The one-and-a-half state solution continues to emerge
Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 12:05AM 
We're seeing this same story again and again over recent months: Israel is internally conflicted on how to make peace with Palestine in general and clearly has plenty of reason to resist any accommodation with Hamas in Gaza, and yet, a viable state and partner continues to emerge in the West Bank:
Rather than cursing the Israeli occupation, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank executive, has shifted the focus to building up the Palestinian state. Fayyad's government has improved security -- as Israeli army generals have acknowledged -- and the rule of law while also introducing far-reaching reforms in education, health and the economy. In its annual report on assistance to the Palestinian people, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates that gross domestic product in the occupied territories rose 6.8 percent in 2009. The recently unveiled second-year phase of this plan is titled "home stretch to freedom."
Palestinians have launched a public relations campaign, "I am a partner," aimed at the Israeli public. Featuring key Palestinian negotiators, it seeks to debunk the myth that there are no peace partners on the Palestinian side.
Geographically split states just don't work--outside of federated, networked America, that is. At some point, it just seems to make sense that Israel will cut some deal with the WB and reduce its Palestinian problem to just Gaza. The West Bank, by most accounts, is doing everything possible to make this an inevitability through internal development that'll need just some reasonable accommodation from Israel to make it far more robust.
So the question becomes, What does it take for Israel to split that difference for good? Forget the big outline. Just tell me how this thing works in the WB.
Reader Comments (1)
A "one and a half state solution" is now perhaps more likely than not (a la the "Clinton Plan," just without Gaza). If the Arab League then blesses it (along with an Israeli-Syria deal), if the U.N blesses it, and if the increasingly self-confident country of Palestine (the recipients of a few billion dollars in peace treaty-related dough) starts turning to its most natural ally, Jordan, for economic/social development (a more natural ally than "Gaza") what in the hell is Hamas going to do? Hated by Israel, hated by leaders of Palestine/West Bank, shunned even by the Sunni Arab League at that point, limited in the amount of commerce and aid they can receive from Iran, they are likely to enter into some kind of deal with Palestine/West Bank, and they will be bargaining from a condition of weakness. There are grounds for optomism, because I believe that Snowcroft / Bzyzinski / James Jones/ and others who have Obama's ear have convinced the President (who no doubt has come to the same conclusion himself) that it truly is a core U.S. security interest to be seen as having brokered a fair deal and an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If the two parties do not head in that direction, the Quartet etc (as per Bzrzinski analsysi) will effectly impose a settlement, backed by the U.N. In that case, in the final analysis, Israel will not dare to reject it, and stand literally alone in the world....