The panacea for peace between Israel and the Palestinians presented these past few months has been separation. The simple, two-state solution.
Many, including political and diplomatic leaders from various governments around the world, have been developing plans that in one way or another include some type of separation. Think tanks are busy trying to hammer out working papers on how to separate the Israelis from the Palestinians and create a long and lasting peace. Proposals are being written, conferences and forums are being conducted. All in an effort to create a workable plan of separation for unwilling and mostly non-supportive parties who will then have to live with the unworkable compromise.
Separation has become more and more popular as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem that has euphemistically been labeled “the Middle East conflict.” The United States and other Western democracies have become even more and more concerned of late because this particular conflict is viewed as a stumbling block to the world’s fight against terror.
Israeli-Palestinian issues must be resolved. Despite what Osama bin Laden proclaims, however, this particular issue has very little to do with the problems of Al Qaida. The problem does, however, fit onto the larger picture of terror facing the world at large.
All this being said, the suggestion of separation is a mistake in solving the issue of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
The idea is an old one. The notion that good fences make good neighbors is an important tool in international diplomacy. It works on the United States-Mexico border. But that is a different situation.
In this conflict using separation as a resolution is, historically, geographically and geopolitically both misplaced and misapplied. There are too many shared flash points, too many areas and shared sites of import of religious and historical import. There is too much overlapping of history, society and even culture — not to mention economy and finance. To separate would starve the Palestinians.
Most Israelis do believe that there should be and will be a Palestinian state. The only questions are within what borders and how the Palestinian state will impact on the state of Israel’s security.
And most Palestinians desire an independent state wherein they will exercise and fulfill their desire for and right to self-determination. The central question facing Palestinians is just how much of their dream will be fulfilled with the reality of statehood.
Separation is bad, it is bad for everyone. It will require thousands of miles of fences cutting back and forth and zigzagging around this community and over that field, excluding this road and including that tree. The policing on both sides of the fence will be exorbitant financially and impossible and exhausting practically. Some estimates place the fence length at twice the north-south length of Israel.
And then there is the problem of Jerusalem. There are certain places that just cannot be divided easily. Today, people and neighborhoods cannot be as easily split as they were for the 19 years under Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967. Jerusalem is too important an issue for everyone. The policy of Israel since 1967 was to make certain that Jerusalem could not easily be split.
For Israelis, especially for those on the political right, separation means totally relinquishing hope of control over the traditional biblical areas of Hebron and Nablus, places where the biblical patriarchs wandered. It means limited access to holy sites and unsafe travel to the settlements through Palestinian controlled areas that will abut the highways. For people living in those areas, it means living in the place of your dreams, but getting there by driving through the nightmare that is the constant threat of sharp-shooting snipers and drive-by shootings.
Palestinians will reject the implementation of separation because it means a significant compromise on the total land that they envision for their state. The Palestinians will also reject separation because, as they know, all Jewish settlers will not be evacuated from the land.
But most importantly, Palestinians will reject separation because it means three states — not two.
It means that there will be a Jewish state called Israel within the pre-1967 borders. It means that there will be a Palestinian state on the remaining areas. Significantly, and this the Palestinians understand even if the rest of the world does not, it means that there will be another Jewish state nestled within the Palestinian state — a state composed of Jewish settlers. And, more than anyone or anything else, settlers are the nemesis of the Palestinians.
Actually, separation would make the situation even worse than it is today. More trying, more dangerous, more untenable, with continued terror. Probably less terror in Tel Aviv, but more terror on the roads and more in Jerusalem.
Separation is not the answer. Not for the interim and certainly not for the long run. So what’s next?