In the rush of refreshing statements heard lately,
the warnings have come from the length of the
political spectrum - from Ami Ayalon to Ehud
Olmert and the Geneva accord initiators and Jewish
intellectuals in America - Israel faces "a threat
that could spell the end of the Jewish state,"
meaning the danger of the binational state. Within
a few years, there will be a Palestinian majority
between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and
according to Olmert "more and more Palestinians
are no longer interested in a solution of two
states for two peoples." The result is "a disaster
- one state for two people."
<snip>
One such alternative is a system that recognizes
collective ethnic-national rights and maintains
power sharing on the national-central level,
with defined political rights for the minority
and sometimes territorial-cantonal divisions.
That model, called "consociational democracy"
has not succeeded in many places, but lately
has been applied successfully to reach
agreements in ancient ethnic-national conflicts
such as Bosnia, through the Dayton agreement,
and Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday
agreement. That should be food for thought for
the experts who contemptuously wave off the
binational option.
Why did arrangements based on one state for two
peoples work in various methods and places -
South Africa, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland -
while the Oslo accords, based on territorial
division, achieved at the same time,
collapsed?
The option of power sharing and division into
federated cantons is closer to the model of the
territorial division of two states but it
avoids the surgery, so it allows the existence
of soft borders, and creates a deliberate
blurring that eases dealing with symbolic
issues, the status of Jerusalem or the
questions of refugees and the settlers. The
mutual recognition allows preservation of the
national-cultural character on the national
level and preservation of the ethnically
homogenous regions. Everything depends, of
course, on recognition being mutual and
symmetric.
<snip>
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/363062.htmlcomments:
Four models proposed here, for the archetectural design of a binational state. The ethnic identity and the community of each is maintained, while some common government prevails to mediate and integrate the two as democratic etities, while sharing some features, like economy and water resources. Sounds a lot like the basis for that already exists.