geopolitical paybacks.
Create a unified Tourism Authority to market and coordinate tourism—a Tri-State Tourism Authority would include Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
Encourage the Arab Oil States (with the help of the United States) to establish an Ivy League-level research university which would include an Arab Institute of Technology, equivalent in quality to M.I.T., in Jericho, Palestine. The Arab world is devoid of quality universities (not one is listed in the top 500). There are thousands of Israeli and Arab academics working at universities around the world who cannot find work in their home countries for various reasons and who could live in Jerusalem and Amman, respectively, and staff such a university. Studies would be conducted in Arabic and English. Students would come from all over the Arab world. As with the HR centers mentioned above, the unmediated working relationship of the intelligentsia is a necessary component of building the psychological infrastructure for Ben-Meir's idea.
A similar initiative could be sponsored in the field of medical care—a Middle Eastern Mayo Clinic, serving the Middle East and Africa, and staffed by overseas Israelis and Arabs as well as Jewish and non-Jewish medical experts on sabbatical. Health care-oriented foundations such as the Gates Foundation might find this an interesting concept to invest in.
All of the above would be practical steps within the five-to-seven year reconciliation period Ben-Meir (2022) wisely suggests we allow for the development of this process. The unmediated, interpersonal work relationships between Arabs and Jews necessary to make these ideas work will do more to de-demonize the “other” than all the holding hands, We Shall Overcome workshops, seminars, and conferences the human mind can conceive.
Gaza and the Settlers
Mitigation must include, first and foremost, alleviating the economic and social stresses on the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. I believe the Gaza dilemma offers us a real opportunity to make progress in the confederation scheme. The EU, United States, and relevant Arab states could propose the following deal: doubling the land mass of the Gaza Strip by reclaiming land from the sea and building the aforementioned port and LNG facility, as well as a desalination plant, a power station, and an airport on the reclaimed land in exchange for Israel annexing all the land west of the security barrier. Excluding Jerusalem, there are approximately 450,000 Jewish residents of the West Bank, less than 100,000 of them east of the security barrier. In other words, about 350,000 of them live on 2 percent of the land contiguous to Israel proper. The Palestinians have already agreed that these areas can be annexed to Israel in return for an equal amount of land from Israel contiguous to the Gaza strip—the well-known land swap concept. Given Egypt's vital security concerns regarding the anarchy in Gaza and the fact that they are the only open door to the outside world available to the Gazans, they have a very central diplomatic and political role to play in making such a deal possible.
The deal would greatly ameliorate Gazan economic stress while making the settler problem more manageable than it appears now; especially since several thousands of those living outside the barrier belong to demographics that would not resist leaving their settlements if the compensation they received assured them a similar quality of life elsewhere. These include most of the settlers in the Jordan Valley, ultra-Orthodox settlers, and even individuals in ideological settlements who find themselves in desperate economic straits, unable to make a living where they live and not being able to afford to move because they cannot sell their house. No Israeli government is politically capable of buying these settlers out before a peace agreement. The U.S. government would also find it politically difficult to initiate a fund for this purpose. But the EU could. This step, combined with real pressure on the Israeli government to stop building settlements outside the barrier, would result in a process whereby within 10–15 years the real number of settlers on disputed land would be minimal. These arrangements must include:
Conditioning all future American aid and access to EU markets on Israel refraining from any further building, for whatever reason (including so-called “natural increase”) on the eastern side of the barrier. Aid and market access should be suspended automatically if even one brick, let alone an additional settlement, is built in this area. Settler leakage of whatever scale should be met with zero tolerance. Conditioning all further aid and access to EU markets on Israel providing equal status before the law to Arabs and Jews in the remaining occupied territory. This means robust measures to limit settler thuggery and Israel's commitment to prosecuting to the full extent of the law any criminality on their part, including: destruction of orchards, fields, and agricultural equipment, as well as attacks on Arab persons and property (homes and automobiles). This means equal enforcement by the Israel Defense Force on illegal buildings, etc., and insisting on American observers to ensure these rules are enforced.
Jerusalem is, of course, a distinctly separate and much more complicated issue that will only be settled in the final stages of the confederation plan. Ben-Meir's proposals sound eminently reasonable to me. I believe, however, that both sides will only be psychologically ready for these proposals as the end result of a process of gradual mutual cooperation wherein people have gotten used to the idea of working together for the common good.
The “Refugee” Problem
One of the reasons that the Camp David talks broke down concerned the issue of the Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian leadership affirms the “right of return” of these refugees to Israel according to the UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Israel counters that this would mean the destruction of the Jewish State and of Jewish self-determination. The Israelis believe that, since self-determination is defined as a right in the UN Charter, Resolution 194 runs counter to the UN's own Charter. Most think Palestinians realize there is no way that Israel is ever going to give in on this issue. Yet the Palestinian leadership cannot submit to the “right of return” as long as so many Palestinians live in the squalor of refugee camps. The solution is to make the Palestinian “refugee” problem a non-issue by turning them into middle-class consumers in their present places of residence. How?
