Two Peoples--One Land:
Federal Solutions for Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan
Daniel J. Elazar
Around the world more and more voices are being raised calling for recognition of the Arab-Palestinians' right of self-determination. Few would disagree that the Arab-Palestinians should have a place in the sun with sufficient authority and power to shape their own collective destiny. They question remains as to how this can best be done without jeopardizing Israel's survival and security.
The Problem of a Second Arab-Palestinian State
While Israel should be willing to take risks for peace, they must be prudent risks. There is the rub in arguments on behalf of a separate Arab-Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.1 There is little or nothing in the past behavior of the Arab-Palestinians to suggest that, other than a handful of moderates, they are likely to respond in a measured way to a measured Israeli offer of statehood. Instead, Israel's concessions are viewed by most of them as signs of weakness, not efforts at rapprochement.
The often bewildering shifts in relationships among Arab states and political leaders appear to most Westerners to be simply a chaotic melange of shifting alliances and seeming betrayals. Students of Arab politics, however, understand that this particular way of relating to one another is characteristic of Arab political entities from Bedouin tribes to the Arab summit and that there are indeed rules to the game. Those rules, however, are not those that non-Arabs would want to live by.2Those rules also make it especially difficult to accept any Arab agreement involving the concession of territory believed to be rightfully Arab as more than a temporary expedient, to be abandoned as soon as it seems possible to reclaim additional territory. Hence any Israeli concession in the way of a Arab-Palestinian entity west of the Jordan River must be accompanied by as close to iron-clad devices to prevent that as possible.
Had the Arab-Palestinians embraced less than a maximalist position on any number of occasions between 1917 and 1948, they could have had their Arab-Palestinian state -- an even larger state than those Israelis willing to do so are prepared to offer them now. In 1948 they could have had their own state in nearly half the territory of western Palestine. Yet they have always insisted on the maximalist position -- and they have always lost.3
Late in 1988, Arab PLO and PLO-related spokesmen for the Arab-Palestinians made a series of statements and declarations that made it appear that they had retreated from their previous maximalist position that called for the destruction of Israel and a Arab-Palestinian state in all of western Palestine. For the first time they publicly stated that they were prepared for a two-state solution, although it is not entirely clear whether even at this point they will be content with the territory occupied by Israel in 1967, not to speak of the border adjustments required to meet Israel's security needs. In their ambiguous statements, these Arab-Palestinians keep referring to the 1947 United Nations partition resolution as still binding, encouraging some to interpret the Arab PLO view to suggest that it is binding not only to the extent of embracing a two-state solution but also leaving open the possibility that the borders it defined should also be considered binding for any peace agreement.
Even these statements, directed to the non-Islamic world, were frequently accompanied by very different presentations in Arabic which reaffirmed the maximalist position and argued that the use of salami tactics such as first gaining a small Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and then using that state to pursue maximalist goals was what the Arab PLO had in mind. At this writing there is not yet any reason to simply take Arab PLO statements to the Western world at face value. They are still too ambiguous to be treated as more than a softening of the Arab PLO position. For example, while demanding self-determination for the Arab-Palestinians as a separate people -- despite the fact that they are an acknowledged part of the larger Arab nation -- the Arab PLO still refuses to recognize the Jews as a people, claiming that they are merely a religious group and hence not entitled as a people to self-determination.
Since the Palestinians in the territories have indicated that they overwhelmingly support the Arab PLO as their sole representative, we must take them at their word and accept PLO statements as the stated Arab-Palestinian position. A softening of the Arab PLO position allows Israel to consider more generous arrangements than might otherwise be possible, but it does not make it wise for Israel to consent to a separate Arab-Palestinian state west of the Jordan.
Those who advocate the establishment of a Arab-Palestinian state argue that Israel's military power is so overwhelming that should there be terrorist attacks from that state or should the state violate the peace agreement, military force could easily be employed to invade it and put an end to these violations. That is a delusion. First of all, it is impossible to invade a neighboring state for what the world considers to be trifling reasons, even if they may not be trifling from the perspective of those who suffer the consequences. Even major violations may not be subject to military correction if Israel's superpower friends object. We saw how this was so after the Israel-Egypt ceasefire along the Suez Canal in 1970. Almost immediately the Egyptians brought ground-to-air missiles up to the Canal to defend against Israeli air attacks in clear violation of the agreement. Israel could have wiped them out as they were being brought up and wanted to, but the United States indicated its strong objections so Israel refrained. Once entrenched and nearly invulnerable, those same missiles and others brought in their wake played a decisive role in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War three years later. Thus Israel could effectively use its armed forces only under the most severe provocation.
More than that, military operations cost lives. For Israelis, the life of each of their soldiers is precious. Difficult as the intifada has been psychologically and in terms of Israel's image, Israeli casualties have been very light -- a situation much preferable to the invasion alternative.
In presenting the best possible case for Israel's conceding a Arab-Palestinian state, it is suggested that unless we try it we will never know. But this is not a laboratory experiment. Once a Arab-Palestinian state is established there is no way back. It is an irrevocable step. Borders between states can be readjusted; balances of power can change. But in our world states themselves are sacrosanct. Should a Arab-Palestinian state be established, widely recognized, and admitted to the United Nations -- which it would be immediately -- even if it were to provoke Israel into a war in which once again the Israel Defense Forces would be successful, Israel would certainly have to withdraw and let the state of Arab-Palestine continue to exist, thus making any military victory pyhrric since it could not bring about a positive political result.
In other words, Israel would be acquiescing to a situation that could put it in an even more Sisyphean position than it is in now. Sisyphus, the mythic Greek figure, was condemned by the gods to roll a rock up a hill; as soon as he got near the top, he was fated to slip and fall, so the rock rolled back down. And this happened again and again.
This has been Israel's problem with regard to the neighboring Arab states. No Israeli military victory can be more than partial, since Israel cannot occupy Arab capitals and hold them until the Arabs sue for peace. Hence Israel has always had to withdraw with an interim agreement or to make peace under unfavorable terms, as with Egypt. At least all of those capitals have been at some distance from Israel proper. A Arab-Palestinian state next door would bring that Sisyphean situation into Israel's backyard.
This does not mean that territorial compromise would not be possible if the territories heavily populated with Arab-Palestinians were linked to Jordan. If that were the case, even in the event of another war and the necessity of further boundary adjustments, the possibility for negotiation would remain because Israel would not have to challenge the very existence of a state, only the location of its borders.
