On 15 November 1988, Yasser Arafat officially recognized the existence of the State of Israel—affirming, as a corollary in accordance with UN Resolutions 181 and 242, that of the State of Palestine.footnote1 This declaration, followed by others, gave explicit ratification to what has been a fait accompli since 1947: the partition of Palestine. Arafat’s gesture was merely an acknowledgement of the undeniable truth of the situation: a nod to the inevitable. Nothing can negate the tangible phenomenon of the existence, between the Gulf of Aqaba and the southern Lebanese border, between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, of two peoples, each with a distinct and profound cultural identity: the Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis. No fusion of the two can reasonably be envisaged in the short or even the longer term. The eviction of the one by the other—as proclaimed in the PLO’s charter—is also clearly impossible. Arafat’s demagogic prophecy of the seventies—‘Israel will be another Vietnam’—has not materialized—or at least, not as he had hoped. But it is also hard to see biblical dreams of a Greater Israel becoming reality manu militari—whether through massive expulsions, or in any other way. There is certainly almost no chance of the slow phagocytic process by which the Vietnamese ingested the Khmers around the Mekong Delta in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the Israelis lack the necessary numerical superiority for such an outcome. Israel’s attempts to colonize Judea and Samaria may indeed have made it ‘another Vietnam’—if not in the sense that Arafat intended. But the analogy stops there. Even with the massive wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, it cannot hope to submerge over two-and-a-half million Palestinians, populating the West Bank and Gaza.

2 maps. The first depicts the current division between Israeli controlled land and full or partial Palestinian controlled land. The second map depicts the UN partition plan in 1947, dividing Israeli territory, Palestinian territory, and the UN zone.

The current state of affairs cannot endure forever. These peoples—manifestly, two distinct nations—are naturally bound to constitute themselves as two separate, sovereign states, both through right of self-determination and because the situation cannot, in all fairness, harmony and practical logic, be managed in any other way. This immediately poses the question of borders: what framework can be drawn up, within which the inhabitants of both states can carry on their daily lives in the manner to which they are entitled? Resolution 242 expresses the wish that Israelis and Palestinians may ‘live in peace’ within frontiers that are both ‘secure and recognized’. Is it superfluous to add, ‘and practical’?

This is the core of the matter. Given the historic mistrust between the two sides, and their divergent cultural heritage, it is vital that the frontiers established between the two should permit each to feel at home, within boundaries that are both clear and simple—that is: acceptable and recognized; secure, definitive and practicable. These boundaries should thus be drawn in such a way as to banish any ambiguity: any cause of friction, litigation or dispute.

Neither the division proposed in the stillborn partition project of Resolution 181 nor the pre-1967 map of the territories occupied by Israel, acknowledged by Resolution 242, meets these requirements. In both cases, the State of Palestine would consist of a constellation of ‘scattered limbs’. In order for these to communicate with each other by road—still the most common, everyday method of travel—‘Danzig corridors’ through Israel would have to be created: two, in the first case, and one in the second. The sorry memory of this product of the Versailles Treaty can hardly encourage its repetition. On quite a different scale, French peasant farmers are quite aware of the bickering and inconvenience caused by the easements entailed on their lands, especially over rights of way—the origin of innumerable conflicts, to this day. The UN resolutions were formulated according to the logic of the conference chamber: they are scarcely compatible with realities on the ground. To stand squarely by them now would be the equivalent of making one nation a Bantustan of the other, which is completely unacceptable. Indeed, their proposals—carrying within them all the germs of war—call for the utmost caution: for the two parties to find themselves, one versus the other, in the position, to borrow a favourite image of Mao Zedong’s, of an encircled encircler, would cast grave doubt on the possibility of a just and lasting peace in the region.

Taking all these points into consideration, the only solution would seem to be the establishment of two self-contained states, each with a ‘sea view’. The latter is a matter of elementary justice: both parties can lay equally legitimate claim to access to the sea, and enclavement would be a ready source of conflicts and difficulties. One state would inevitably be the prisoner—or the hostage—of the other. The two-state solution suggested would naturally meet with serious obstacles in practice, however convincing in purely intellectual terms. Nevertheless, these problems seem less insurmountable than those attendant on the ‘scattered limbs’ approach.

At the juridical level, there is no reason why the UN should not come out in favour of such a solution. The greatest difficulties lie on a practical and human level. The existence of two such self-contained states would inevitably require changes to the present legal, territorial borders that would involve both transfers of population and exchange of land. This is the most sensitive point, at which the mind might well falter or draw back—were the alternative not the bloodshed that would be the inevitable outcome of any ‘scattered limbs’ formula. This is also why, if an agreement were reached, it would have to be implemented with the utmost generosity, caution and skill.

Transfers and exchanges of population as the result of an accord have occurred in the past. In 1923, for example, the Treaty of Lausanne which concluded the Greco-Turkish war provided for the mass repatriations of Greeks from Asia Minor and Turks from Greece. These occurred in precarious material conditions and under pressure of events. But, come what may, they were carried out. In the Israeli–Palestinian case, with both time and money available, it should be possible to do far better, especially if the operation were undertaken via the United Nations, and provided that Israel—a consolidated state with fifty years’ existence and ample resources behind it—contributed a minimum, rather than stripping what it evacuated even of trees, as it did when handing Sinai back to Egypt in 1982. The price of a viable peace, after all, is always lower than a state of war.