The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Thinking Outside the Box
By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 748, February 21, 2018
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-palestinian-conflict-thinking/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A creative solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
must start with appreciating the advantages of the hybrid spatial model that
has emerged in the West Bank, notably the governmental powers granted to the
Palestinian Authority as far back as January 1996 in Areas A and B, and
discarding the stillborn paradigm of total separation.

In a recent lecture on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, New
York Times journalist Thomas Friedman wondered how the highly creative state
of Israel had not found a creative solution to the conflict beyond the quest
for the best way to separate from the Palestinians.

In order to think outside the box, one has to be familiar with the structure
of the box and its intricacies, especially with the lid. As far as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned, four basic assumptions, firmly
endorsed by the EU and the US administrations since the days of President
Clinton, have kept the box tightly closed:
-The solution to the conflict must be geographically confined to the
territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
-The solution requires the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian
state.
-The border between Israel and Palestine must be based on the 1967 lines
with minor revisions.
-The West Bank and the Gaza Strip must constitute a single political entity.

Leaving no room for negotiations, these four assumptions have led time and
again to a dead end. Gaza’s economic plight, for example, could have been
substantially relieved had Egypt been prepared, with extensive international
assistance, to expand the strip into the open spaces of the Sinai desert in
the direction of al-Arish.

The prevailing, conventional Israeli and international discourse has placed
Israel at a conceptual crossroads between only two possibilities: preserving
the Jewish-democratic state by withdrawing to the June 4 lines with small
adjustments (that is, retaining the settlement blocs) or ending up with a
conflict-ridden, binational state leading inevitably to an apartheid regime.
Creative thinking of the kind sought by Friedman should be able to salvage
Israel from the trap of having to choose between these polar and impossible
alternatives.

The creativity of Einstein’s theory of general relativity could provide
inspiration for escaping this conceptual fixation. Einstein did not offer
new laboratory discoveries. He simply proposed a different general theory in
which the invariance of the speed of light becomes a law of nature. In
comparable fashion, creative thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
entails recognizing that the narrow landmass between the Mediterranean Sea
and the Jordan River cannot be divided into two fully-fledged states.

It is not only the Jewish settlements in the West Bank that make it
difficult to partition the Land of Israel. The difficulty stems from a range
of geophysical factors: communal, ecological, transportation-related,
economic, and those involving water, sewage, and electricity
infrastructures. The difficulty also arises, of course, from the security
aspects of partitioning the land.

Since the time of the September 1993 Oslo Accord, two different models have
emerged. In one, situated in the West Bank, the territory in question has
been organized – through its division into Areas A, B, and C – into a kind
of Palestinian-Israeli coexistence marked by varied forms of governance. The
second model, situated in the Gaza Strip, entails a binary division: “They
are there, we are here,” with a fence, a rigid and uncompromising boundary,
between Israel and the Hamas-controlled territory. The path to creative
thinking begins with pondering the different patterns of security activity
that have emerged in Gaza and the West Bank. In the Gaza model of total
separation, Israel’s use of military force requires considerable resources:
tanks, warplanes, and, from time to time, high-intensity military
operations, along with huge investments in counteracting the extensive
tunnel network. In the West Bank model, by contrast, security is organized
in a hybrid spatial balance with daily meeting points between Israelis and
Palestinians, as a dynamic of economic cooperation that includes an Israeli
civilian presence makes the massive use of military power unnecessary. When
it comes to quality of life, the West Bank model turns out to be far more
beneficial to both sides.

A creative solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must thus start with
appreciating the advantages of the hybrid spatial model that has emerged in
the West Bank, notably the governmental powers granted to the Palestinian
Authority as far back as January 1996 in Areas A and B. Thinking out of the
box, then, means discarding the stillborn paradigm of total separation in
the West Bank.

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This article was first published in Hebrew in Israel Hayom on February 5,
2018.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for forty-two
years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly
a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the
Greg Rosshandler Family