The establishment of a Arab-Palestinian state would require Israel to withdraw from essentially all the territories it captured in 1967 on the grounds that no truncated West Bank Arab-Palestinian state could possible satisfy the aspirations of the Arab-Palestinians. Unfortunately, such a total withdrawal would, from the first moment, endanger Israel's security. Israel would not only have to give up all chances of achieving strategic depth, but even minimum defensive positions. If Israel were to give back all the territories, there is some question as to whether there would be enough ground for IDF training maneuvers, much less room to station forces close enough to the critical points along the coast and near Jerusalem where they would be needed in case of attack in order to block the first assaults on Israel's population centers. While it might have been possible for the smaller armies with less equipment of the pre-1967 period to be so placed, the exponential increase in armament and military equipment, not to speak of the increased size of the forces more than twenty years later which require more space.
It is hard to say that doubling the seven miles between the Mediterranean Sea and the old Green Line near Netanya would create strategic depth, but at least it would be fourteen rather than seven miles. To achieve a mere twenty miles of "strategic depth" in Israel's most populated areas, it will be necessary to draw the new borders near the mountain crests of Judea and Samaria. We have seen how Israel suffered losses whenever it was surprised, as in 1973 and in 1987. Unless Israel has sufficient depth to contain those losses, it will be destroyed. And since everybody gets surprised at one time or another, Israel must never lack that depth.
It has been suggested that the Arab-Palestinians are likely to be constrained from taking advantage of their new position by the pleasures and the responsibilities of statehood that would preoccupy and ultimately deter them from risking what they have. There is no sign of that from their past behavior. It is true that people can change under appropriate circumstances, but we have all too many examples of peoples for whom statehood has not brought moderation, but simply more power to do mischief. When Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge took over Cambodia, they did not become responsible -- they simply used the power of the state to commit genocide on their own people. Two generations ago, many German conservatives supported Hitler because they believed that only he could stabilize the country and save them from the Bolsheviks. They argued that once he gained power, the responsibility of office would moderate his radicalism. We all know the result. To suggest that moderation will occur among the Arab-Palestinians is nothing more than a pious hope at this point, especially since the Arab PLO is now challenged by the Muslim fundamentalist movement, Hamas, that rejects any kind of Jewish state in "Palestine."
There are those who suggest that the establishment of a Arab-Palestinian state would provoke internal troubles for the new state as the local leaders confronted the diaspora Arab PLO leadership who would seek to move into a position of power. This indeed is quite likely, but there is no reason to believe this internal Arab-Palestinian dissension will distract them from making trouble for Israel. It may very well be that both sides will be tempted to seek a way out of their troubles through provoking a conflict with Israel, especially once their statehood is guaranteed by the world community. That is at least as much a feature of historical experience as the other scenario.
Perhaps most worrisome is what to do about the irreconcilables in a Arab-Palestinian state. Look at Ireland today. The Irish Republic has a peaceful, stable government with no desire to conduct a war with Britain or even with the Protestants of Northern Ireland, much as it may sympathize with the Catholics in that unfortunate province. Moreover, the Irish Republican Army is down to a tiny hard core of irreconcilables. Nevertheless, without circumscribing the civil liberties of its citizens to such a degree that no self-respecting Western government would do so, there is no way that the Irish Republic can totally suppress the IRA or keep it from using its territory as a base.
In any Arab-Palestinian state, there would be a far greater number of irreconcilables dissatisfied with the settlement, wanting to continue the struggle. Moreover, they would have a level of weaponry that so far has not been available to the IRA. hey could shoot missiles at airplanes landing at Ben-Gurion Airport about three miles from the Green Line, or, for that matter, rockets at the heart of Tel Aviv, another few miles away. All the Israeli coastal areas and the Jerusalem area -- where six out of seven Israelis live -- would be in the gun-sights of individual terrorists. It is unlikely that the Arab-Palestinian government would have either the will or the wherewithal to control these irreconcilables, especially if it were preoccupied with an internal power struggle that could well lead to civil war (as it did under similar circumstances in Ireland immediately after independence in the 1920's).
If an internal Arab-Palestinian power struggle develops, scoring points against Israel will most likely become one of its principal features. True, the Israeli army can retaliate. But we have learned from experience what the limits of retaliation are. Indeed, it is not sensible to retaliate for everything; when one side retaliates it only provokes counter actions. A state cannot go to war over every terrorist incident; on the other hand, people can be killed by any individual terrorist. Informal border raids by both sides are hardly the answer. Many Israelis remember the days when to walk through the fields of Netanya, a city on the Mediterranean coast 30 miles north of Tel Aviv, at night was to risk being murdered by terrorists who had come across the border from the area now full of Israeli suburban settlements. Few Israelis are prepared to go back to those days again.
Sober advocates of a Arab-Palestinian state try to protect Israel against such a situation by requiring that the establishment of such a state would have to be preceded by, in the words of Mark Heller, perhaps the most sober of them all, "an explicit, unambiguous Arab-Palestinian commitment to peace and to the renunciation of all further claims against Israel...by...the Arab PLO...and [this must] have active ratification by other Arab states."4
Advocates of a Arab-Palestinian state would require a comprehensive peace that would include Arab states' economic support for the new Arab-Palestinian state and, again quoting Heller, would require "closing down refugee camps and disbanding UNRWA" coupled with "the military neutrality of the Arab-Palestinian state,...limitations on the size, equipment and deployment of Arab-Palestinian military forces, consistent with internal security needs, as well as procedures for verification, monitoring and early warning." Heller would also require "a special regime for Jerusalem" and probably a transitional period for staged withdrawal of Israeli forces.5
All this is the minimum that realistic Israelis who are prepared to accept a Arab-Palestinian state would require. Indeed, most Israelis who would accept a Arab-Palestinian state call for its total demilitarization. Heller is more realistic; he understands that it is impossible to have a completely demilitarized state. But that is one of the reasons why so many Israelis object to such a separate state in the first place. For most Israelis, the conditions Heller lists are the minimum necessary for any kind of political concessions, much less a separate Arab-Palestinian state.
