"Right to Exist" ( Was Re: [lbo-talk] Re: Friedman)

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Sep 27 20:17:06 PDT 2003


On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Jordan Hayes wrote:


> If there's "one state" and "right of return" and universal suffrage,
> then very quickly the current government will be voted out of power;
> those who will be voted in will have no interest in what is the current
> "Jewish State of Israel" ... End of story. Right?

Well, this is purely a fantasy question. But as a fantasy, the answer is, (a) this needs a bit of cleaning up, and then (b) No.

On the cleaning up side: if, in this fantasy world, there is one state and universal sufferage, then the right of return question would be electorally irrelevant. Your vote would count no matter where you lived in the Mandate of Palestine.

The "right of return" is a question about where people live within that territory (whether within or without the "Green Line") and whether they can return to their old homes. It is a hugely heated question -- but not for your fantasy. In fact I think we would have to assume that it had been settled in some way constitutionally for such a system to ever have been set up.

This brings us to


> then very quickly the current government will be voted out of power;
> those who will be voted in will have no interest in what is the current
> "Jewish State of Israel" ... End of story. Right?

This conflates the "government" (which gets voted in and out of power) with the form of the regime (which is established by a constitution, and is usually much harder to change -- common safeguards are requiring a 2/3 vote to change it or something similar).

Latly, if in you are posing this fantasy as something that in an alternate universe might be set up tomorrow, the Jews living in the unified territory between the river and the sea still currently outnumber the Palestinians living in that area roughly 6 million to 5 million. Given current trends, that is projected to hit even around 2012, but it's not there yet.

Although, now that I think about, if you assume the refugees camps from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan would be largely emptied into such a state, that would even it out immediately. But it wouldn't be an overwhelming majority in either direction.

So now, after setting these system parameters, it is perfectly possible to imagine your fantasy system being set up and not being voted away. The Israelis and the Palestinians are both very divided groups. If you can imagine the two sides actually coming close enough to agree to set up such thing, they you must be able to imagine a central bloc who would unite in one form or another at the ballot box against the extremists on both wings. And if the constitution had the usual safeguards -- and I imagine it would have to have more than the usual safeguards to ever come into existence -- then there is no reason why such a system shouldn't theoretically be able to enjoy many years of fantasy existence.

But if you want to pursue such an abstract line of thought, I think the question that would make it interesting would be, Can we imagine a constitution for such a state that the two sides could agree on even in an ideal speech situation? Is a Middle Eastern Belgium even conceivable as a thought experiment? And if so, what would be its principles and mechanics?

Michael



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