ABCD: Four possible futures between the river and the sea

Despite the complexity of the history and the many dimensions of the current conflict, the possible futures for Israel-Palestine are few.

Dr Alex Sinclair has boiled them down to four words, conveniently starting with the letters A,B,C and D.

Sinclair, who is Chief Content Officer at Educating for Impact, and an adjunct lecturer at the Melton Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained the four possible at Limmud Oz in Melbourne.

Failure to resolve the status of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would create an apartheid Israel, with different regimes within pre-1967 borders, which has a majority Jewish population, and the West Bank's majority Palestinian areas.

Jews and Arabs would continue to have full equality in pre-1967 Israel. But Palestinians in parts of the West Bank would be subject to Israeli military governance, justice and army control while Jews in the settlements would be governed by Israel’s civil governance, justice and police system. This system currently applies in Area C, which comprises 61% of the West Bank, where most Jewish settlements are situated.

Sinclair acknowledges the inflammatory nature of the term “apartheid” but quotes former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo to justify the term. “In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state,”  Pardo told the Jerusalem Post in 2023.

Also known as the “one-state solution”, a binational state posits the entire population, Jewish and Palestinian, living together under one system of government.

This state, which might be called Israel-Palestine, would include the whole region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, what is currently Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It would be a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state operating in both Hebrew and Arabic with a population that is close to 50/50 Jewish and Palestinian, though the number of Palestinians is expected to grow and the proportion of Jews to shrink.

The model assumes the capacity of the two warring populations to live peaceably under a shared system. Many people believe it amounts to or would lead to the removal of Israel and its replacement with Palestine.

This extreme solution posits Israel taking control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but without the current Palestinian population.

While not even extremists have gone so far as to explicitly promote expelling entire populations, there is a strong subtext in favour of this options in the rhetoric of Religious Zionist leaders Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. They have argued for totally destroying Gaza so that large swathes of the population will leave, and expanding settlements in the West Bank to squeeze out the Palestinian population.

The argument that Israel’s military actions in Gaza constitute genocide is based on the belief that Israel’s true military agenda is to significantly reduce the Palestinian population, rather than simple to remove the Hamas terrorists and their infrastructure.  

The two-state solution first proposed at Oslo in 1993 remains on the table, despite its failure to come to fruition 20 years ago.

In various follow-up meetings, Israelis and Palestinians have worked toward a negotiated two-state solution, notably at the Camp David Summit of 2000 and the Olmert-Abbas negotiations of 2008.

The broad strokes of a viable potential future agreement were set out in the Geneva Accord in 2009:

Analyst Shaul Arieli argues division is the only solution which would allow Israel to remain both Jewish and democratic.

“The demographic and land data in the West Bank paint a clear picture: Palestinians hold a significant demographic majority and spatial dominance, both in terms of land ownership and built-up area. This reality presents annexation advocates with an insoluble dilemma: either losing the Jewish majority or giving up Israel's democratic character. Nevertheless, separation can be achieved through land swaps of about 4% of the West Bank's area.

“Such a solution would allow preserving 80% of the Israeli population currently living beyond the Green Line under Israeli sovereignty, while maintaining territorial continuity and the fabric of life for both Palestinians and Israelis.“