The economic viability of the Arab-Palestinian state is not the issue. So many non-viable states have been established with the assistance, or under the protection, of one or another of the world's larger powers that the point has become moot as long as there is some other state or group of states around to provide needed assistance. In fact, given the talents, energy and education of the Arab-Palestinians, it would be far from last among the Arab states. Still, as recent unsuccessful efforts on the part of the Arab-Palestinians to develop separate marketing arrangements with the European Community have demonstrated, finding a place in today's world economy is not easy, even where an energetic and talented population is involved. A state has to be competitive in a world where the competition is growing ever more fierce. It is precisely the lack of economic viability and limited opportunity for improvement that is likely to encourage some segment of an increasingly frustrated population to seek nationalist and irredentist solutions.
It has been suggested that continuing to allow Arabs to work in Israel will help matters. This is feasible (although it will be opposed by some), but it will also have to be accompanied by appropriate economic links in other spheres, especially in connection with trade, currency controls, worker benefits and the like. By the time we begin to add up those needs, we begin to move away from the idea of a fully sovereign Arab-Palestinian state into something like a confederation. This becomes even clearer when we add the necessary security guarantees and means of inspection and monitoring.
If there are the expected acts of terrorism by the irreconcilables, workers crossing the borders will have to be subject to careful search and screening similar to what is now done at the Jordan River crossings. To do this on a daily basis would be a hardship and added cost for everyone. The Arabs will feel demeaned and the Israelis will feel harassed.
Then there is the issue of Israeli settlements across the Green Line, which Heller ignores. Nearly 600,000 Jews now live in what the Arab-Palestinians and others refer to as the West Bank.6Approximately 60 percent of these Jews live in the new neighborhoods of Jerusalem built across the Green Line since 1967. Most of the remaining 40 percent live along the western border of Samaria. Still others are scattered throughout the Judean and Samarian highlands. Even assuming that the scattered highland settlements are expendable -- that they could be evacuated or removed either as part of a peace agreement or through natural processes of emigration once the territory is ceded to a Arab-Palestinian state -- Israel is not likely to evacuate Jerusalem neighborhoods or western Samaria under any circumstances. There would be very little sentiment even among the most forthcoming Israelis to concede those territories to a Arab-Palestinian state. That, in itself, would probably make the establishment of a separate Arab-Palestinian state impossible. The Palestinians would not give up their claims to those territories and the Israelis would not leave them -- for good reason. This, too, suggests that some other solution must be sought, even by those who want to provide the maximum possible self-determination for Arab-Palestinians.
Divisions Among the Arab-Palestinians
Politically the Arab-Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza can be divided into five groups:
The old elites -- the notable families that for generations dominated public life in their respective communities, and most particularly the heads of those families.
The old left -- which, since the days of the British Mandate, has been identified with the Communist party.
The active PLO supporters -- generally but not exclusively the younger leadership.
The fundamentalists -- a growing group, especially among students and intellectuals who are undergoing a religious revival.
Finally there is the vast majority of the working and middle classes who are relatively apolitical and basically try to go about living their private lives, even more so than in countries with a democratic tradition since they have never expected to be involved in politics.
The old elites and the old left are in decline. The notable families have been discredited as part of a general transformation of the quasi-feudal order which characterized Arab Palestinian society and indeed the Arab world as a whole. As ordinary people acquire greater education, new economic opportunities have opened up, supplemented by the political currents of modernization, the power of the notables has been significantly weakened. They have been additionally weakened because so many of those families were the mainstays of the Jordanian regime between 1948 and 1967 and continued to back the return of Jordanian rule in the subsequent decades, secretly if not openly.
The Communist left has become irrelevant as have Communist parties elsewhere. Their radical thunder has been stolen by others. The apolitical working and middle classes continue to be frightened into silence. Thus the field is left open for the Arab PLO and the fundamentalists to take over and to fight each other for control.
At the very least that fight would continue after the establishment of a Arab-Palestinian state. In this respect the spread of Muslim fundamentalism is most worrisome.
Given what we know about religious fundamentalism, of which Muslim fundamentalism seems to be the most extreme in its willingness to engage in political violence to gain power, the establishment of a Arab-Palestinian state, offering something very concrete to control, would intensify that conflict. More than that, the arrival of the diaspora PLO would probably lead to an alliance between the old elites and the apolitical working and middle classes against it, which would turn the struggle into a three-way affair, complete with assassination and terror, as has been the Arab-Palestinian habit in the past.
Those who advocate a Arab-Palestinian state are right about several things. One is that the Arab-Palestinians do need some kind of territorial political entity to satisfy their legitimate group aspirations. Moreover, it would be better for Israel if it were separated from the vast majority of Arab-Palestinians, who will never be happy as a minority living in a Jewish state and who, if they become a majority, would certainly change the Jewish character of the state.
On the other hand, it is also true that Israeli security requires an Israeli presence in all the territories west of the Jordan River. In addition, Jews should have the right to settle in all parts of Eretz Israel. Jordan, which occupies the eastern third of the historic land of Israel/Palestine also has to be considered. Its population is approximately 70 percent Arab-Palestinian, with Arab-Palestinians dominating the economy and occupying many of the key positions in the Jordanian government, outside of the army.7 More Arab-Palestinians live in Jordan than in the West Ban and Gaza. Most of the Arab-Palestinians west of the river do not want to be ruled again by the Hashemite kingdom. Given their experiences between 1948 and 1967, we can hardly blame them. On the other hand, the Hashemite dynasty will not last forever.
Israel need not acquiesce to two Palestinian states, one east and another west of the Jordan, in a land promised to it not only by God according to the Bible but by mandate according to the League of Nations, especially since the Arab PLO makes no secret of its grand ambition to take over the existing states on both banks of the Jordan and to consolidate them into one Arab-Palestinian whole.
Israelis have long since agreed, even if somewhat reluctantly, that the land that was once called Palestine by Europeans (including the land east of the river) should be partitioned between a Jewish state and an Arab state. Few Israelis have any objection to that Arab state being Palestinian. Indeed, most Israelis believe justice requires that the state be Arab-Palestinian. But that is a question for the Arabs to answer. The most we can do is to decide that if Hussein cannot deliver as a partner for peace, then Israel no longer needs to support him.
There can be no solution based on two entirely separate states -- one Jewish and one Arab -- apart from Jordan. Once Jordan is in the picture, then we can negotiation with the Arab-Palestinians about the division of the land; we can negotiate about how the territory west of the river will be used; we can try to reach an accommodation that will be far from ideal for both sides but as fair as possible under the circumstances.
