Israel-Palestine: “Two States Plus” – The Urgency of a Real Utopia

As the situation in Gaza worsens and the Israeli political debate becomes increasingly radicalized, any plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems out of reach. Yet many are working to prepare for the future. One political project, A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland, deserves special attention. It proposes two sovereign states linked by a confederation, each recognizing the national legitimacy of the other and organizing coexistence throughout the disputed territory. In a context marked by military deadlock, democratic fatigue, and the rise of anti-Zionist interpretations in Europe, including of this project, what can we make of such a utopian construct?

 

During our reporting trip to Israel in May 2024, we met many people, all of whom impressed us with their vitality, spirit of resistance, and imagination for securing the future of their country. Two of them, Meron Rapoport, an Israeli Jew, and Rula Hardal, an Israeli Palestinian, are advocating a unique political project that contrasts sharply with the options that generally dominate public debate: “A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland.”

For a long time, it seemed to us that the utopian nature of the “A Land for All” project made it difficult to be heard in a situation saturated by war, but also by internal struggles to save the rule of law and democracy in Israel – anti-government struggles that preceded the war and have continued in parallel ever since. Our fear was that amid the armed conflict and the divisions in public opinion caused by the events of October 7, as well as by the turn taken by the Israeli response over the months, the voices of our interlocutors would be stifled or that they would be distorted or even appropriated for anti-Zionist propaganda purposes in a European context where this wave has continued to grow, becoming a veritable tidal wave.

But the time for delaying is over. It must be over at a moment when the far-right religious Zionist component of the government and its prime minister are embarking on the project of occupying Gaza. The hostages seem to have been forgotten, the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza reduced to suffering bombardment and hunger, while Israeli civil society is exhausted by a war that never ends, and whose meaning is now lost in pure power politics, in defiance of the rights of peoples—the very rights that are the lifeblood of Zionism in the true sense of the word. The United States, a historic ally of this liberal civil society in its defense of a democratic Zionism based on the rule of law, is now only a supporter insofar as its own power politics benefit from it. Thus, they are indifferent to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied territories, as long as they do not disrupt their geostrategic agreements with Arab countries – or even with Iran.

We are therefore plunged into a bottomless catastrophe. Yet it is precisely in these times, when no solution is in sight, that a utopian project has the virtue of reminding us that one day we will have to move towards a fair settlement of the conflict, even if Israeli society, since October 7, has never been so far from glimpsing such a possibility.

It is in this context that we have decided to present the “A Land for All” project to the readers of K., through the voice of Meron Rapoport, co-founder of the movement, who, following our discussions with him and Rula Hardal in May 2024, kindly agreed to give us an interview one year later. A large number of intellectuals, particularly in Europe and the US, have called on the European Union to support it and make it its official position. However, the brief presentation of the project does not allow us to accurately assess its nature and implications, let alone identify the obstacles that would need to be overcome to make it possible. Yet this task is essential. It is a misunderstanding of the utopian genre—which is made up of concrete descriptions and details—to think that this assessment can be overlooked. This is all the more true in a tragic context such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the very value of utopia, capable as it is of guiding and inspiring people when they need it most, must necessarily be measured against its feasibility. All the more so because, by contenting ourselves with vague invocations, we run the risk of making the project appear to be something it absolutely is not: an anti-Zionist enterprise aimed at turning the page on the historical Zionism that inspired the creation of the State of Israel.

But what is Zionism, if not the project of establishing a sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Israel, ensuring the security of its citizens and, as such, ideally living in peace with its neighbors? “A Land for All” proposes exactly that: a firm recognition that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a national conflict that can only be resolved through the maintenance of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state within the 1967 borders and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside it. Rula Hardal, current co-chair of the movement, emphasized this from the outset of our discussion in 2024: “The transformative revision of our national identities, our national projects, and our national movements is exactly what we need.” From this perspective, expressed by a Palestinian woman, this begins with recognizing that “the Zionist national project is fully legitimate.” And conversely, it must be added from the outset that this is just as difficult for a large part of Jewish opinion to accept in the current situation. In short, the question of heightened national consciousness, in no way diminished or curtailed, but deepened and made explicit by both sides, is the new path that we are striving to open up here. And it is also, it must be emphasized, what sets this project apart from the binational hypothesis and the abolition of Jewish sovereignty that today define a large part of anti-Zionist positions—when these do not simply aim at the expulsion of Jews as colonists who must finally be gotten rid of^[1].

But neither the project is a two-state solution as we know it. Or more precisely, to use Rula Hardal’s words again, it is a “two-states-plus” solution . So what is this plus?

