Hotovely Proposes 1 State for 2 People
by Eitam Abadi
While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in Washington last week meeting with United States President Barack Obama and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, a freshman parliamentarian from his ruling Likud faction was in Ariel talking to the party’s central committee members about her plan to annex the Judea and Samaria regions and grant full Israeli citizenship to all its Jewish and Arab residents.
Member of Knesset Tzipi Hotovely wants Netanyahu and the world to know that there is a viable alternative to the creation of a Fatah-led Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland, as Obama and previous US administrations have been determined to established.
Hotovely has reportedly spent her summer vacation not relaxing on European beaches like many of her Knesset colleagues but meeting with top experts on demography and security in order to draft an in-depth initiative for what she calls “one state for two peoples.”
She intends to complete the draft by the time the Knesset’s extended summer recess ends in October and publish it in hopes of having the same impact on Netanyahu from the national camp that the Western-backed Geneva Initiative did from on former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who had been pressured to withdraw from the Gaza region.
Hotovely first heard a presentation on the one-state option from Netanyahu’s former bureau chief and current Makor Rishon deputy editor Uri Elitzur at a conference she organized at the Knesset in May 2009 entitled “Alternatives to the two-state solution.”
Hotovely invited many Zionist thinkers to present their plans and, according to reports, she initially did not like any of them but eventually decided that Elitzur’s idea had the most potential. She then endorsed the plan at the Jerusalem Conference in February.
Former defense minister Moshe Arens, who also spoke at Hotovely’s event, was similarly persuaded by Elitzur’s argument and came out in favor of it in June.
Among current politicians other than Hotovely, only Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has been quoted as endorsing a one-state solution. But Rivlin only refers to it as the lesser of two evils when compared to dividing the land of Israel, and he does not see it as a practical solution ready to be implemented that is better than the status quo.
Hotovely, by contrast, believes that the resistance must have a practical plan now that can be presented to the world to thwart international pressure to divide the land of Israel at a time when the Jewish state’s right to exist and defend itself is being questioned.
“The world will continue pushing us,” Hotovely said in an interview in Jerusalem. “The Goldstone report and flotilla incident proved that even though Israel left Gaza, we still must defend every step we take there. We are in the worst situation, whereby we are being delegitimized and no matter what we do, we will still be responsible for the Palestinians. Most Israelis are afraid of the demographic threat and want to be away from the Arabs. They don’t realize we can’t pretend that they are not there.”
After explaining why both the status quo and a two-state solution are unacceptable, Hotovely said the one-state solution can be palatable because it would enable Israel to maintain control over all of Judea and Samaria and ensure that no Jews or Arabs would have to move.
“There has been a cloud hanging over Judea and Samaria for far too long,” she said. “We need to stop thinking that they can be given up in one deal or another. Israelis oppose giving up the Golan, because they have been there. They support giving up Judea and Samaria because they haven’t been there. If we annexed it, it would bring them closer.”
Hotovely suggests annexing Judea and Samaria in stages, starting with the areas with the densest Jewish populations and the Jordan Valley . She would then propose annexing the rest after building the “infrastructure” for accepting a million and a half new Arab citizens.
By infrastructure, she means a constitution or bills guaranteeing Israel’s future as a Jewish state. The bills would encourage aliya in a serious way and require all citizens to perform national service, which could be done in their communities. Israel would return to policing Ramallah and would control the Arab education system to ensure that it encourages coexistence.
Following discussions with demographers, Hotovely believes Israel can maintain a 70 percent to 30% Jewish majority if aliya was encouraged as a national priority.
She bases this on there currently being nearly 6 million Israeli Jews and 1.5 million Arabs who already possess Israeli citizenship. There is a debate among demographers whether there are currently 1.5 million or 2.5 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
“I call it a Jewish state with a large Arab minority,” Hotovely said about her plan. “I know the one-state solution has problems and I am thinking about how to solve them, but in the Middle East, every solution has a price. I prefer to fight the Palestinians in parliament and not with tanks, and I would rather have speeches by Ahmed Tibi and Saeb Erekat in the Knesset than missiles on Ashkelon.”
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