New Realities in the Territories
Time does not stand still -- rather, it inexorably moves on, changing circumstances as it passes by. It is now well over two decades since the Six-Day War and the political realities which emerged in its aftermath for both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
Any new solution which is to be found to the Arab-Israeli conflict must take into consideration the situation as it exists today. The approaches used in the past are no longer applicable or realistic. The growth of Jewish settlements throughout the territories, and the web of economic integration and public services -- roads, water sources, electricity and communications lines -- all have contributed to weaving a connecting fabric between the territories and Israel that cannot be easily cut. At the same time, the existence of limited de facto joint rule involving Israel and the Palestinian residents of the territories, and Jordan until 1988 offers possibilities for utilizing that fabric to weave a long-term settlement of the conflict between those parties to the benefit of all.
Certain other trends have also continued and must be taken into consideration. There has been a consistent, if uneven, out-migration of Palestinian Arabs from the territories since 1948. The continued influx of Arab-Palestinians has added further to Jordan's role as the main center of the Arab-Palestinian population. Another trend is the growing sense of "Arab-Palestinian-ness" on the part of that population. This Arab-Palestinian identity is based on a sense of isolation from the larger Arab world which does not seem to care what happens to the Palestinian Arabs as people. Real as it may be, it is not necessarily committed to a PLO-centered solution to the conflict.
Several of these new realities stand out in particular, affecting the immediate future of any negotiations: (1) the extent of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria; (2) the shifting fortunes of the Arab PLO establishment in the territories; (3) the growth of economic interdependence between Israel and the territories; and (4) the emergence of de facto, if limited, shared rule under Israeli administration.
1. The Israeli Settlements8
Since the Likud's rise to power in 1977, the administered territories have been transformed from relatively self-contained Arab areas to integral parts of the Jewish settlement network in the Land of Israel. The fact that these new settlements were established in empty territory or on lands purchased locally without displacing the local residents, itself reflects that there was -- and is -- space for both people in those territories. This has created new realities which now heavily influence the possible ways to resolve the conflict. Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District fall into five groups:
The neighborhoods, towns and settlements surrounding Jerusalem;
Settlements in the Jordan River Valley;
Settlements on the western fringes of the Samarian mountains overlooking the coastal plain;
The security belt of settlements at the southeastern edge of the Gaza District;
Settlements in the heartlands of Judea and Samaria adjacent to major cities such as Nablus, Ramallah, el-Bireh, and Hebron.
Each of these five groups is reflective of a particular stage or set of goals in Israeli settlement policy. All have some, if not substantial, support from most sectors of the Israeli population. At least the first four are essentially non-negotiable according to the positions of all the major parties in Israel.
1) The neighborhoods, towns and settlements surrounding Jerusalem, in addition to housing the increased population of that city, are designed to provide the city with a buffer zone and to strengthen its Jewish hinterland to the north, east, and south. While most are satellites of Jerusalem, they include the Etzion Bloc to the south. These are settlements originally established before 1948 to guard the southern approaches to Jerusalem, that were destroyed by the Arabs in the War of Independence, and rebuilt in the years immediately after 1967. Seventeen miles south of Jerusalem, the Etzion settlements, including the town of Efrat have been expanded into true satellite cities and now divide Arab Judea into two districts, one centered around Bethlehem/Beth Jallah, and the other around Hebron. They combine agriculture with local and regional service industries and have many commuters who work in Jerusalem. East of Jerusalem is Maale Adumim, a new city, and a number of smaller settlements surrounding it.
2) The settlements in the Jordan River Valley were also established in the years immediately after the 1967 war by the Labor government, in accordance with the Allon Plan, which provided for the absorption into Israel of the Jordan Valley and the ridges immediately to its west, desert areas almost entirely unpopulated at the time. Fourteen settlements were established in that region between 1967 and 1977 and since then another seventeen have been established. They are almost entirely agricultural in character.
3) The initial settlement of the western ridges of the Samarian mountains overlooking the coastal plain was also undertaken by the Labor government, again reflecting the Israeli consensus that somehow Israel's coastal strip had to be widened even if part of Samaria were to be turned over to Arab rule. There, however, the Likud government greatly expanded activities, in effect setting off a land rush. Because of the territory's proximity to Israel's heartland, it is eminently suitable for suburbanization, offering low cost housing within easy commuting distance of most of Israel's major industrial and commercial centers. Most of its settlers are commuting suburbanites looking for more housing for their money rather than ideologically motivated.
4) It has been the policy of both the Labor and the Likud governments to build a security belt of settlements at the southeastern portion of the Gaza District. Indeed, the Labor government expanded that security belt into northern Sinai (the Yamit area). The Israeli evacuation of the Sinai led to intensified efforts in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine. Between 1967 and 1977, only two settlements were established in the Gaza District. Since 1977, another nine have been erected.
5) Jewish settlements in the heartland of Judea and Samaria, except for the Etzion Bloc, have been the most controversial element of Israel's settlement policy, although even there the establishment of Kiryat Arba, the Jewish city abutting Hebron, was initiated and advanced under the Labor government, if somewhat reluctantly. It is the expansion of settlement in the heartland which is gradually dividing Judea and Samaria so thoroughly that repartition is increasingly impossible. Between 1967 and 1977 only ten settlements were established in all of Judea and Samaria. Since 1977 their number has been augmented by more than sixty new ones. They combine cottage industries, a bit of agriculture, and commuting to jobs in Jerusalem or along the coast.
A cumulative effect of Israeli settlement activity has been to transform Judea, Samaria, and Gaza from separable territories, detachable from Israel for whatever future they may have, into integral parts of the Israeli network. Since the region's geography lends itself to that kind of integration, even a modest concerted effort on the part of the Israeli government has been able to capitalize on geographic reality. As time passes, the success of that effort will become even more pronounced.
The changing character of the settlements is also indicative of the change that has taken place. In the first stages of settlement, only hardy ideologists went forth to the territories, whether in the form of the young pioneers of the Jordan Valley, or the ideologically motivated settlers of Gush Emunim in the Judean and Samarian heartland, or the sons and daughters of the original settlers of the Etzion Bloc who saw themselves as returning home. Toward the end of the 1970's, these settlers were joined by those who shared the government's view that the territories should be absorbed by Israel but were not ideological crusaders. They saw opportunities for personal benefit in the territories in ways which also allowed them to be of service to their people.
