Palestinian Statehood: Debate How, but Not If

As Palestinian and Israeli leaders grapple with the peace process, Palestinians living in the Palestinian areas are trying to figure out their own future. What seems clear is that the Netanyahu administration, like most Israelis, has yet to make up its mind about what they would like to see as the final status of the Palestinian territories. Sure, we all know what the Likud leader and half of Israel don’t want to see: a Palestinian state. But what is their vision of Palestinians and Palestine in 10 or 15 years?

I asked this question of the late Yitzhak Rabin in June 1993. I was the first Palestinian journalist to interview an Israeli prime minister for a Palestinian newspaper. In that interview, Rabin said that he would like to see some kind of entity in cooperation with Jordan. That was before Oslo and before Israel’s recognition of the PLO. The prevailing feeling after that famous handshake and recognition was that Israel was willing to accept a Palestinian state, eventually.

Palestinians accepted the vagueness in Oslo based on the trust that had developed between Yasser Arafat and Rabin. The five-year interim period was meant to allow Rabin and Shimon Peres to sell the idea of Palestinian statehood to Israelis while allowing the PLO to prepare the institutional and economic groundwork for a Palestinian state.

Now all this has disappeared. Rabin and Peres are gone, and we are back to Square 1 as Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors are holding out on a couple of percentage points of Palestinian lands without any genuine interest in reaching agreement on the long-term status of the Palestinian territories. Of course listening to the Israeli rhetoric, one is led to believe that if the issue of land is transferred to the final status talks, that somehow it will be resolved.

The Israeli government says that agreeing to two or three more percentage points of land puts their country in danger. If that is the case, why would shifting this important issue to the final status talk help? Would Israel be in less danger during those discussions? The answer has come from none other than Israel’s strategic ally, when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright disagreed in London with the amount of danger posed to Israel by returning this sliver of Palestinian land.

The security issue is no more than an excuse. It has not been made by the Israeli minister of defense or the army. It is obvious that the opposition to the return of Palestinian territories comes from the settlers and right wing. And it is precisely these racist settlers living in the Palestinian lands who are and will continue to be the main stumbling block to a lasting peace. Short of a miracle in which the settlers agree to live under Palestinian rule, Israel will have to either annex the Palestinian territories or make the current apartheid situation a permanent one. Neither option will be agreed to by the Palestinians or the international community.

Which brings us back to the issue of Israel’s long-term vision for the Palestinian territories. Despite continuous political discussions, rarely do we hear any serious talk about the long-term status of the Palestinian areas even from an Israeli point of view. The only exception was Joseph Alpher, who issued a study at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University about the various alternatives, concluding with the serious possibility of a Palestinian state as the eventual agreement.

So the problem between Israel and the Palestinians is not whether there should be 11% or 13% for the second redeployment. Palestinians have made Palestinian statehood their clear goal. The next 12 months will see a concerted Palestinian effort to make this a reality. Israel, the U.S. and the rest of the world have two choices: Either they acquiesce to this eventuality and be part of a historic reconciliation, or they watch from the sidelines as statehood happens.