Parries → Tony Blair and the Four-State Vision 

When I read of Tony Blair’s part-time residence at Jerusalem’s American Colony Hotel, I am moved. I see the quintessential contemporary Englishman lose his inbred European anti-Semitism and his anti-Americanism, doing what’s right for his country and helping ensure his country does right for the world, despite strong cultural forces in Britain against this (forces he admittedly stoked). He lost his high office as a result and is now engaged as fully and deeply as he can be in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I wonder if he’s studying Arabic and Hebrew. If I saw him in the street I would stand and applaud.

I am however going to be terribly arrogant here—this is my blog after all—and state that there is one and only one formula for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and until Blair becomes a champion of it, he merely pours his prodigious abilities into a hopeless cause, thereby possibly exacerbating the problem.

Nonetheless, I see this exacerbation only as a great good, because when it comes to the big things we must necessarily fail many times before succeeding. There will come a moment during Mr Blair’s fruitless efforts when he himself will recognize that the two-state vision needs some modification and refinement. This moment can come at any time because Blair’s mission is unconstrained by any term limits and he can therefore devote the rest of his working life to it. But as soon as it comes, we will make great strides forward with his help.

What’s wrong with the two-state solution is that it willfully ignores the fact that the Palestinian cause is not really a mirror image of the Zionist one, that the Palestinians, for a variety of reasons, currently lack the will to a nationstate. When leftists talk about colonialism and imperialism, they conveniently forget that the nationstate itself is a European idea foisted upon the rest of the world.

On the other hand, Palestinians obviously don’t want to be ruled by an Israeli military occupation, as happened from 1967 to 1992 and continues in a somewhat curtailed form to this day. So the solution to the conflict must be some sort of middle ground, a Palestine comprised of most of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and perhaps portions of Jerusalem that is neither a fully sovereign nationstate as we know it nor a territory of Israel.

The fundamental insight required is that the Palestinian issue is not one for Israel alone. Jordan sits on the vast majority of Palestine, and its population is mostly Palestinian. Although this fact has been successfully ignored since the inception of the Palestinian national movement in the 60s, it is nonetheless central to the issue and is necessarily a part of any true solution to the conflict. Israel’s Likud party was ridiculed for stating the notion that Jordan is Palestine, but while this is not fully true, it is nonetheless somewhat true. (At any rate, it is more true than saying that Israel is Palestine, which is what Palestinian maximalists and European leftists say.)

Ownership of the Palestinian issue is also shared with Egypt. Egypt is a giant Arab nation and Gaza borders it alone, and indeed Gaza was Egyptian before 1967. And yet Egypt has also been able to wash its hands of the Palestinian issue (which, incidentally, Egypt itself forged in the 1950s as a weapon against Israel).

Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy seems to be based on an understanding of this fundamental point. By withdrawing from Gaza, Israel was essentially telling Egypt that it could no longer sit in the peanut gallery; either Egypt steps into this newly-created vacuum, or the Iranians will—and the prospect of Gaza as Iranian-backed Islamist agitator should be even more alarming to Egypt than to Israel.

But whether by deliberately calling Israel’s bluff or being simply unable to choose self-interest over Israel-hatred, Egypt did precious little to manage Gaza’s security, resulting in a coup by Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that would overthrow Egypt’s own regime if it could.

So apart from a few public squawks from Jordan’s king that He will accept no preemptive moves by Israel on the West Bank, statements so cryptic to Western ears that they made no blip, there has been no movement since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza towards an understanding that the Palestinians are a joint Israeli/Jordanian/Egyptian issue.

As soon as that happens though, a viable and achievable solution will swim into focus: Palestine as a joint protectorate of Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Israelis already living there will be able to stay and also acquire Palestinian residency cards. Palestinians living there will hold the same cards, together with either Egyptian or Jordanian passports. The administrative cooperation required will bring Egypt, Jordan and Israel together as parents, forming a bedrock alliance. And with investment and stability emanating from these three nationstates, backed enthusiastically and materially by the US and the EU, the Palestinians will have it very good indeed.

This, it seems to me, is a four-state vision that Tony Blair could come to embrace—and enable.