From Sedek: A model for Kufr Bir’im (Credit: Zochrot)
The first English-language issue of Sedek, a journal produced by the Israeli organization Zochrot, is one of the most exciting things I’ve read recently. The collection of essays is the result of the sincere engagement of Palestinians and Israelis with one another around the Palestinian right of return. One can take issue with some of the ideas presented in the essays (and I will) but the cooperative spirit that suffuses the works is as significant as the content it’s produced.
The first essay is impressively comprehensive. It describes how the right of return can be implemented in stages while balancing individual and collective rights.
The authors of the essay (Norma Musih and Eitan Bronstein) draw upon Salman Abu Sita’s geographical studies to argue that there is ample room in Israel proper to resettle the refugees. I was lucky enough to catch a lecture by Abu Sita on the topic here in Beirut a few months ago. He projected slides with maps showing where historic Palestinian villages lay, and where the major urban centers in Israel are today. The maps demonstrated clearly that the Palestinians could resettle the geographical spaces they used to inhabit without too much hassle (large urban centers were the exception).
There isn’t any doubt that the moral and just case for resettling Palestinians in and around their villages is unassailable. But I wonder whether it’s the wise choice – are there better choices that will more positively impact the future viability of the state (subject to the refugees’ consent)? Is settling mostly urban refugees in rural environments practical?
There is an emotional appeal to resettling destroyed villages, but what does that mean for social life after the return? Most camps (at least here in Lebanon and in Gaza and the West Bank) are more densely populated, and closer to urban centers than the villages may be.
Also, one of the global trends observed throughout the twentieth century is the mass migration of people from rural to urban centers. Usually they’re following opportunity which is more concentrated in cities. Any decision to resettle Palestinian refugees in rehabilitated villages needs to take the history of migration into account. Decision makers have to evaluate whether there’s an opportunity gap between rural and urban centers in the state and what impact that will have on the resettled refugees’ lives.
Finally, the environment must be taken into account. Studies should be conducted to help us understand what impact rehabilitating the villages will have on the water table, animal migration patterns, air quality, etc… We have a historic right to resettle our villages, but we also have a responsibility to ourselves and future generations to prevent environmental degradation. Is there a balance between the two?
One thought that persisted when I was reading the document is that refugee absorption may not be as orderly as the authors envisage.
I think that before the refugees can return, the Zionist government will have to be dissolved and reconstructed (the Sedek constitutional outline is a great start); the one-state solution will antecede the return. But what’s to stop the refugees in Lebanon from amassing at the border and demanding their return immediately? (And should they be stopped? Why? Who will tell them?)
Relatedly, there isn’t enough of a focus on the actions other countries in the region may undertake on a unilateral basis. I hope that Lebanon is much less racist and sectarian by the time we’re in a position to implement the return, but it may not be. A deal needs to be made with the countries that share a border with Palestine/Israel to ensure the welfare of the refugees above all (Sami Hermez talks about what a deal may look like here).
My final issue with the first essay relates to Stage III. The authors envisage a weak state where each of many communities “will be the equivalent of a state, in the sense that it will be able to create its own social and cultural structures.”
This is OK in theory, but the vision quickly becomes problematic for me when the authors write that curricula “in each school would be determined by the community-state that runs it. The national government would have the authority to reject curricula (if, for example, they encouraged racism), but would not have to approve them.”
In my view, if the one-state solution is to have long-term viability, the state needs to be a strong one (which doesn’t mean overbearing or internally coercive). That means that a uniform curriculum ought to be applied. Of course, language differences will result in some curricular deviations, but every student should be taught the same version of history, for instance. The idea is to develop a multicultural state that respects particular cultural differences, but simultaneously seeks to develop a group (national) identity that endures.
Just as importantly, curricula should be tailored to permit students from Palestine/Israel to compete internationally (the Haredim have to be taught occupational skills). The country will have every opportunity to become a regional economic powerhouse if its graduates leverage their access to the Arab world and the West. This can be the country’s comparative advantage in lieu of natural resource wealth. But it needs an education system that is modern and uniform.
The other essays in the collection are very good and well worth reading. But I want to engage with Shir Haver’s essay, Economic Aspects of the Return of Palestinian Refugees, on a practical level.
I agree with Haver that the influx of refugees will result in strain on the state initially but will ultimately yield growth through diminished unemployment rates, increased consumption, and greater labor diversity. Haver’s discussion is empirical and well-reasoned and I only have two more points to add to it:
1. Returning refugees can be employed in resettlement and infrastructure developments. I don’t think that individual compensation for refugees is a good idea. Instead, the money ought to be allocated to job-creating activities (like building apartment blocks). The jobs will be the result of the needs of the returning refugees themselves and therefore cannot be said to reduce opportunity for others (itself a weak argument, as Haver demonstrates). Government debt will increase in the short term (unless the Europeans fund everything) but that debt will be offset by a broadened tax base in the medium and long term.
2. The occupation’s economic warp in the West Bank and Gaza will presumably cease to exist in a one-state scenario. That means that growth based on entrepreneurialism, increased operational efficiencies (yielded by freedom of movement, for instance) and other factors can be expected to create new opportunities for returning refugees across Palestine.
Haver notes that the Israeli welfare state (for secular people) is disintegrating. This is something that alarms me personally. The state has a responsibility to safeguard human rights. And unlike many Americans, I believe healthcare, higher education, and retirement benefits (to protect human dignity in old age) are human rights; people are entitled to them. A progressive income tax in a capitalist society can provide all of these things if society insists upon it. Israel’s economic liberalization policies in the nineties helped reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, but they also increased the country’s wealth gap.
Pernicious economic policies that favor the rich are difficult to roll back because of the nexus between money and power. But the kind of society-wide restructuring that will result in the one-state solution and the refugees’ return may provide an opportunity to break from American economics and adopt a more Scandanavian model for society. Think of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine in reverse (or not, depending on your perspective). This will be necessary for preventing the emergence of another plutocratic state in the Middle East (or indeed, in the West).
There are other small issues that one can and must discuss. But the proposal document as a whole is remarkably solid I think. This collection of essays is a victory for liberal thought in an environment that is increasingly fascist. And the fact that it was written in good faith by a diverse group of people alone makes me hopeful. Their cooperation is a model for the kind of state that’s worth building.
A lot of the proposals cannot be enacted in the immediate term, but others can. The Israelis are faced with the formidable task of explaining to their countrymen that the return is not only inevitable, but desirable – that Israel is in the midst of the Zionist dusk. Zochorot’s work is a good start. But others must undertake the process of humanizing contemporary Palestinians to Jewish Israelis.
For us Palestinians, the process of humanizing the other in preparation for return can begin today as well. It’s very difficult to ask Palestinians in Gaza and in Lebanon to begin thinking of life in one state alongside Israelis, but that’s the kind of thing that will ease the return’s implementation.
I may be criticized for drawing ‘equivalences’ when I say that both sides must humanize the other (“We’re not the party that massacred 1400 people recently”). But the question now is less about the responsibility imbalance and more about the concrete steps that need to be taken to implement a vision. Israelis can do a lot here too; it’s hard to describe the impact of seeing Israelis on a flotilla to Gaza on a television in Shatila.
