JERUSALAAM – JERUSHALOM:
PALESRAEL AS A SINGLE STATE SOLUTION:
THE FEDERALIST PAPERS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
By Biko Agozino
"... Israeli Jews and Palestinians are irrevocably intertwined demographically...Palestinians and Israelis interact, through antipathy and hostility, but physically they're in the same place...this is something that can't be changed by pulling people back to separate boundaries or separate states." Edward Said, interviews by David Barsamian on 'A One-State Solution', in Culture and Resistance, South End Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 5.
ABSTRACT:
This is a proposal for a lasting peace in the Middle East
based on the possible application of the principles of federalism that were
first outlined by the founding fathers of the US in the famous Federalist
Papers. I propose to sample a group of Jewish and Palestinian youth on the
applicability of the Federalist Papers to what I choose to call Palesrael, a
single state solution for both Jews and Palestinians united in a federal system
of government which would respect the autonomy of local governments while
guaranteeing the equal protection of all under the federalist constitution. I
choose to sample the youth because they will be the future leaders of the
country and also because the older population are sufficiently traumatized by
the conflict not to be sensitive to any new ways of thinking about innovative
solutions. The single capital city for the single state solution will therefore
be Jerusalaam or Jerushalom, call it what you may in your own dialect for 'City of Peace'! Seriously.
NARRATIVE TEXT:
In the year 2020, I would like to see a Just Jerusalem as
the capital city of a federal republic of Palesrael, I proposed in 2008 while I was a Professor of Sociology at the University of the West Indies. It was a proposal for a contest at MIT for a Just Jerusalem, not funded but slightly updated here. This proposal assumes that
both Jews and Palestinians are Semites with more in common than is apparent
from their sibling rivalry. The proposal is for Jerusalaam-Jerushalom to be
recognized as the capital city of one state, the state of Palesrael. This is
the best political scenario for a city like Jerusalem that is holy to many
different faiths and is being claimed by rival faiths: the federal capital city
status would enhance the sharing arrangements while federal presence would
guarantee equal protection of all.
The conflict in the Middle East has been rightly described
as the most intractable conflict of its kind that has bedeviled the world and
any solution to that puzzle is likely to contribute to global peace for the
benefit of humanity. The area occupied by Jews and Palestinians is arguably the holiest land on earth with
Jews, Rastafarians, Christians, and Muslims claiming every inch of the land as a
special place for their faith. It is ironic that the Holy Land is also the most
troubled and conflict-ridden, although religious fanatics might see this as
logical in the sense that the devil would be working overtime to ensure that
the holiest of places is denied the peace that all religious faiths preach but
often fail to practice adequately.
The conflict in the Middle East, like most cases of social
conflict, is not a religious conflict between God and Satan but a conflict that
is man-made and that is open to rational, empathic and creative resolution by
human beings no matter what faith they profess or lack of it. The federalist
solution as pioneered by Americans is effective because of the clear
distanciation between religiosity and the state or attempts to keep religion as
a private personal affair while leaving politics as the remit of elected
officials and democratic citizens alike. It is true that even Americans
continue to redefine the tensions between religion and the state as
fundamentalist groups mobilize to threaten aspects of secularism but the US is
exemplary in the ways that Native Americans, Christians, Africans, Jews and
Muslims, not to mention other faiths, unite to build a strong and democratic
federalist polity as a shining example to the rest of the world, the flaws of
America especially in international relations and domestic race-class-gender
politics not withstanding.
For those who are not familiar with the federalist papers,
it is important to clarify that it is a collection of mostly newspaper articles
written by some of the American founding fathers as part of the debate that
continued after the Pennsylvania constitutional conference. There were some who
believed that federalism was bad because the federal government could become
imperialist and thereby sabotage the autonomy of local government. They argued
for confederation to be maintained on the basis of a friendly association or
imperfect union among the willing states as was the case prior to the attempt
to engineer a ‘more perfect union’ through the federal constitution.
On the other hand, those who supported federalism argued
that the imperfections of confederation were obvious in the fact that some
states were using exclusionary measures to protect their own residents from
free market competition against residents of other states. States like Delaware
and Connecticut were almost about to go to war against the state of New York
over such issues as the imposition of import duties on chicken and timber!
Moreover, members of state militia were beginning to mobilize and take the laws
into their hands to pressure the central government to pay them better
remuneration but without a central government capable of defending the union
with a collective force or moral leadership.
Those in support of federalism argued that a strong central
government was essential for the defense of the polity against foreign invasion
while leaving the matters of law and order largely to the local government
authorities and to individuals who are granted the right to bear arms (more of
a duty in the Middle East). The federalists won the argument and thirteen
states initially ratified the new constitution and gave birth to the United
States of America. More states later joined the union and the strength of that
union was tested by confederates in the civil war when it was proven to be
adequately strong especially with the support of hundreds of thousand formerly
enslaved Africans who rallied to fight on the side of the union army.
As we watch the rain of missiles in the air and the harvest
of the mangled corpses of children, women and men who would rather live in
peace and prosperity; as we remember the pitiable image of Jews being dragged
off their homes by Jewish soldiers in order to demolish those homes because
they were built in occupied territories that had been ceded back to
Palestinians or watch Israeli bulldozers demolish the homes of Palestinians or bomb them for one reason or the other and as
Palestinians are forced into a ridiculous position of fighting and killing each
other in factional battles over the control of crumbs, I wonder if the American
founding fathers of God’s own country could lend a light to the Holy Lands by
applying the principles of federalism to the conflict.