“The transformative revision of our national identities is exactly what we need.” — Rula Hardal

In practical terms, it can be described as freedom won for everyone throughout Mandatory Palestine. The idea is that once a Palestinian state is created as a democratic state governed by the rule of law and respecting universal human rights as enshrined in international law—equality, freedom, respect for minorities, and the sanctity of human life—it will be able to enter into a confederation of two sovereign nation states, inspired by the model of the European Union, with Israel (which has already met these criteria since its founding, even if its room for improvement in this area remains obvious and is growing day by day under pressure from the far right) in a confederation of two sovereign nation states, inspired by the model of the European Union, with open borders and freedom of movement and residence rights for all its citizens. This confederation would thus guarantee a fluid relationship between the two states; it would also have common institutions, particularly in the areas of monetary policy (it should be remembered that the shekel is already the currency in Israel, the occupied territories and Gaza), social policy and security. Economic cooperation, the sharing of resources and primary common goods – particularly water – but also social rights, starting with health, as well as civil protection in both territories, would form a common foundation of experience, maintained and consolidated for a global population divided into two groups with entirely distinct citizenships and therefore political rights and the ability to influence the direction of their own state.

This common foundation is based on the confederal reunification of a space that is equally important, albeit in different ways, to both sides. For being equally important does not mean being identical. It is the rigor and intelligence of this political vision that reminds us of this fundamental political truth. “Equally” means “with the same legitimacy.” But this equal legitimacy is also, when we look at the content of the experiences, what differentiates the actors involved, by virtue of the meaning that each attaches to belonging to this land taken as a whole. The originality of the project thus lies in taking into account two equally valid but specifically different attachments to the entire territory of Mandatory Palestine. These attachments must be honored and recognized by both sides and put into practice, while maintaining the two entities of the confederation as politically distinct. Thus, citizens of the Palestinian state will be able to move freely in Israel and will be free to settle on the land of their ancestors—without becoming Israeli citizens, and therefore without being able to participate in the sovereign decisions of the Jewish state. Similarly, Israeli settlers currently living in the occupied territories could remain there as Israeli citizens living on Palestinian sovereign territory, without being able to influence the politics of that state.

The utopia obviously begins with the obligation to overcome the immense difficulty currently posed by the creation of a democratic Palestinian state. For it presupposes—as the plan emphasizes—the complete dismantling and disarmament of Hamas in Gaza and the transformation of the Palestinian Authority into a democratic body. No militia of any kind, Meron Rapoport insists, can remain in either of the two states. The monopoly on legitimate force will be held by each of them within their own territory. But even if we imagine these obstacles removed—which, he emphasizes, can only be done gradually, as violence will certainly not disappear overnight—another major obstacle is often highlighted. The mistrust between the two sides is too deep, the fear too great, and the trauma on both sides too massive for anyone to sincerely believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence between citizens and residents on the same territory. This is all the more true given that this is a land that both sides sometimes consider their exclusive possession and that some, moreover, sacralize. In other words, the illusion manifests itself in the abstraction that we make of the fact that attachment, through its power expressed on both sides, not only distinguishes but also opposes the protagonists.

Utopia begins with the challenge for each side to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national project.

However, the strength of the project lies precisely in not stumbling over this realistic observation, but in approaching the situation from the perspective of what is equally real, namely what already objectively binds the two sides together. This link cannot be reduced to economic interdependence, however intense and effective it may be. The “partnership” on which Meron Rapoport focuses is based on this level, but also goes far beyond it. The intuition of the project’s promoters cannot be reduced to promoting the integration of all the groups involved through trade and work. For while social integration is certainly based in part on socio-economic integration, it is clear that this is not enough in the political and historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What also unites the two peoples, just as objectively, is precisely what has generally divided them and led to armed conflict, namely their equal but not identical attachment to this land. This attachment has, as a matter of fact, set the two sides up as enemies engaged in deadly wars. It has done so all the more, Rula Hardal points out, because it has been overdetermined by religion. However, she confides, “the problem is primarily between two national groups.” Returning to this reality does not mean abruptly confusing the positions, but rather reestablishing the space where they can be articulated: that of a different political belonging to this place, which is indeed the same place. It is by starting from this point—a starting point rejected by both religious Zionists and the Islamist movements that have taken power in Gaza, which in truth act neither in favor of the Israelis nor in favor of the Palestinians—that the foundations can be laid for mutual recognition of the legitimate ties, including religious ties, that each side has with this land.

The fundamental utopian assumption is to imagine that the other’s feelings are not simply a pretext for expulsion, colonization, and indiscriminate killing, but that they are sincere. The “real utopia” is based on the following gamble: that reciprocity of perspectives can not only be triggered but is already partly in place, with each person capable of putting themselves in the other’s shoes, of assuming good faith, in other words, of not suspecting the other of lying when their voice trembles at the mention of the olive trees in their native village or the tomb of the patriarchs. The project therefore relies on each person’s ability to imagine that the other’s emotion is not a ruse intended to justify a policy of hostility. But if they do not dismiss the other’s perspective as a lie, it is also because their attachment to their own is felt to be unshakeable. In other words, it relies—this is not the language used, but K’s interpretation—on the socio-historical integration already at work, woven into the conflict itself.

What unites them is precisely what divided them: their equal but not identical attachment to this land.

The second assumption is also emotional and may seem even more utopian. For this type of integration to work, one condition is necessary: mutual recognition of the actual traumas that deeply underpin the commitments on both sides. Let us be clear. This is not about a politics of guilt, nor about counting the suffering inflicted on each side, nor about a necessarily endless debate about who suffered more. It is about recognizing that this conflict has its own history, and that within it, both sides are burdened with trauma, without it being necessary to compare them, let alone equate them.

