For the Long-Run: Avoiding the Temptations of the Status Quo, Rancour, and Self-Pity

Abstract

This article updates the author's article which opens this issue, and responds to the other contributions. Composed over the winter of 2011–2012, the opening paper was commissioned for a private conference held in Europe. The difficulties academics from Israel or Palestine (and elsewhere) experience in convening to discuss the subject matter explain why the conference was private. It was not officially conceived as a ‘track-two’ contribution to the possibilities of a peace initiative from the second Obama administration, or from the European Union, but it was intimated that such possibilities might shape the paper.

Notes

1. See, for example, the recent analyses of the International Crisis Group, written by Nathan Thrall.

2. The components of control originally analysed by Lustick—segmentation, dependence and co-option—inside Israel’s 1967 borders apply with even greater force to those in the occupied territories (1980).

3. Benny Miller remarks here that ‘democracy is a strategic necessity for Israel, not only an idealist aspiration, as Israel is so much dependent on the West in every respect’.

4. On the MacBride principles, see McNamara (2009).

5. See notably Mearsheimer and Walt (2006), Mearsheimer and Walt (2007). Walt's most recent judgement on US policy-making on our topic is not shy:

Obama's well-intentioned efforts to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians were a series of humiliations: Israeli settlements kept expanding, Gaza kept getting pummeled, moderate Palestinians were discredited, Hamas grew stronger, and the two-state solution that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama all favoured is now dead (if not quite buried). Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry wasted a lot of time and energy on this problem and got bupkis. (http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/07/obama-was-not-a-realist-president-jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-obama-doctrine/)

6. See, for example, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/27/arafats-ghost/.

7. See, for example, Nimni (2005) for the Austro-Marxist tradition and its evolution. On condominia, see O’Leary, Lyne, Marshall, and Rowthorn (1993).

8. On questions of land ownership and access within Israel inside its 1967 borders, see Lustick (1980) Ch. 4 passim.

9. My views on explanations and justifications of partitions, and a general rebuttal of their merits, may be found elsewhere O’Leary (2007, 2011).

10. This argument is made in O’Leary (2014) and elaborated in a work-in-progress, provisionally entitled Passages from Colonialism to Consociation: Understanding Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press). Miller's opinion that settlers cannot develop strong emotional attachments to what they see as their new homeland is contestable—Ulster Unionists, South African Boers and Americans of British stock quickly developed deep attachments to new lands.

11. Briefly, the argument developed in O’Leary (2001) is that consociational devices are required in federations which lack a Staatsvolk; no argument is made against federalization per se; McGarry and I agree that consociational theory and arguments have developed since Lijphart's pioneering work (see O’Leary, 2005) and consider that power sharing at the centre may be vital in holding federations together, as confirmed in large N tests by Cederman, Hug, Schádel, and Wucherpfenniig (2015); and both McGarry and I think that Horowitz's prescriptions do not aid national minorities, and may be exploited to divide them.

12. Greater detail may be found elsewhere, for example, O’Leary (2013).

13. There may be multiple layers of power sharing, for example, Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia within Belgium, within the EU.

14. In short, these principles are not exclusively consociational.

15. For the case under discussion, I have found a master’s thesis to be the most ambitious foray, Bloch (2004). See also Benjamin Wasserman, Forever Ripening: The Recurrent Binational State Idea in Israel. Mandatory Period to the Present, Political Science Senior Honors Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2012.