As scholars, activists, and professionals, we no longer regard a two-state solution as feasible or desirable. The demographic intermixing of peoples and their deep economic interdependence have turned Israel and the Palestinian territories into a de facto single political and economic space.
For this reason, we support the efforts of the Federal Forum of Israel-Palestine, a coalition of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, to build support for a federal solution based on equality of political rights, local control, free movement, and free trade.
Over the last century, many prominent individuals have gone on record for a federal system for the area of Israel-Palestine. They have included Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, the director of the Arab College in Jerusalem, Judah Magnes, the president of Hebrew University, Itamar Ben-Avi, the first modern native speaker of Hebrew, political theorist and historian Hannah Arendt, and Nobel prize-winning free market economist, F.A. Hayek. Many of these thinkers regarded the decision of the United Nations in 1947 to reject federalism in favor of partition as a tragic mistake. Our goal is to reopen a serious discussion of constructive ways to address that error.
As advocates of a federalist approach, we strongly favor emulation of the highly successful Swiss style canton model for Israel-Palestine. With more than two dozen self-governing cantons (many with official languages and churches) that system has brought Switzerland a long record of prosperity and internal peace. To address shared security concerns, it includes a seven-member Federal Council elected by both houses of parliament, with rigorous checks on power and a presidency that rotates annually.
To implement a comparable framework across Israel and the Palestinian territories, we favor a transition plan that would give Palestinians a meaningful financial stake and accelerate their integration into the broader economy. One possible win-win method is to transfer to each Palestinian resident a private ownership share in government-owned industries and publicly held land (now more than 90 percent of the total in Israel). Such a transition to widespread individual Palestinian ownership can draw on the methods of the Czech Republic’s voucher dispersal program of the 1990s.
We agree with the Federal Forum’s Guiding Principles that a “federal solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict enables both peoples to enjoy self-determination, autonomy and cooperation, with the benefit of interdependent economies.”
While we give wholehearted moral support for a Swiss style canton model, we emphasize that any change must be entirely in the hands of Israelis and Palestinians and must never be imposed by foreign governments.
We encourage individuals, including scholars, activists, and professionals both in the United States and in other countries, to endorse this effort by signing this statement. We also urge them to contribute financially to the Federal Forum and consider joining as international members.