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The common wisdom of the day can often be wrong, but nowhere is today's common wisdom more wrong than in what the talking heads are saying about the Holy Land.
The common wisdom is that a two state solution is the only solution to the continuing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, but it hasn't worked due to a lack of trust on both sides.
There is no reason that trust should spontaneously develop now. Within both camps there is internal political strife. Hamas and Fatah have split the Palestinian Authority into nearly two separate governments and last week's election in Israel leaves no clear majority party and an unclear future as to the tone of Israel's future policies on the conflict.
Even if both sides had clear negotiating strength, geographically a two state solution would be difficult at best.
Neither Gaza nor the West Bank can be considered an exclave so technically both are exclaves, divided by a diplomatically unfriendly neighbor.
The two closest parallels of a country divided surrounding a unfriendly neighbor in the past century can be found with Pakistan and India or Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In both instances, the country caught with territory on both sides of the hostile country (Pakistan and Azerbaijan) found the territory incapable of effectively governing. East Pakistan became Bangladesh, and Nakhchivan has become an autonomous Republic, almost entirely independent from Azerbaijan.
Both bring examples of what would happen eventually if there was a permanent nation-state that consisted of Gaza and the West Bank. We've seen Israel effectively blockade Gaza for the most part, and the West Bank as a landlocked area is also heavily dependent on its neighbors no differently land locked area in far more politically stable regions.
A two state solution is not going to work, and I would like to submit an idea named after a place right here in New Hampshire that was named after what was once the name of the piece of land both sides are fighting for.
Prior to the establishment of either the ancient Kingdom of Israel or the nation of Palestine, there was Canaan. The land of milk and honey, a geographical area roughly where Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are now.
At one time during the days of the Bible, both
precursors of modern day Israel and Palestine lived with independent nation states in what was Canaan. Two independent nation-states occupying the same space is no more politically feasible than two bodies of matter occupying the same space is physically feasible, but two nations combining to create a new umbrella nation-state is politically possible and has various precedents throughout the world.
That umbrella nation-state would be a secular one called Canaan: the name of the territory prior to the current conflict, and the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Knesset would co-exist no different than our own House of Representatives and our Senate.
Day to day administrative functions would be daunting to say the least and would require joint Israeli and Palestinian presences in everything from the police and the military to judges and census takers. The new binational bicameral legislature would require a split between one side taking having a figure take the head of state position and the other taking the head of government position, with those roles rotating regularly.
The reconciliation to make such an arrangement feasible would be breathtakingly complicated to be sure, but the two sides are at a stalemate that cannot end without one side committing genocide on another. Creating a new state compromised of both nations is a superior option to the delusion that a two state solution can ever work.
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