# 406 – 2 States: Another Election

2 States: Another Election

My last Letter from Israel focused on the backlash after Yair Lapid’s statement about a 2-State solution before the UN General Assembly.

He was criticised for his words by so many – including, of course, his main rival for the Premiership, Netanyahu. But some cleverdicks reminded us that Bibi himself had said basically the same thing in front of the same assembly. And I forgot that I did write about this at the time: nearly 9 years ago, in my Letter # 245 of January 30, 2014, I wrote the following –

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Reminder: In Israel proper, there is a large population of Israeli Arabs, about 1 1/4 million of whom are Muslim, and around 1/4 million Christians. (That’s gone up by at least 1/2 million since then). They have full political and religious rights. 

Israeli PM Netanyahu finally came out and implied that he was ready to agree to the 2-state solution, still with some smaller conditions (you can forget about all refugees’ ‘right of return’), but to have East Jerusalem as their capital (almost is today). Leave most of the ‘settlers’ there to become Jewish citizens in the Palestinian state – with dual citizenship, as is the case today for at least half Israel’s population.

(Whereas only around 20% Americans are said to have passports, I believe that there are far more passports in Israel than there are citizens – many have 2, some even have 3 passports. So many of Israelis are/were refugees). 

This immediately caused anguished screams in the Knesset, first from some within the PM’s own party, then from the opposition, and obviously from the Arab parties, followed by head-on-wall-banging in Europe, UN etc. 

But it would be a political win-win step..

• The Palestinians would never accept this – they want Jew-free country, like Jordan, Saudi and so many others. But if we make the offer loudly and officially, the UN will, perhaps, get off our backs.

• And if they DO accept this, we would make it very clear that this would be conditional on having peace. Any attack on Israeli citizens (dual nationality) in Palestine would be dealt with as it is today (in ‘occupied West Bank). We have the right to continue to defend our citizens.

If they want this to work, they have to want peace.  

Put the ball in the other’s court. Let THEM and the UN and all the others worry about the problem; not us. 

Win-Win.

Gosh, I am such a dreamer….

    Stephen

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(I think I already mentioned that I am slowly copy/pasting all my letters into 1 word file, with no real purpose in mind. I doubt very much if I’ll print even 1 copy – it’ll be over 1,000 pages. But, I am having fun re-reading what I wrote back then, and am chuffed that much of what I said was right and that many of my predictions proved right).

And now we face the 5th election in 44 months. Nov 1 (ditto Denmark) . Seems that nearly everyone is expecting everyone else to change their vote, but they themselves will not, proving that they are right. Even if there is a larger turnout, it is not expected to make much difference.

Netanyahu’s Likud will again be the largest party. Yair Lapid’s will be 2nd.

Likely outcome?

1. Netanyahu wins and scrapes together a right-wing religious and national coalition.

2. A surprise shift, not necessarily towards the Left, but to the Centre, allowing Lapid (or Benny Gantz) to form a more Centrist coalition, with some religious, with the same Arab party as before, but without extremists.

3. A stale-mate, and a date for the 6th election in 4 years….

I wish –

1. Some or all politicians would represent constituents. For me, that always reminds a politician of who he is and what his main job is – and that he is being ‘watched’ by the voters.

2. To help get past the ‘balanced’ coalition headache, I repeat the suggestion to reward the winning party with bonus seats. E.g., here, where we have 120 seats in the Knesset, the winning party should receive 10-20 extra seats. That would go towards giving them the power to move forward with their manifesto. The democratic system will ensure that, if/when, it fails to produce, a new election will be called, at the latest after the designated period.

I’ve used that word ‘democracy’ again. Some article I read ‘claims’ that only 14% of the UN nations are democratic. I actually wrote to the author of the article, asking for his definition of ‘democracy’. No reply yet. I would love to be on the committee that a) defines the word officially, and b) that decides which of the 193 UN countries can be members of UNDO (UN Democracy Organisation).

Wish us luck…

Stephen