US the only obstacle to a free Palestine
Israel is a client state that needs to be given the appropriate instructions
What should we do "the day after"? Maybe we could hold a million-strong march on Washington demanding that the USA end its enabling of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. As I discussed previously, this would have to mean being part of the process of replacing Israeli troops with an international force in preparation for Palestinian statehood. The US government would have to end obstructionist UN vetoes, and tell their Israeli clients that the game is up and their fullest cooperation is non-optional. A UN mandated force from countries with no interest in the region would move in with rules of engagement to ensure peace and security, and protect Palestinians from other Palestinians, and Palestinians and Israeli settlers from each other.
This would not be the bogus "peace process" of yore. It would be a UN supervised implementation of statehood embracing the whole of the 1967 conquest, give or take any mutually beneficial land swaps. East Jerusalem would be the capital with the small old city section under UN control.
Of course, Netanyahu and his friends will tell you that the Palestinians do not want a two state solution. That is not true. The latest Palestinian opinion poll (see pages 20-21) shows considerable support for a separate state. 51 per cent support a separate state based on the 1967 borders. A further 21 percent support a separate Palestinian state but in confederation with Israel. Only 10 per cent prefer a unitary state based on equality of the two sides. That leaves 21 per cent who did not know or did not want to say. Those who want to drive the Israelis into the sea would be some unknown proportion of this latter group. Of course, there is no support for the fragmented Bantustans that "moderate" Zionists have in mind.
This is not to say that agreeing to a two state solution means abandoning the view that there should be a one-state solution. However, the latter is not an obstacle to the former. And, of course, given future economic and political development in the region, there is no reason to think that Israel has a permanent future in its present form as a Jewish ethno-state.
As for continued hostilities, that would depend mainly on Israel, and how it conducts its extensive economic and other dealings with Palestine. This in turn would depend on the price that it would have to pay for any delinquent behavior. As far as I can see the Palestinians would have no reason to upset the apple cart, and then there is the incentive of not losing Israel's cooperation nor foreign trade, aid and investment more generally. In the case of freelance hostility, a Palestinian state could be more effective in thwarting whatever terrorist threat still remains.
What about the Israeli settlers? There are around 700,000 of them or 7 percent of the Israeli population, including about a quarter of a million in East Jerusalem. This means they are now about 20 percent of the West Bank population. That is a similar proportion to that of Arabs living in Israel. I imagine the more hostile and fanatical settlers would be deported. Many would choose to leave rather than live under the new arrangements while many others would remain. Most should be entitled to Palestinian citizenship and they would live under Palestinian law. There would still be a lot of physical separation and there would need to be considerable devolution to local government. Preventing strife between the two groups would have to be a top priority, particularly given that Zionists would be sure to exploit any grievances to the hilt.
What about the form of government? Would it be a rerun of the corrupt and autocratic Palestinian Authority or more of a bourgeois democracy where the government is accountable to electors? I think the latter has real prospects. To begin with, we know from surveys that Palestinians and Arabs generally want accountable democratic governments. Then there is the dynamics of the profoundly new conditions. With the USA no longer finding its policies and "interests" greatly at odds with the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians, it would no longer have a reason to oppose democracy, and at the same time the Palestinians would no longer have to suppress their desire for democracy out of fear of losing aid, investment, trade and security guarantees if they elected the wrong government. This is a phenomenon that Amaney A. Jamal from Princeton University explores in her book Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All?.
It is something that could play out in other Arab countries as well. Jordan, which Jamal discusses at length, could possibly be the first cab off the rank. In that country there is an electorally popular Islamic movement that is very opposed to the US-Israel Axis and thinks that Jordan should not be its compliant lap dog. However, if the US were to pull the plug on Jordan, the effect would be disastrous. So even people who are hostile to US policy in the region feel that it is best to go along with King Abdullah II's authoritarian regime for fear of US retaliation. In a word, they are subject to US blackmail. So if the US's foreign policy in the region ceased to be so utterly odious, there would no longer be popular resistance that needed to be suppressed.
The ability of Islamists to mellow is shown in Kuwait where they have a quite benign attitude to America after it rescued them from the Iraqi Baathists three decades ago. And even their political opponents have no problem with their full participation in elections, and they jointly nudge the local Sheikh in a more democratic direction.
By setting up political parties that aim to win elections, Islamists certainly want to be part of the democratic process. However, their preferred version of democracy would impose a social conservatism that Europeans abandoned some time ago. This means that that secular elements, particularly those in the elite, would have to accept the possibility of a more Islamic minded government and stop supporting military coups of the sort we have seen in Turkey and Egypt, for example. This is a point that Shadi Hamid stresses in his book The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea.
This way of looking at things is very much at odds with the popular notion that democracy is not possible in Muslim countries because any government you vote in will refuse to be voted out. This is something of a myth. The only example in the MENA region that I can think of is the Palestinian Authority which has refused to hold fresh elections for fear that Palestinians would vote for people not to the liking of Israel and America.
Perhaps it is too much to hope for such a big change in policy, given firstly the eagerness of the bourgeoise to never pass up an opportunity to show that it is no longer fit to rule and secondly the complete absence a political left that could mobilize public opinion for good policy on this or anything else.