The EU and the United States could join in an integrated project to generate a 10 percent yearly economic growth rate in Jordan over the next 10 to 15 years. Sixty percent of Jordan's citizens are Palestinian. They constitute the largest Palestinian refugee population. Jordan has over 90 percent literacy and over 15 percent of its population has a post high school education. Economically they may be part of the undeveloped world; sociologically they are part of the developed world. In other words, they have the HR to support such a growth rate over a sustained period and to become a modern middle-class society relatively quickly. A vastly improved standard of living would lessen grassroots pressure regarding the actual “right of return,” thus providing greater diplomatic flexibility. There are about 400,000 Palestinian “refugees” in Lebanon. Their camps are more internment than refugee camps. Unlike Jordan, the Lebanese permit no Palestinian integration into Lebanon. The Palestinians are not citizens and have no rights as citizens. They live lives of complete squalor with no hope whatsoever. Not surprisingly, this group of people is the most radical both regarding terror and the “right of return.” The UN, the EU, and the United States must pressure Lebanon to grant them full citizenship. In return, the EU and the United States should declare these camps “tax-free zones,” enabling free access to all goods and services produced in the camps to European and American markets. A special investment bank should be established to generate such economic activity. As with the Jordanian example, within 10–15 years these people would become middle class and lessen the grassroots pressure on Palestinian leadership regarding the “right of return.” In support of these two steps, Israel should forego the 3.5 billion U.S. dollar aid package from the United States and propose that 2 billion of this should be dedicated to Jordanian economic growth and 1.5 billion to Lebanese refugee camp economic development. This aid constitutes significantly less than 1 percent of Israel's Gross Domestic Product and many Israelis (including myself) view our constant pleading for this aid to be a national disgrace, given that Israel is a developed country and could easily make up this so-called loss of revenue by slightly increasing Israel's value-added tax. A more logical and politically acceptable solution, of course, would be to eliminate the self-evident inefficiency in Israel's byzantine and often corrupt bureaucracy. All aid to Lebanon and Jordan should be conditioned on both countries granting Palestinians living in their countries full citizenship with equal access to work, education, and housing—especially those still living in refugee camps. Since 1948, monies directed to the refugee “problem” by way of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have been quadrupled—that given to Europe, per individual, under the Marshall Plan (Clawson 2002)—yet these people are, for the most part, still living in squalor. Perhaps it is time for the West to initiate a mini-Marshall Plan they manage themselves to resolve the material plight of those Palestinians in refugee camps. Resolving the Palestinian plight would be much cheaper than perpetuating it by way of UNRWA.
UNRWA is the elephant in the room. It is as big an obstacle (if not bigger) to peace as the settlers. It is a major factor in the Palestinian propensity to never say yes to anything (especially the Palestinian rejection of the 2000 Camp David proposals). It is an enabler of the corruption infecting Palestinian society (think of Mobuto and Marcos as a comparison). Endemic corruption is a disincentive for a corrupt leadership to actually make progress on the peace front—it is much easier to steal in anarchy. UNRWA actually manufactures refugees on an industrial scale—handing out refugee status to any descendent of an original Palestinian refugee. Yet, according to international law, a refugee is someone who had to flee his or her country of birth and as yet does not have citizenship or legal residence in another country. Descendants of refugees cannot inherit refugee status. A third-generation Palestinian lawyer legally living in Michigan or Canada is not a refugee. Descendants of refugees that have not acquired citizenship or legal residence are stateless persons, not refugees. UNRWA is an obstacle to peace and should be absorbed by the UN High Commission on Refugees.
Sometimes intellectual clarity has a place in resolving problems. This requires delineating the difference between “The Right of Return,” “The Right of Self Determination,” and a “Law of Return.” Rational Israelis in 2022 have little problem with Palestinian self-determination and their desire to create their own state, or with them adopting a “Law of Return” to that state (on the Israeli model). But if they have a right of return to anywhere in historical Palestine because their forefathers came from there, then the settlers can claim a right of return to anywhere in historical Israel because their forefathers came from there. The settlers will turn “The Right of Return” argument on its head.
It is time for the peacemakers to get practical; to acknowledge the laws of irrational human behavior as they do the laws of nature. Forests do not pop into existence in all their full-grown glorious majesty; neither does peace. Both grow slowly out of tiny seeds planted and nourished. I offer the above as seeds that might potentially grow into Ben-Meir's (2022) vision.