Subsequently, those groups were joined by a third category of settlers, those who have no ideological motivation but simply want to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire better living conditions at a price they can afford. It is precisely the prosaic character of this last group -- which greatly outnumbers the first two -- that marks the transformation of a collection of outposts to an extension of Israel proper into the territories.
In the mid-1980s, the pace of Jewish settlement slowed down, in part for lack of money and in part for lack of Jews. Thus the plans for more extensive settlement, which were reflected in the extensive lands acquired by the Israeli military government, the Jewish National Fund, and private purchasers, remained unfulfilled. Subsequently, the intifada added another obstacle to more settlement, although as of this writing it has not led to any Jewish out-migration from existing settlements or to a cessation of new settlement efforts. Thus the Jewish settlement effort will likely continue as long as there is no peace. On the other hand, it could be halted with the lands acquired in anticipation included in the negotiations over the future status of the territories.
While few Soviet Jewish immigrants will choose to settle in the territories, some will, offering increased possibilities for "deepening" the Jewish presence. Thus with every month that passes, there is less chance the Arabs have missed the opportunity to secure a complete or even substantially complete Israeli withdrawal and the Arabs must now reckon with a changed map.
2. The Shifting Fortunes of the Arab PLO Establishment 9
At this writing, the Arab PLO is in perhaps its strongest position ever in the territories. But its present status is not the result of steady growth. Rather it is one more peak in a series of peaks and valleys that has marked its standing among the indigenous Palestinians since 1967. Nor is its present status guaranteed to continue. Indeed, it was only after a struggle with the United National Committees (UNC), the body that has led the intifada locally, that the Arab PLO has been able to hold on. Given past history, one can assume that it will continue to do so only insofar as it appears to be able to deliver.
The Arab PLO had a difficult time in the years between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War as the local population was unwilling to extend it serious credibility. The problems Israel had in winning the Yom Kippur War led to a resurgence of nationalism in the territories with a concomitant strengthening of the Arab PLO, which reached its peak when Yasser Arafat appeared before the United Nations in November 1975 and PLO-backed candidates virtually swept the 1976 municipal elections in Judea and Samaria. A subsequent Israeli crackdown, including the removal from office of mayors known to be active Arab PLO supporters and the disruption of the flow of PLO-dominated funds from Jordan into the territories, led to a decline in Arab PLO influence in the latter years of the 1970's.
Early in the 1980's PLO strength in "Fatahland" in southern Lebanon once again raised its profile and influence in the territories. The Israeli success in overrunning Fatahland and securing the ouster of the Arab PLO as a major organized entity from Lebanon in 1982 and 1983 once again led to a decline in Arab PLO fortunes among the indigenous Palestinians, again on the assumption that the Arab PLO was too weak to deliver. Arab PLO fortunes reached their lowest point in the Amman Arab summit in the fall of 1987, only to be given a new lease on life as a result of the intifada and the ability of the Arab PLO leadership outside of the country to capitalize on the Arab uprising to launch its own peace offensive. What is clear is that the issue is not closed. No doubt the Arab PLO leadership is mindful that they need some successes or their fortunes may take another downturn.
3. Growth of Economic Interdependence and the Provision of Public Service Delivery Systems10
Since 1967, Israeli policy has been to enable Arab-Palestinians to work freely in Israel. Before the intifada, these Arab workers account for 36 percent of those employed in construction, 15 percent in agriculture, 5 percent in industry. The highest percentages are employed in tourism and household services. At the same time, Arab labor in Israel has substantially increased the standard of living in the territories. In 1972, for example, 6.5 percent of the families in the Gaza District owned a gas or electrical appliance for cooking; in 1987, 87.1 did. Comparable figures for refrigerators were 8.7 to 78 percent. The increase in private automobiles has not been nearly as spectacular but has been significant enough, from 3.2 percent in 1972 to 14.5 percent in 1988.
The economic development of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District from 1967 until it was halted by the intifada attests to the benefits derived by the Arab-Palestinians in the territories from contact with Israel. The gains achieved from this interaction result from both contact with a more advanced economy and to the framework of relationships instituted by Israel since 1968. An exclusive relationship with either Israel or Jordan would not have served the economic interests of the territories. While some Arab-Palestinians argue that an independent Arab-Palestinian state would have offered them the possibility for the development of a stronger indigenous economy, there is no evidence to that effect. Where they have been able to operate independently, the Palestinians have demonstrated that it would be as hard for them to compete in the world market as it is for other small underdeveloped countries. For example, the European Community pressured Israel to allow the Arab-Palestinians to market their citrus products directly to Europe, not through the Israel marketing boards. The end result was a disaster. The Palestinians could not get their shipments to the market on time, the agents who were willing to serve them in Europe were not competent to serve their needs, and their prices were too high.
Essentially, the economic interaction which has developed between Israel and the territories has taken the form of a common market. This common market also incorporates industrial growth and agricultural development. Needless to say, the unusually high economic growth rate that was a feature in the territories until overwhelmed by political events was paralleled by substantial gains in economic welfare, reflecting a steep rise in the disposable income of the Palestinians and a shift in their occupational structure toward that of a more developed economy. Furthermore, the provision of public service systems -- roads, electricity, water sources, and communications lines -- have also been integrated. For example, the Jerusalem metropolitan area provides public services to the hinterland comprising Bethlehem, Ramallah/El-Bireh, and Jericho.
Any drastic transformation in the present network of economic relationships and public service systems would inflict grave costs on the population of those territories. Under any future political arrangement, Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District should, for their own benefit, maintain close economic relations with both Israel and Jordan.
4. Existing De Facto Shared Rule11
In the years following 1967, a de facto shared rule developed in Judea and Samaria that until 1977 gave the Palestinians almost complete internal self-government involving a minimum of coercion and a maximum of consent, and for the next decade nearly as much self-rule. Overall, Israel and Jordan provided the umbrella. Israel controlled security and the economy while Jordan shaped the relationships between individuals and groups in Judea and Samaria and the Arab world. Jordan provided the Arab-Palestinians with a legal identity; the Jordanian curriculum was (and is) used in their schools; Jordan registered organizations and controlled the operation of trade relations between the territories and the Arab world, in addition to being the second most important outlet (after Israel) for their exports. In short, for two decades the portion of land that is the focus of the dispute was already in joint tenancy, with local inhabitants enjoying considerable autonomy de facto in their internal matters and daily life.
