What Do People Mean by “One-State”? |
A recent poll conducted by the Jewish Voter Resource Center found that nearly half of American Jews under the age of 35 support replacing Israel with a binational state as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether this finding represents a lasting generational shift among American Jews remains to be seen, but it raises an important question: is a one-state solution a viable alternative to the traditional two-state paradigm?
Before answering that question, however, we must first ask what a “one-state solution” actually means.
Some observers may notice a growing alliance between American progressives—both Jewish and non-Jewish—and Palestinians who say they support a one-state solution “where everyone has equal rights.” But are they necessarily referring to the same thing?
When American progressives speak about a binational state in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they often envision something similar to Belgium.
Belgium has two major national communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemings and the French-speaking Walloons. Rather than assimilating them into a single national identity, Belgium has institutions that recognize both communities and allow them to preserve their distinct identities through a system of shared power. Many issues of daily life, such as education, language, and culture, are administered at the regional level, enabling each community to maintain its traditions and heritage. Belgium’s political system also contains constitutional safeguards that ensure neither group can permanently dominate the other.
In other words, a binational state such as Belgium is not merely a one-person-one-vote democracy. It is also a system that grants both communities collective national rights alongside equal individual rights, allowing each nation to exercise a degree of self-determination under the same federal government.
Applied to Israel-Palestine, such a model would likely involve a decentralized federal government that recognizes both Hebrew and Arabic as official languages, grants Israelis and Palestinians autonomy over matters such as education, language, and culture........