The two states solution appears to be the compromise being
pursued after both sides recognized the right of each other to exist side by
side by side but there is doubt about the viability of two states with one
splintered and with the capital city still in contention by both sides that are
intricately tied together in economic, legal, political and social relations.
The idea of a single state solution has been raised occasionally by the Palestinians but the Israelis tend to see that as the worst
case scenario for fear that they might lose what some call a Jewish state which
Israel is not, being a secular state. I see the single state solution to be a win-win solution to
the crisis.
Jews can reside in any state of the federation and
Palestinians can reside in any state they choose. To some extent, this is
already true in the sense that there are Palestinians living in Israel just as
there are Jews in ‘occupied’ territories. Most countries in the world today are
multicultural and citizens are free to settle wherever they choose, whereas those countries that tried genocide and expulsion of the other tends to fail when multiculturalism works better. A federal
structure is best suited to do that especially by building settlements and
distributing them equitably to those who cannot afford to choose in the free market
but without creating urban concentration of poverty ‘projects’.
The federalist solution appears even more feasible given
that Jews and Palestinians are one Semitic people linguistically whereas the US is one of the
most multicultural countries in the whole world. If a country as diverse as
that could unite under a federalist constitution, there is no reason why a
people as homogenous as Semites could not unite under a federalist arrangement
that would respect the rights of all citizens to live wherever they could
afford to live and practice whatever faith they subscribe to while respecting
the rights of their brothers and sisters or else they would attract the might
of the federal government which should be equipped to guarantee the equal
protection of all.
Since the adult populations of the region have tried and
woefully failed to engineer a solution to this conflict despite expensive
militarization, terrorization, victimization, assassination, iron domes
securitization, nuclearization, apartheid, genocide, and hideous walls of separation, I am inviting young people
who are not yet old enough to vote, to apply the legendary ingenuity and
originality of young minds to the solution of the problem by borrowing from the
mistakes and successes of the American founding fathers but without the
prejudice of their oversocialization into exclusionary boundary enforcement and
ideological intolerance.
LOGIC OF PROJECT DESIGN:
I hypothesize that there are lessons in the Federalist
Papers for the resolution of the Middle East crisis between Palestinians and
Israelis. I propose to test this hypothesis by randomly sampling one hundred
and seventy young people under the age of 18, half being Palestinians and half
being Israelis, half male and half female, and assigning one of the Federalist
Papers to each to argue for and against the application of the views in each Paper
to the Middle East crisis. If Federalist paper number one is randomly assigned
to a Palestinian youth to argue for and against, then the same paper should
be randomly assigned to an Israeli youth to argue for and against. The responses will be compiled as the Federalist Papers for the Middle East.
The 85 Palestinian youth and the 85 Israeli youth will then
meet at a constitutional conference to draft a youth constitution for the
Federal Republic of Palesrael in which Jews and Palestinians will live side by side and happily
ever after. The draft constitution could be put to a referendum among young
people for a possible youth election and youth model government for Palesrael.
In 10 to 20 years, these young people would be the leaders of the new republic
and will get the opportunity to implement their peace plan if current leaders
of the beloved territory leave it until then. The resulting constitutions for Palesrael and the constitutent states and local governments could include the principles of structural equality by ensuring that half the senators will be Jews and half Arabs, half will be male and half will be female, if possible.
LIMITATIONS:
It is being assumed here that the young people would come to
an agreement that there are lessons and support for Palesrael within the
Federalist Papers. What if the youth reject the idea and opt to retain the
boundaries as they exist or continue expansionist fantasies due to the
entrenchment of the socialization of mutual hatred in their upbringing? Then
the experiment would end there.
However, because the experiment is designed to solicit views
for and against, it is reasonable to hope that the federalist option would
appear competitive if not more attractive in the end. Lack of funding for the
project is another limitation but a fraction of the funding dedicated to
sustaining the current violence would fund this project or we will rely on
volunteer youths and NGOs to pull it off.
With a Washington DC model for a Just Jerusalaam-Jerushalom,
there will be peace, justice and economic sustainability for all the citizens
of the federal republic of Palesrael even if all ills are not cured as is the
case with DC today. All the money being wasted currently waging a war without
end against brothers and sisters would be poured into human development instead.
Everybody wins 200% by gaining the state they cherish plus much more in the
whole federation from the river to the sea as is the case in the US. Only the people could decide how many
states to create as members of the new federation. Whereas federalism would not
cure all the ills of society, it offers more comprehensive and comprehensible
solution that will be sustainable and just.
INNOVATION
There is nowhere else the Federalist papers have been
debated and adapted for the drafting of the constitution of a new republic that
I know of. The American constitution has been remarkably successful in
attracting the attention of other nations that try to base their constitutions
on that model. Yet, none has based such a decision on a replication of the
debates that gave rise to the federal constitution in the US. If successful,
the project could be a model for the training of youth in political leadership
around the world and the model could also be applied to other conflict-ridden
regions of the world for global justice, peace and sustainable development.
Dr.
Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.
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