This arrangement was disrupted by Arab-Palestinian extremists and the Arab PLO on the eve of Israeli-Jordanian negotiations to give it a more permanent character. Their disruption of these arrangements was based on their struggle for what they believed to be would be a greater long-term gain, namely independent statehood. In the meantime, it is the indigenous Palestinians who are paying the price. In 1986, Israel and Jordan again came close to establishing a more formal shared rule arrangement, actually agreeing to a de facto condominium which was launched at the end of August 1986. It was disrupted by Shimon Peres' premature efforts to bring about an international peace conference which was scheduled for the end of a period of consolidation of this arrangement.
Changes in the Legal System
The extent of the integration of Israel and the territories is manifested clearly in the changes that have taken place in the legal system serving Judea and Samaria and to a lesser extent the Gaza District since 1967. It is accepted practice under military occupation of territories whose future status is not yet settled to retain the laws previously in force, subject only to necessary modifications which can be introduced by occupation authorities under international law. Israel firmly adopted this position in 1967 but here, too, the pressures of the passage of time have been inexorable. Over the years what is, in effect, a new legal system has been introduced, built upon Jordanian legal foundations but modified in the direction of incorporating substantial elements of Israeli law. This has been true for both the Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the territories, those who retain their Jordanian citizenship and those with Israeli citizenship who settled within them. Thus the Israeli Supreme Court has extended its jurisdiction to all the inhabitants of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza district on the grounds that, since they live under the Israeli flag, they are entitled to the basic civil rights protections that Israel as a western democracy seeks to secure.
The application of Israeli law is particularly extensive in the case of the Israeli citizens who have settled in the territories. It can be said that they and their settlements are almost fully under the laws of Israel in fact, if not technically.12 The turning point was in March 1978, a few days prior to the signing of the Israeli-Egypian peace treaty, when the military commander of Judea and Samaria, as supreme authority in those territories, established local and regional councils for the Israeli settlers by legal order (Hebrew: tzav) and established a system of by-laws based on Israeli law, for them. The pace of Knesset legislation applicable to the territories also has increased over the years.
Israel's original negotiating position with regard to the extension of autonomy to the Arab-Palestinian residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza under the Camp David agreement was based upon certain basic guidelines, namely that the autonomy should be extended to people, not territory; that Israel must maintain sufficient control over security matters, water and other essentials that directly affect its safety and the lives of Israeli settlers in the administered territories; and that the right of Jewish settlement remain open. While these points were basic to Menachem Begin's government, they were not self-executing. For example, even if the Israeli government had been successful in securing endorsement of its stand that autonomy should fall upon people rather than territories, still there were and are territories predominantly Arab in population, including most of the duly constituted municipalities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza region. At the very least, for the foreseeable future, there will be clearly separate Arab and Jewish cities and villages. Hence some relationship between people and territory would have to be worked out so that the people in those territories will implement the autonomy within them. Any successful solution depends upon how it combines the governance of peoples and territories, for there cannot be governance of one without the other.13 Even if the emphasis will be on peoples, it will be necessary to govern those peoples in their territories.
The Territories in the Context of the Metropolitan Frontier
Beyond the political and military reasons why Israel is seeking a solution that does not involve complete withdrawal from the administered territories, there are others which also reinforce the necessity to reach an accommodation based upon some combination of self-rule and shared rule in the territories in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians. These reasons lie in the changed circumstances of settlement and economic development in which both find themselves. They can be seen through the prism of the unfolding frontier of development initiated in the land by the Zionist enterprise over a century ago and which has continued through all the frontier stages which have shaped the frontier societies of the modern and postmodern worlds.
As an extension of the great frontier of the Western world, the original Zionist settlements were principally rural in character.14 With the establishment of the State, Israel moved into a second frontier stage which also had its parallel in other Western countries, that of industrialization and urbanization. In the latter years of the 1960s, approximately coincident but not a result of the Six-Day War, Israel began to move into the next stage of development, namely metropolitanization. Its industrial base was transformed through the application of sophisticated new technologies while its patterns of settlement were being transformed by new modes of transportation and communication. The earlier unity of place of residence and place of work began to disappear as the possibility of moving quickly across substantial distances on a daily basis became real. So, for example, during the days of the urban frontier, Israeli Arabs living in the Galilee had to forego involvement in the industrialization process because their villages did not attract industry, or move to Jewish cities away from their own cultural frameworks and live lonely lives in order to achieve economic advantage. With the coming of metropolitanization, the same Arabs could remain residents of their villages and take a bus to some destination in the Haifa Bay metropolitan region to work in the morning and then back again at night without being unduly burdened as a result.
Israel's urbanization and metropolitanization began along the coast in the Tel Aviv and Haifa Bay regions. Jerusalem, whose urban development had always taken a very different turn, never really entered the urban-industrial frontier because at the time it was cut off at the end of the Jerusalem corridor surrounded by territory under Arab rule. Then came the Six-Day War and suddenly Jerusalem was reunited with its potential hinterland, precisely at the time that metropolitanization was beginning to engulf the country.
In the ensuing decade, Jerusalem not only gained strength as a focus for Jewish development activities related to servicing the metropolitan frontier, such as higher education, government and other public sector activities, but also was re-integrated with a hinterland in Judea and Samaria that was increasingly drawn toward it. From an agricultural point of view, the region from Hebron on the south to Nablus on the north, Jericho on the east and Bet Shemesh on the west, became a single market with produce flowing into Jerusalem daily from every part of it. Jerusalem, in turn, became a magnet for employing the residents on the mountain ridge along the same axis, particularly as development of first its Jewish sections and then its Arab areas required more hands for building, a need met principally by the Arab population. Some of these new workers moved to the city, others remained in their native towns and villages and commuted. Thus the country's newest metropolitan region united both Jewish and Arab nodes within a single economic framework whose prosperity rested upon their mutual interaction.15
This new development, as much as any security or other considerations, makes a return to partition an atavistic step. This is not to say that it cannot be done. History has shown that politics can overrule economics even in such circumstances. Jerusalem probably could be cut off at the end of a corridor again and returned to the peripheries of Israel. The Arab areas around the city could be cut off from their natural focal point if political decisions are made to that effect. But in such a case everybody would suffer, not only the individuals who would lose their only significant opportunities for employment but the two peoples as peoples would lose a major opportunity for economic and social development enhancing their prosperity which has been the result of the reconnection since 1967.
