Two States or Not Two States? Leadership and Peace Making in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Abstract

The debate around the viability of the so-called ‘Two-State Solution’ and the perspective of an alternative ‘One-State Solution’ began to attract renewed the attention after the collapse of the Oslo process. We suggest that instead of debating the viability of rival constitutional schemes, a more fruitful approach to the issue of peace making in Israel/Palestine should focus on the structural elements of the picture more than on future possible outcomes of the diplomatic process. This article focuses on the role of the two leaderships by analysing their historical background, discourses and policies in order to understand to what extent the debate on the TSS/OSS dichotomy reveals the hidden logic of the alternatives. Our aim is to describe the ‘primordial soup’ that enables discussion and decisions with respect to the different scenarios addressed by the debate. We conclude that the TSS/OSS alternative hardly identifies meaningful coalitions for peace making and the attainment of either of the two solutions seems to be unlikely without a dramatic change the very identity of Palestinian and Israeli leadership; the rhetoric about the ‘missed opportunities’ of negotiation contributes instead to obscure the resilience of the status quo.

Notes

¹ The best known blueprint based on the concept of TSS is the Geneva Initiative, at http://www.geneva-accord.org.

² See for example the examination of Israeli policies in the West Bank presented by Shlomo Gazit (2003). Ample documentary evidence of electoral platforms, government guidelines, plans and territorial blueprint can be found in Lukas (1992), Hirsh and Lapidoth (1992), Benvenisti and Khayat (1988), and on the website of the Israeli foreign Minister (http://www.mfa.gov.il). For a discussion of the failed Camp David summit of 2000 – and of Israel's proposal for the final status agreement – see Pressman (2000), Enderlin (2002), Ross (2004) and Swisher (2004).