A binational state in Palestine: The rational choice for Palestinians and the moral choice for Israelis

International Affairs

Volumn 73, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 31-58

  Tutunji, Jenab ^a   Khaldi, Kamal ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040007365     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2623549     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Israel has annexed Jerusalem and Prime Minister Netanyahu is seeking to renegotiate the agreement struck by his predecessor over Hebron, which may still result in an Israeli withdrawal from most of the city.
2. Ofira Seliktar, 'Conceptualizing binationalism: state of mind, political reality, or legal entity?', in Ofira Seliktar and Ilan Peleg, eds, The emergence of a binational Israel: the second republic in the making (Boulder, CO, Oxford: Westview, 1989), p. 28.
3. Ibid., p. 14.
4. See Arend Lijphart, Democracies: patterns of majoritarian and consensus government in twenty-one countries (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1984).
5. Regrettably, in this article we cannot deal with the unwieldy topic of the vast numbers of Palestinian refugees or those in exile or diaspora, as they now describe themselves, both because that would take us too far from our subject and because it is not possible in the space available to treat that matter adequately.
6. It should be pointed out that rational choice does not concern the choice of ends, but of means to ends, or the choice of strategies that are most efficient in securing one's goals. Economists (and political scientists by derivation) speak of maximizing expected utility, which depends not only on the pay-off associated with an outcome, but also on the probability of securing that outcome. This involves weighing expected costs against expected benefits. Consequently, it is ultimately an empirical question whether a strategy is rational or not, regardless of whether the person or group pursuing that strategy believes itself to be maximizing utility in so doing. The present relevance of these observations lies in the fact that the pursuit of strategies leading to an independent Palestinian state may not be rational if it can be demonstrated either that the sought benefits will be lower than those than can be attained through a different strategy or that, even if the benefits are substantial and superior, the probability of attaining those benefits is quite low.
7. Abba Eban, 'Peace: the only alternative left', New Perspective Quarterly, 10: 1, Fall 1993, pp. 56-7.
8. Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, The peace process and terror: conflicting trends in Israeli public opinion in 1995, JCSS memorandum no. 45, Feb. 1995, table, p. 13.
9. JCSS memorandum no. 45, table p. 18.
10. Jan de Jong, 'Palestine after Oslo: borderlines between sovereignty and dependency', in Beyond rhetoric: perspectives on a negotiated settlement in Palestine, part two (Washington, DC: The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, August 1996), p. 21. De Jong is an urban planner based at the St Yves Legal Resource and Development Center in Jerusalem.
11. JCSS memorandum no. 45, p. 20.
12. Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 6: 3 (a bimonthly publication of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Washington, DC), p. 3.
13. Meretz would no doubt prefer an independent Palestinian state to a binational one, but given a situation of continued occupation, it will not support the suppression of individual Palestinian rights because of its commitment to democracy. It nevertheless would like to minimize the number of Palestinians from the occupied territories who would remain under Israel, rule.
14. From The Third Way's platform for the elections for the 14th Knesset, as made available through an unofficial translation by the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.
15. See de Jong, pp. 10-14.
16. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
17. Also see Simcha Bahiri, 'The economy of binational Israel', in The emergence of a binational Israel: the second republic in the making (Boulder, CO, Oxford: Westview, 1989), pp. 169-85.
18. Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: the political economy of de-development (Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995).
19. John Page, 'Economic prospects and the role of regional development finance institutions', in Regional economic development in the Middle East: opportunities and risks (Washington DC: The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, December 1995), p. 8.
20. Ibid., p. 13.
21. Ibid., p. 11.
22. Ibid., p. 13.
23. Ibid., p. 11.
24. Krugman is Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the author of Peddling prosperity: economic sense and nonsense in the age of diminished expectations.
25. Paul Krugman, 'The myth of Asia's miracle' Foreign Affairs, 73: 6, November/December 1994, reproduced in Competitiveness: an international economics reader (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994), p. 72.
26. Pedi Lehman, 'Land for peace: on the inner-Israeli controversy over peace in the Middle East', Aussen Politik 47: 2 (English edn), 1996, pp. 165-74.
27. 'Generation gap: young Palestinians vow to derail accord', Wall Street Journal, 13 Dec. 1994, A1.
28. Results of public opinion poll: poll no. 22, 29-31 March 1996, prepared by the Survey Research Unit, Center for Palestine Research and Studies, pp. 19-20.
29. Ibid, p. 20.
30. Results of public opinion poll no. 23, 28-30 June 1996, Center for Palestine Research and Studies. pp. 5-6.
31. See Ofira Seliktar, 'Conceptualizing binationalism: state of mind, political reality, or legal entity?', in The emergence of a binational Israel: the second republic in the making, Ilan Peleg and Ofira Seliktar, eds, p. 12, for a discussion of sectoral democracy'.
32. See Arend Lijphart, 'Typologies of democratic systems', in Comparative Political Studies 1, April 1968, pp. 3-44. Examples of consociational democracies are Switzerland, the Netherlands, Lebanon and Malaysia.
33. Financial Times Survey on Israel, 15 July 1996, p. 1.
34. Ian Lustick, 'The political road to binationalism: Arabs in Jewish politics', in The emergence of a binational Israel: the second republic in the making (Boulder, CO, Oxford: Westview, 1989) pp. 97-124.
35. A federation refers to a single state with undivided sovereignty; a confederation refers to a union of two sovereign states.
36. A compilation of many of his essays on Zionism and Palestine is, A land of two peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
37. Quoted in Marc Ellis, Beyond innocence and redemption (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 46.
38. Albert Einstein, Out of my later years (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1956), pp. 263-4.
39. See Marc Ellis, Beyond innocence and redemption: confronting the Holocaust and Israeli power; creating a moral future for the Jewish people (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).
40. Ian Lustick, For the land and the Lord: Jewish fundamentalism in Israel (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1988), p. 76.
41. Ibid., pp. 78-9.
42. For an examination of stereotyping see Louk Hagendoorn, 'Ethnic categorization and outgroup exclusion: cultural values and social stereotypes in the construction of ethnic hierarchies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16: 1 (January 1993).
43. Abba Eban, 'Israel has no alternative to Rabin's realism', New Perspectives Quarterly, 13: 1 (Winter 1996).
44. 'Splits in Hamas help spark blasts in Israel', Wall Street Journal, 6 March 1996, A 13.
45. Ian Lustick, For the land and the Lord, pp. 81-2.
46. A land of two peoples, p. 89.
47. Marc Ellis, Ending Auschwitz: the future of Jewish and Christian life (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 51-2.
48. Anthony D. Smith, 'Culture, community and territory: the politics of ethnicity and nationalism', International Affairs, 72: 3 (1996), p. 445.