For Israeli Jews, this means fully acknowledging the Nakba, the occupation, and the effects of colonization, which together form the backdrop to the ongoing historical trauma of the Palestinians. It means recognizing that evoking this trauma is not a rhetorical tool in the service of a policy of force and the repossession of territory, which in this case would involve unlimited victimization. For the Palestinian people, as Rula Hardal courageously pointed out, this means recognizing that the struggle against Israel in its terrorist form and the rhetoric that accompanies it has continually revived the trauma of the Shoah, something that the Palestinians have never been able to acknowledge. As “victims of the solution to the Jewish question in Europe,” and in no way responsible for it, the Palestinians nonetheless bear some responsibility, through their actions, for the fact that the traumatic Jewish memory, shaped in modern times by the Shoah, has been periodically revived. For Rula Hardal, this judgment also applies to what happened on October 7. This, she says without hesitation, “we must acknowledge.” This recognition, it should be noted, goes far beyond what many Western voices are prepared to admit, as they stubbornly deny that what happened that day was Judeophobia and antisemitism.

It is clear that, however utopian it may seem, this project is not a purely intellectual decision, arbitrary and detached from the realities that need to be faced. It does not ask both sides to suddenly trust each other. It proposes what might be called a series of tests. The test of recognizing the legitimacy of the other’s national project. The test of the ability to recognize the other’s attachment to this land and to judge it equally legitimate. The test of the ability to recognize the other’s trauma without retreating into a defensive posture in the face of the victim’s accusatory force.

Between the Jordan River and the sea, there are only two traumatized peoples.

Ultimately, the most accurate intuition about this political project is perhaps this: between the Jordan River and the sea, there are two traumatized peoples. And the only possible way out is to build a common will to dissociate the condition of being traumatized from a position of victimhood, to renounce the benefits that this position provides, in the form of a poison that inevitably leads to mistrust and sometimes hatred.

On this project, which is based on a disconnect between citizenship and residence, between political belonging and enjoyment of the land, the pragmatic realist will, however, have one last objection. It is not a minor one, since it raises two related problems posed by the “law of return” on the one hand—this law allowing Jews and descendants of Jews to obtain Israeli citizenship— and thus to come and populate, as Jews, what is a Jewish state – and the “right of return” on the other, a right denied to the Palestinian exiles of 1949, who are divided into several groups of refugees in East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora (mainly in Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon). The confederation, on both levels, is set to change the situation, since the principle of two states that it brings together, with the added bonus of freedom of movement and residence that it provides, cannot fail to have an impact. For it follows that repopulation, in both states and on the same land, becomes the major consequence that must be anticipated in demographic terms. A Land for All, as its inventors make no secret of, aims to finally do justice to the refugees of 1949. Meron Rapoport and Rula Hardal agreed to tell us that this is the main pitfall that must finally be stopped from being obscured. Recognizing the Nakba, in short, on the Jewish side, means precisely that. Freedom of residence takes on its full meaning in this regard, as refugees can return to what they consider their home, but without citizenship. But the right of return is no less affected by the arrangement, since current settlers, and possibly other Jews claiming the right to settle on this part of the land which, although located outside the state of which they are citizens, can legitimately be considered theirs from the point of view of their attachment, which is reflected in their status as non-citizen members of the confederation.

None of our interlocutors hid the obstacles facing the upheavals in the overall configuration that this project implies. Paving the way for such demographic changes, coupled with changes in status intended both to enable and control them, is by no means self-evident and cannot be envisaged without anticipating and taking into account all possible scenarios. It is therefore reasonable to ask: Is it conceivable that populations will remain non-citizen residents, especially over generations, without demands for reconnection between the two statuses arising? Is this not counting on maturity at a given point in time, without considering that effective residence, as it continues over time, will give rise to political claims that cannot be separated from it? And what would happen to these claims if the segments of the population, by virtue of their size, were to undermine the majority-minority relationship that is supposed to apply in each of the two states? Any realistic observer of migratory phenomena knows that prolonged residence, especially from one generation to the next, would inevitably give rise to legitimate political demands, bringing with them new conflicts.

Here, it is the idea of “confederation” that needs to be clarified in terms of its capacity, through the new links it would create, to respond to this trend, i.e., to counterbalance the implications of the residential strategies deployed over time and the demographic changes that are bound to accompany them. Everything is therefore deferred to the inventiveness that can be credited to this form, with significant reference, for each of our interlocutors, to the original political form that is Europe. The summit of utopia is thus reached through what appears to be a reality that is currently being tested, but located at a great geographical and political distance from the place where we agree to try to transport it.

Nevertheless, however utopian it may seem, this project, insofar as it is a mechanism based on a principle of distinction and articulation, has the advantage of identifying the complex coordinates of the conflict as it actually occurs. This is where its relevance lies – that is, its ability to feed our imagination without letting it drift into pure fantasy. Let us hope that it will be of great use when the dust of war settles.

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Julia Christ, Bruno Karsenti, and Danny Trom