Middle East & North Africa

EWI Speaker Series: Two States, One Land: Is It Possible?

EWI’s Speaker Series highlights provocative approach to Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Watch the full event here:

As part of the New York Center’s EastWest Institute’s Speaker Series, Dr. Mathias Mossberg and Mark LeVine discussed Two States, One Land, on November 20.  In the center’s packed conference room, the editors discussed their new book, a compilation of essays from leading Palestinian and Israeli experts, which  puts forth a parallel state solution to this deep and seemingly intractable conflict. The far-ranging essays discuss the concept of two distinctive states, one Israeli and one Palestinian, sharing and governing over the same land. This solution, according to Mossberg and LeVine, would offer an answer to the failures of previous attempts at a two-state solution at Oslo, for example.

Also speaking on the panel were Hiba Husseini, Managing Partner of the law firm Husseini & Husseini and legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiations team in the Oslo, Stockholm and Camp David peace processes, and Dr. Dror Ze'evi, a visiting scholar and instructor at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, Bosphorus University and on the faculty at Ben Gurion University since 1992 and one of the founders of The Department of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University.

“It is incumbent upon us to think of a new solution, because of the long-standing nature of the stalemate.” Ze’evi said.

Mossberg is a retired Swedish ambassador, the president of the Swedish North-African Chamber of Commerce and senior fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden. Mossberg was also a vice president of EWI and responsible for its Middle East Program. LeVine is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, a co-editor a contributing editor for Tikkun and a senior columnist for Al Jazeera. With recognizable members of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conversation, as well as a number of dialed-in listeners from around the world, the speakers began by explaining what they called the “Parallel States Project.”

“The Parallel States Project is a way to think outside the box.” Mossberg explained. “It is an intellectual provocation to Israelis and Palestinians.”

The Parallel States Project, by proposing the sharing of one land and integrating many areas of both the Israeli and Palestinian state systems, would require widespread cooperation and confidence from both camps. Furthermore, a system of two states sharing one land requires careful consideration of the basic needs of both sides: security, identity and access to land. A two state-one land system would need a high-level of cooperation between both peoples, on a common Israeli-Palestinian security structure, widespread economic integration and the preservation of the national identities of both states.

"Challenges would be enormous, but the proposal would also address many of the biggest issues." Husseini stated.

Another important aspect needed to make this system viable is the concept of separating statehood from land. This radical way of thinking, a negation of our traditional notion of statehood introduced many centuries ago by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, is absolutely integral to the success of any system that attempts to create two distinctive but integrated and cooperative nationalities in one land. Any success of Mossberg and Levine’s idea of a two-state system sharing the same land could set a precedent for avoiding future conflicts around the globe.

“This plan would not only work in Israel-Palestine,” LeVine stated. “Perhaps it could be applied to eastern Ukraine."

In places where previous attempts of a two-state solution have failed, two separate national states sharing the same land offers a challenging but viable solution to the Israel-Palestine question. All speakers emphasized that if there is a genuine will to work and live together, necessitating security and economic cooperation, there can indeed be two distinctive national identities sharing, peacefully, the same land on the same terms.

“If we have provoked leaders to think in a new way, we have succeeded in some way.” Mossberg said.

Advancing the Role of Women Political Leaders in Peace and Security

Overview

The conference “Advancing the Role of Women Political Leaders in Peace and Security,” jointly organized by Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND) and the EastWest Institute’s Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention (PN), will bring together female political leaders and legislators from the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the MENA region, including Egypt, Libya, and Morocco. The conference will be held at the Hotel Le Diwan in Rabat, Morocco, on November 18-20, 2014.

“Bringing together women peacemakers in Morocco, land of tolerance, peace and diversity, links the west to the east on common issues and challenges about conflict prevention and peace management.” 
– Loubna Amhaïr MP, Member of the Moroccan House of Representatives  

Countering Violent Extremism in Syria and Iraq: A regional Approach

Overview

On November 13-14, experts from Iraq, Syria, the MENA region and Europe will meet at the EastWest Institute’s Brussels center to identify key elements to help reduce violent extremism in Syria and Iraq. Participants will also explore the potential for regional cooperation between neighboring states on confronting the threat of ISIS and other insurgent extremist groups in Syria and Iraq. Attendees include experts from think tanks, as well as and members of the diplomatic community, the European Union and the academic community in Brussels. 

The meeting will be held under The Chatham House Rule. 

