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The four-state solution that didn't happen [1]
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Date: 2023-11-27
Both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict have their own spin on the 1947 UN Resolution 181, called the Partition Plan, which the UN accepted but which did not get enacted; instead, war broke out and resulted in Israeli independence (one side) and the nabka (the other side). The map of the boundaries included in the plan is a familiar one. Jews note how much smaller the proposed Jewish State was than Israel, and that it was discontiguous. Palestinian Arabs note that they had expected to be given one independent state, not half of one, with many of their people on the wrong side. In any case, the war ended with a somewhat larger Israel and no Palestinian Arab state, a condition that still exists.
This is not an advocacy diary but a history one. The actual plan was more complex than we are led to believe. It did not define two fully separate countries with borders (physical indications or barriers) between them, but actually four entities with no borders, just boundaries (imaginary lines on a map) between some of them, like between say Belgium and The Netherlands. Nowadays we think about borders and some imagine that they need walls. But until WW I, which led to a wave of nationalism and restrictions on migration, national boundaries were typically open, simply demarcations of who was in control. That kind of soft boundary was still familiar in 1947; it seems like it was lost to history in I/P after 1948 with its DMZ through the middle of Jerusalem. It’s also far from today’s “separation barrier”; the patchwork of large settlements would also make a two-state solution very difficult to implement if it had hard borders everywhere.
In the 1947 plan there were, of course, the two ethnostates, referred to as “Jewish” and “Arab”; at the time. In the text of Resolution 181, “Palestinian” referred to members of both groups who already resided in the cisJordan region, which had been Mandatory Palestine under post-WWI British mandate, and part of the Ottoman Empire before that. Neither state is given a name in the Plan; the Jewish state became Israel and there was no name for the Arab state that didn’t happen (“Palestinian” took on its present meaning considerably later). The Plan also included a third geographic entity, Jerusalem, which was to be an international city under UN supervision, with its own citizenship open to both groups. Jerusalem was defined fairly broadly, including Bethlehem, Abu Dis, and other surrounding villages, not just the city itself.
The fourth entity is the one that seems to have been forgotten, as it stemmed from an idealized vision more like, say, the European Union as if it only included Belgium and The Netherlands. This is the Economic Union of Palestine, as described here in the Resolution:
D. EC0N0MIC UNION AND TRANSIT
l. The Provisional Council of Govemment of
each State shall enter into an undertaking with re-
spect to Economic U nion and Transit. This under-
taking shall be drafted by the Commission provided
for in section B, paragraph 1, utilizing to the great-
est possible extent the advice and co-operation of
representative organizations and bodies from each
of the proposed States. It shall contain provisions to
establish the Economic Union of Palestine and pro-
vide for other matters of common interest. lf by
1 April 1948 the Provisional Councils of Govern-
ment have not entered into the undertaking, the
undertaking shall be put into force by the Com-
mission.
The Economic Union of Palestine
2. The objectives of thc Economic Union of Pal-
estine shall be:
(a) A customs union;
( b) A joint currency system providing for a single
foreign exchange rate;
{e) Operation in the common interest on a non-
discriminatory basis of railways; inter-State high-
ways; postal, telephonc and telegraphic services,
and ports and airports involved in international
tradc and commerce;
(d) Joint economic development, especially in
respect of irrigation, land reclamation and soil con-
servation;
(e) Access for both States and for the City of
Jerusalem on a non-discriminatory basis to water
and power facilities.
This fourth entity, the EUP, while not quite a state, would thus provide many of the functions of a state to the three geographic components.
More importantly, the borderless arrangement in the Plan was to allow for open transit and common currency, albeit, confusingly, under separate central banks. They would thus work together for the common prosperity while the Arab and Jewish entities would be providing many services to their own citizens. Open transit was obvious because both were discontiguous; the Arab state had Gaza, the West Bank, and some areas that ended up behind the Green Line including Jaffa (an enclave) and much of Galilee. Jewish Galilee was discontiguous from the rest, and Negev (mostly empty desert) was barely contiguous.
Among the other terms in Resolution 181, existing residents on the “wrong” (my term) side of the boundary would be allowed to remain and keep their property, and could choose either citizenship. While I can’t find documentation offhand, IIRC there were something like 300,000 Arabs living on the Jewish side and fewer than 10,000 Jews on the Arab side of the Partition. Schools would be provided for both groups on both sides, as needed, and both sides’ languages would be allowed on both sides. But a Jew could not move into the Arab area and vice versa without permission. Religious freedom was to be assured on both sides, and “no discrimination of any kind shall be made
between the inhabitants on the ground of race, religion, language or sex”.
It didn’t work then. The Arab League violently disapprove of it, and for that matter many Israelis didn’t approve it either, and set out to ethnically cleanse parts of what became Israel (what they didn’t tell us in Jewish Sunday School, where the founding myth was recited instead). It probably can’t work now. But it does present an interesting ideal for a long-term solution, where neighbors can respect each other’s rights and then work for the common prosperity. Instead today the One State Party rules both Israel and Gaza and works for the common destruction.
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