Thus there should be a major interest on the part of both parties to work out a political arrangement that will recognize the unity of the country even as it provides for maximum self-government for its peoples combined with shared rule where necessary.
Think of some of the possibilities. Jerusalem by its very nature does not lend itself to becoming a major industrial center. Indeed there are many reasons why the city and its environs have escaped the impact of industrialization so as to preserve Jerusalem's special character. Prior to the metropolitan frontier, this, in effect, doomed Jerusalem to being a backwater and its region to suffer from lack of development. One of the characteristics of the metropolitan frontier, however, is that other nodes in the metropolitan region can industrialize to everyone's benefit without damaging Jerusalem's special character.
On the metropolitan frontier, education itself becomes a major industry, a means of developing a population that is equipped to participate in the sophisticated socio-economic systems of the metropolitan era. Jerusalem is ideally suited to be a major educational center. Indeed, education is one of the functions that is most appropriate to the city, given its historic role.
Jewish Jerusalem has already become the educational center of the Jewish people, through the Hebrew University, its many yeshivot, and, increasingly through the technical colleges sponsored by the Orthodox community and social and humanistic research institutes of various kinds. There are, in addition, many renowned Christian-sponsored institutions for Bible and theological study. While no similar development has taken place in Arab Jerusalem proper, the beginnings of serious institutions of higher education serving the Arab population are to be found in adjacent Bir Zeit and Bethlehem. Only peace will enable those institutions to develop further. United within a common metropolitan region, they will add an additional dimension to Jerusalem's position on the world's educational map. Together, these institutional complexes can put Jerusalem in the forefront as a world educational center. But it is precisely the ability to concentrate a number of separate institutions, each maintaining its separate identity in every respect, but within close proximity to one another so that synergism can play its role, that will make the difference. This indeed is the essence of the metropolitan frontier -- separate but synergistic -- and is the way in which other great educational centers in the world have become what they have become.
Combining People and Territory: The Local Dimension
In any solution, it will be necessary to link particular local jurisdictions either with a Arab-Palestinian entity or with Israel. This, indeed, is the direction in which things have developed informally since 1967. In local government matters, Arab municipalities and villages were given almost complete self-rule, while Israeli settlements began with internal self-rule and were subsequently organized into regional councils or given more clearly cut municipal status under Israeli law so that they could formally exercise those self-same powers.16
The importance of these local organs should not be minimalized. In an age and region where the focus tends to be on national governments and international relations, it is far too easy to minimize the importance of local self-government. Jews with good historical memories will know how the local community became the focal point for Jewish self-government and the maintenance of a Jewish corporate identity throughout the long years of the exile in very meaningful ways. Similarly, it can truthfully be said that the Arab-Palestinians have never had so much self-government as they have had since 1967 under the Israeli policy of maximizing local self-rule through Arab municipalities.
This is not to suggest that the Arab-Palestinians would be satisfied with a simple continuation of that arrangement. There are certain areas of self-government which are closed to them, some of which are substantively important and others symbolically necessary. Be that as it may, the possibilities of building an appropriate combination for governing people with some local territorial base is a real one that offers many advantages.
Whatever the final arrangements, there is enough experience around the world and, for that matter the territories themselves, with regard to the mechanisms for autonomy to develop proper substitutions for its implementation. For example, all the tools are available and much has already been done to establish a legal basis for an arrangement in which persons take precedence over territory in determining who belongs where legally. There are over one hundred models of diversity of jurisdiction arrangements, mixed governments, power-sharing and the like presently in operation around the world from which to draw, not to speak of the highly significant and, in the end, the most important fact that there are twelve years of experience behind us of de facto autonomy in the territories.17 The problems that often are presented as the most difficult in fact can be overcome technically without any particular inventiveness.
What Then?
No Jew need to deny the Jewish people's historic claim to all of Eretz Israel; no democrat can deny the principle that, insofar as humanly possible, no one should be governed without his or her consent. In the twentieth century, government by the consent of the governed for identifiable peoples has been associated with self-determination.
There are two problems with this extension of the democratic principle. One is that self-determination has all too often been used as a cover and justification for one internal tyranny or another which does not advance the democratic principle. Often it does not even secure whatever modest benefits there might be in transferring power from an external tyrant to an internal one since in many cases the external power was far more benign, even democratic, than its successor regime. Thus the two principles should not be confused in that regard.
The second reason is that self-determination does not necessarily require totally independent, politically sovereign statehood to be achieved. We have already noted that in the present world of intense interdependence there are no fully sovereign states anymore. Not even the superpowers can act as they please.
Beyond that, some peoples, out of desire or necessity, gain their self-determination through federal arrangements. Some, like the native American (American Indian) tribes, because of their size alone, can never be more than "domestic dependent nations," to use the defining phrase applied to them by the United States Supreme Court. That is the kind of self-determination possible for "nations" of a few hundreds to a few thousands in size, where even the largest of them, the Navaho nation, does not reach 200,000.
In other cases, for the Basques and Catalonians, for example, self-determination has been achieved within the land that they share with other Spaniards, even though both are large enough in terms of population and resources to maintain independent states and are the strongest and most vigorous peoples on the Iberian Peninsula. The nature of their identity and situation is such that this was the most feasible and probably the most equitable solution available to them and the other parties involved. Nor is politically sovereignty feasible for the six republics that have federated to form Yugoslavia. In their case external enemies have made it necessary for the peoples of Yugoslavia to seek self-determination together, whatever the tensions and animosities between them.
The Arab-Palestinians as individuals and as a group need to be governed with their consent, something which is not presently the case. They, too, have their claims to the land which they believe to be as legitimate as the Jewish claims. In fact, neither side will be able to fully exercise its claims. All will have to concede something on that point.
Israel has long since given up exercise of its claims east of the Jordan and most Israelis have come to recognize that Israel will not be able to exercise exclusive control to all the territory west of the river. Jordan has now formally relinquished its claims west of the river, which it had originally exercised, presumably, in the name of the Arab-Palestinians, a claim which many Arab-Palestinians disputed. On the other hand, Hashemite claims to rule east of the river must be considered in light of the fact that 70 percent of the residents of Jordan are Arab-Palestinians with roots in the West Bank. The Arab-Palestinians may now have come to realize that they will never be able to exercise their claims to the entire land. They have yet to determine how they will exercise their claims east of the river, and must come to realize that even west of the river they will not be able to have exclusive control over territory. This does not mean that they cannot achieve self-determination or government with the consent of the governed, but it does mean that they, as well as Israel and Jordan, will have to rely upon federal arrangements to do so.