One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States

Overview

On November 20, Mathias Mossberg will present One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States, a new book that imagines a solution for a long-standing and seemingly intractable conflict. 

In One Land, Two States, leading Palestinian and Israeli experts, along with international diplomats and scholars, examine a scenario with two parallel state structures, both covering the whole territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, allowing for shared rather than competing claims of sovereignty. Such a political architecture would radically transform the nature and stakes of the Israel-Palestine conflict; open up for Israelis to remain in the West Bank and maintain their security position; enable Palestinians to settle in all of historic Palestine; and transform Jerusalem into a capital for both of full equality and independence—all without disturbing the demographic balance of each state. Exploring themes of security, resistance, diaspora, globalism, and religion, as well as forms of political and economic power that are not dependent on claims of exclusive territorial sovereignty, this pioneering book offers new ideas for the resolution of conflicts worldwide.

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Click here to watch a live web stream of the event.  

Civilian Blood in Iraq and Syria

EWI Professorial Fellow Greg Austin discusses the strategic need to protect civilian populations in the upcoming military campaign against the Islamic State. Austin highlights a 2007 EWI report that argues for the moral obligation to protect civilians as essential for any effective counter-terrorism strategy.

 

As a powerful coalition of states gears up to degrade and defeat the barbarous Islamic State forces, we need to prepare for the deaths of civilians caught in the cross-fire over the many years that this campaign may be in place. In its recent incursion into Gaza, Israel used leaflets and other means to warn civilians to abandon certain areas. While not effective in important ways, consideration of similar intent must now be displayed by the new coalition toward the civilian population of Iraq and Syria. How can this new alliance help them escape or avoid death and injury at the hands of the attacking coalition forces? Or from reprisals by Islamic State fighters?  

The defence of civilians from such attack by either side in coming months and years cannot be isolated from a strategy for the defence of civilians today. Sadly, the coalition partners now assembling to attack ISIL have not been engaged with such a mission in recent years. There have been good reasons for that, the most important being the reality that for all of their power, these external actors have been able to offer little protection to the citizens inside Iraq or Syria.     

There is another explanation. The external powers, such as the United States and Saudi Arabia, have focused most of their attention on the state interests under threat since the Arab spring began and have paid too little attention to the humanitarian catastrophe that it has unleashed. This catastrophe has been a breeding ground for recruits to the extremist cause, as Hilary Clinton warned it would be. 

The heavy United States and allied focus on countering violent extremism, so evident and arguably quite effective for a decade after September 11 2001, appears to have faded in the more recent past. There are reasonable explanations for that. The policies became routinized and the threats became localized. The leadership of Al Qaeda had been killed, neutralized or otherwise hemmed in. Offshoots such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were fought to something of a standstill. Not so in Iraq.

By June 2014, when the Islamic State (IS) was declared and a caliph formally named, its fighters were in control of score of towns and cities in Iraq and Syria, including a number of major population centres. These include Fallujah, only 70km west of Baghdad, the scene of heavy fighting against coalition forces after the 2003 invasion and home (normally) to around 370,000 people.  

Islamic State fighters are now concentrated in urban areas with a total population numbering in the millions. How will the new coalition target the IS forces in these cities and towns without a large number of civilian casualties? The answer is it can’t. In addition to its military strategy, the coalition urgently needs a civil defense strategy for the people now under IS control. In 2007 and 2008, EastWest Institute authors offered a number of guidelines on the defensive measures and civilian mobilization needed to protect civilians while countering violent extremists. None of the papers quite anticipated the situation we see today but a short manifesto, Protect Civilians and Civil Rights in Counter Terrorist Operations (2007), asserted the centrality of a moral obligation of states to protect civilians in such circumstances. That principle now needs to inform a coalition strategy for defense of civilians in the new war.

This strategy would have to be formulated in consultation with community representatives and executed largely by civilians (on the assumption that there is no over-supply of uniformed personnel). Can we please see this strategy? It will be a lot more difficult than the military plan. Who will lead on that? 

Read the piece here on New Europe. 

 

The Moderate Middle East Must Act

Yousef Al Otaiba, EWI board member and ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, writes an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, presenting the myriad steps the international community must take to effectively combat the Islamic State and extremism in the Middle East. 

"We agree and are ready to join a coordinated international response. But to be effective, the fight must be against more than ISIS. And it must be waged not only on the battlefield but also against the entire militant ideological and financial complex that is the lifeblood of extremism," says Otaiba.

For full article, click here (paywall). 

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