Is Israeli-Palestinian confederation all it’s hyped up to be?

Thousands of Palestinians pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem’s Old City, marking the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha

Shira Efron and Evan Gottesman write in +972, “The idea of building an Israeli-Palestinian confederation as a framework for resolving the conflict has a natural appeal today, even among the traditional two-state camp on both sides of the Atlantic. It should therefore come as no surprise that J Street, the prominent pro-two-state lobby, spotlighted such proposals at its annual conference this past month.”

“Confederation represents an attempt to reconcile the contradictory impulses that inform support for both two-state and democratic one-state proposals, and shows an earnest effort to introduce new ideas in a policy arena too often characterized by stale thinking. That, however, does not necessarily make it the best option to follow.”

“It is certainly easy to view the two-state solution as passé. The possibility of formal annexation of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli government’s ongoing process of creeping annexation through settlement expansion and other policy means, combined with a divided, opaque, and authoritarian Palestinian leadership, all coincide to make the idea of partition appear ever more distant.”…

Construction work for new housing in the ultra Orthodox settlement of Modi’in Illit. Jan. 11, 2021

“Confederation is posited as a response to the status quo, one that obviates the need to address many of the key problems with conventional two-state frameworks: settlements and settlers seemingly too numerous to evacuate, the division of Jerusalem, and the rights of Palestinian refugees. Yet in sidestepping these problems, confederation proponents must also acknowledge the new and serious complications that would arise from this model.” (more…)