Notes
1. On a separate Palestinian state, see Arieh Eliav, Land of the Heart: Israelis, Arabs, The Territories, and A Vision of the Future (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974); Eliahu Eliachar and Phillip Gillon, Israelis and Palestinians (London: R. Collings, 1978); Mark Heller, A Palestinian State: The Implications for Israel (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1983) and "A Palestinian State: Thinking the Unthinkable," Moment 13:6 (September 1988); Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Bar Kokhba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Politics (Chappaqua, NY: Rossel Books, 1983); Yehoshafat Harkabi and Moshe Maoz, "The Palestinian Problem: A Palestinian State or a Jordanian Solution," Middle East Review 71 (1974): 60-67.
All the above advocate that as a solution to the conflict. For the views of those opposed, who addressed the issue, see Daniel J. Elazar, "Palestinian State--Don't Buy It," Moment (September 1988); Hirsh Goodman, A Palestinian State: The Case Against (Jerusalem: Israel Information Center, 1979); Moshe Aumann, The Palestinian Labyrinth (Israel Academic Committee on the Middle East, 1982).
2. On the ways of Arab politics, see R. Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982); Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981); Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Yehoshafat Harkabi, Three Articles on the Arab Slogan of a Democratic State (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department of Information, 1970).
3. On the Palestinian position in the conflict, see Emile Nakhleh, "Israeli Occupation and Self-Rule in the Territories: The Inhabitants Perspective," in Governing Peoples and Territories (Philadelphia: ISHI, 1982); Yehosafat Harkabi, "The Position of the Palestinians in the Israeli-Arab Conflict and Their National Covenant," Journal of International Law and Politics 3:1 (1970).
4. Mark Heller, "A Palestinian State: Thinking the Unthinkable."
5. Ibid.
6. "Data Base: 191,700 Jews in the 'Occupied Territories'," Survey of Arab Affairs No. 13 (August 15, 1988).
7. On the Palestinians in Jordan, see Avi Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan 1948-1957 (London: Cass, 1981); D.L. Price, Jordan and the Palestinians: The PLO's Prospects (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1975); Eliezer Be'eri, The Palestinians Under Jordanian Rule: Three Issues (Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Hebrew University, 1978).
8. On Israeli settlement in the territories, see Aaron Dether, How Expensive are West Bank Settlements (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post and West Bank Data Project, 1987); Arieh L. Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs 1878-1948 (Efal, Israel: Yad Tabenkin, 1982); Anne Mosely Lesch, "Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories," Journal of Palestine 8:1 (Autumn 1978): 103-105; Chaim Waxman, "Beyond the Green Line: American Jewish Settlers in Judea, Samaria and Gaza," Jerusalem Letter 84 (December 17, 1985); Mordechai Nisan, Israel and the Territories (Ramat Gan: Turtledove, 1978); R. Watson, "An American Presence (Jewish Settlers from the United States in the West Bank)," Newsweek 103 (June 1984): 40-41.
9. On the PLO's shifting status, see E. Rouleau, "The Future of the PLO," Current 258 (December 1983): 42-58; G. Russell, "Maneuvering for Position," Time 126 (November 11, 1985): 38-39; John W. Amos II, Palestinian Resistance: Organization of a Nationalist Movement (Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1981); Michael Hudson, "The Palestinian Resistance: Developments and Setbacks 1967-71," Journal of Palestine Studies 1:3 (1972): 64-84; W.L. Chase, "Arafat's Back, Reshaping Outlook For Mideast Talks," U.S. News and World Report 102 (May 4, 1987): 40.
10. On the economic interdependence of Israel, the territories, and Jordan, see Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Judea, Samaria, and Gaza: Views on the Present and Future (Washington and London: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982); "The Economy of the Territories and the Future of the Arab Palestinians," Survey of Arab Affairs No. 2 (November 21, 1985); David Kahan, Agriculture and Water Resources in the West Bank and Gaza (1967-1987) (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post and West Bank Data Project, 1987); Meron Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Project: 1987 Report (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1987); Simcha Bahiri, Industrialization in the West Bank and Gaza (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post and West Bank Data Project, 1987).
11. On the existing de-facto shared rule and its changing character, see Daniel J. Elazar, ed., From Autonomy to Shared Rule: Options for Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1983); Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Governing Peoples and Territories; Shmuel Sandler and Hillel Frisch, Israel, the Palestinians and the West Bank: A Study in Intercommunal Conflict (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1984).
For futher discussion of what has developed in the administered territories since 1967 from both the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives, see Emile Nakhleh, ed., A Palestinian Agenda for the West Bank and Gaza (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980); Daniel J. Elazar, ed., Judea, Samaria, and Gaza: Views of the Present and Future.
12. Cf. Moshe Drori, "Israeli Settlement and Israeli Law in Judea and Samaria," Jerusalem Letter 106 (1 February 1989).
13. For a more complete discussion of this point, see Daniel KJ. Elazar, ed., Governing Peoples and Territories.
14. The frontier thesis underlying this argument is, of course, based on the work of Frederick Jackson Turner in The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, 1920), as extended by Walter Prescott Webb in The Great Frontier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), and subsequently applied on a comparative basis to the various new societies of the modern world, e.g., Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), and Walker D. Wyman and Clifton B. Kroeber, The Frontier in Perspective (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965).
This writer has suggested an extension of the Turner thesis as the urban-industrial and metropolitan-technological frontiers in Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1970) and The Metropolitan Frontier, A Perspective on Change in American Society (New York: General Learning Press, 1973). I have applied this model to Israel through several studies beginning with Israel: From Ideological to Territorial Democracy (New York: General Learning Press, 1971).
15. Saul Cohen, Jerusalem Undivided (New York: Herzl Press, 1980).
16. See Moshe Drori, Local Government, Democracy and Elections in Judea and Samaria: Legal Aspects (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Federal Studies and Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, Institute of Local Government, 1980); and Sasson Levi, Local Government in the Administered Territories (Hebrew) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, Institute of Local Government, 1978).
17. See Daniel J. Elazar, et al., A Handbook of Federal and Autonomy Arrangements (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, forthcoming).
