After 14 years of aggressively promoting Washington’s imperialist two-state paradigm for Israelis and Palestinians, it now appears that J Street might be finally adjusting to new realities on the ground.
As the US-based Liberal Zionist lobby group is set to use its national conference this week to outline the principles for reigniting American efforts to impose a solution on Israelis and Palestinians, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami has announced that this will include a robust discussion on the notion of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation in place of dividing the land into two separate nation-states.
On the surface, J Street’s willingness to finally move past the failed “two-state solution” might seem encouraging. For several years, the group’s stubborn refusal to entertain ideas outside the partition paradigm had led many of its younger members moved further left and embrace solutions that better address the grievances and aspirations they had been hearing from Palestinians. But despite hemorrhaging so many bright young activists to rival organizations and movements more in touch with realities on the ground, J Street appears to have finally succumbed to the pressure to allow for a discussion featuring new conceptions.
Although J Street hasn’t yet officially redefined its position, the seemingly revolutionary step of allowing space for new conversations comes almost a year after Peter Beinart – who had been one of the most influential Jewish advocates in the United States for partitioning the land into two separate states – officially declared his rejection of the two-state paradigm last July.
It’s therefore important to appreciate that this subtle shift within J Street – as small as it might be – reveals a growing acknowledgement by Liberal Zionists that the two-state paradigm cannot actually work.
But unlike Beinart, whose expressed openness for both the confederation and democratic one-state paradigms have demonstrated a humble willingness to explore new possibilities, J Street’s readiness to entertain the confederation model isn’t actually such a significant departure from its years of unwavering support for partition.
In fact, confederation should be understood as the two-state paradigm’s new packaging and J Street’s willingness to discuss it should be understood not as a rejection of the two-state model but as an attempt to rebrand it.
In addition to forcing Israel to relinquish sovereignty over the Samaria and Judea regions – something the Jews deeply connected to their people’s historic aspirations must vehemently oppose – the confederation model entrenches the current power dynamics by attempting to bribe Palestinians with crumbs like the promise of freedom of movement. It also further entrenches the colonial economic model that the Oslo Accords institutionalized for the West Bank and Gaza while simultaneously claiming to have ended the occupation.
Confederation is essentially an upgraded two-state model with some tweaks to the failed policy. West Bank Jewish communities wouldn’t need to be destroyed and Palestinians would be able to travel freely throughout the land – but these tweaks depend on the relationship dynamics improving enough to downplay the security concerns of Israelis. Like its two-state predecessor, the confederation model offers no meaningful improvements when it comes to how Israelis and Palestinians experience one another.
Confederation doesn’t take into consideration the grievances or aspirations of Jews and Palestinians. It doesn’t aim to achieve anything close to what either people would consider justice but rather tries to force both sides to compromise on issues they find deeply important.
J Street’s willingness to grant the confederation model some legitimacy at their conference should alert us to the fact that confederation is simply an attempt to rescue the “two-state solution” aggressively pushed by the imperialist powers since before Israel attained independence. It’s not a new proposal but rather a manipulative liberal fantasy picture of what partition can look like in a best case scenario where both sides somehow learn to get along without a meaningful decolonization process.
