One Land, Two States by LeVine Mark; Mossberg Mathias; Bartelson Jens

Author:LeVine, Mark; Mossberg, Mathias; Bartelson, Jens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

NATIONAL ECONOMIC INTERESTS AND STRATEGIES TO REDRESS IMBALANCES

I have emphasized the failure of Palestinian policy to adopt economic strategies geared toward ending occupation, alongside the Israeli policy success in prolonging occupation through economic peace, since the Parallel States proposal will have to address both if it is to achieve its ambitious goals. Too few experts, pundits, and policy-makers have recognized that Palestine (like all such things!) is a case like no other and should not be subject to generic, template-driven, one-size-fits-all policy formulas. And in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, this rings truer than ever. While conventional wisdom might have been unable to envisage that the liberal market system could fail so dramatically, with the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation since the second Intifada this should have become obvious at least to Palestinian policy-makers. Sustaining the short-lived growth gains from the post-Oslo “peace dividend” and economic cooperation has proved elusive, if not futile, with real per-capita incomes today 30 percent below 2000 levels.

The developmental cost of having remained faithful over the years to failed economic doctrines and a rose-tinted view of the realities of Israeli occupation rises with every passing day. The Parallel States structure must be able to transform what is today, for want of a better term, a bipolar Jewish-Arab economy into a mutually beneficial framework for growth and sustained development. This bipolarity is manifested in various dimensions, all of which will need to be tackled by any future arrangements: uneven performance, from crisis/depression, to recovery/exuberance, back to normality; a lopsided structure governed by the same underlying economic rules, regulations, and policy but with one Jewish dominant pole and several Arab satellite poles; and skewed resource distribution in land, water, and other natural resources, as well as financial capital (industry, investment, technology) and human-social capital.

To the extent that the Parallel States structure can apply, and indeed exploit, the more nuanced concept of divisible sovereignty to create a more functional and equitable economic relationship between the two states, it can offer more than the conventional economic cooperation or integration schemes proposed. It also suggests alternatives to the descent into a colonial or apartheid unitary state system, which is what Israel and the Occupied Territory risk becoming if current trends continue.

But avoiding these pitfalls calls for more than just careful or innovative design. More vital is that the Parallel States structure secure clear sovereign gains for Palestine, whose economy requires major support and restructuring if long-term imbalances and divergence are to be reversed. This in turn implies that the Parallel States economy must not be conceived of as some distant goal after a political settlement appears on the horizon. Instead, efforts could be focused today that are consistent with the core assumptions of the Parallel States structure regarding sovereignty, statehood, and reversing adverse path dependency. This means that the Parallel States framework should embody principles and economic goals that are necessary for the success of any negotiated two-state configuration. But these should also be relevant to a longer-term struggle for equal rights and freedom as prospects for a two-state solution recede.

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