Commissioned by the Arditi Foundation for Cultural Dialogue, “An Israeli/Palestinian Federation: An Alternative Approach to Peace” was supported by the Geneva Graduate Institute. A home for interdisciplinary research since its foundation, the Institute brought together a group of academics and specialists — constitutional law scholars, historical sociologists, development economists, and historical sociologists — with Riccardo Bocco, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the Institute, to think beyond the current dramatic stalemate and consider an alternative to the two state solution for Israel and Palestine. The resultant report was written by Riccardo Bocco and Nigel Roberts, Former World Bank Country Director for West Bank and Gaza.
Marie-Laure Salles, Director of the Geneva Graduate Institute, introduced the report, which she called “a project of profound importance and meaning”. It has been, she said, “both a privilege and a responsibility for the Institute to contribute to this important initiative at a time when radical imagination is definitely more essential than ever, [though becoming] rare and actually difficult to sustain.”
“It would be easy to dismiss such a proposal as deeply unrealistic in the current climate— yet perhaps it's exactly this improbability that makes the conversation necessary, as an invitation to expand our horizon of thought. To imagine a radically different future – one that is grounded in equality and justice as moral compass – is already a form of action. The kind that opens up the realm of the possible – and calls for courageous leadership willing to follow that thread.”
Metin Arditi, President of the Arditi Foundation, addressed the genesis of the project, which dates back to early 2023 and the powerlessness he felt in the aftermath of the last elections of the Knesset, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu created a coalition with the extreme right.
“I thought, What can I do? What can I do from where I am in Geneva? And I just made a very quick analysis and I thought, there are three possibilities in front of us, or let's say in front of Israel.”
The first possibility, he explained, is the status quo, which in itself is a recipe for disaster. The second is the two-state solution that has long been presented as the way forward for peace but that he finds equally dangerous, due notably to the violence that might occur in the removal of up to 700,000 Israeli settlers from the West Bank and Gaza.
Metin Arditi embraced a third solution: the idea of a one state solution modeled on what he called the “Swiss formula” where there would be cantons or districts or departments with “a cantonal constitution, which would encompass major areas of decisions, and especially religion and immigration ».
“This solution,” Metin Arditi explained, “could be the closest we could think of [to] a two state solution where every identity — not minority — would feel home and safe.”
Co-author of “An Israeli/Palestinian Federation: An Alternative Approach to Peace”, Riccardo Bocco, focused on the humanity behind the conflict and the necessity to address the narratives of the two partners for peace, the far-reaching generational trauma on both sides stemming from the Shoah and the Nakba, and the question of the occupation and decolonisation.
“In 1967, after the Six-day war, Abba Eban - then Israeli ambassador at the United Nations in New York - contributed to the writing of Resolution 242 of 1967 related to the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the territories occupied during the war. In his Memoirs, he relates a very intense exchange of letters with Golda Meir, his Prime Minister in Tel Aviv, urging her to end as quickly as possible the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He was pointing to the fact that the occupation was going to become “the cancer of Israeli society”. And, tragically, Abba Eban was right in predicting the future…” he said.
In his presentation of the report, Nigel Roberts emphasised the ways in which their project stands apart from similar solutions, notably by distinguishing between residency and citizenship for Palestinians and Israelis:
“A Palestinian refugee returning to Israel would become a citizen of Palestine, but only a resident of Israel. He or she would have a right to vote in elections for the Palestinian parliament, but not the Israeli parliament. He/she would be subject, as a resident, to Israeli law - and the same would apply to Israelis who resided in the Palestinian territory under a federation. They would vote in Israel while resident in Palestine, but would be subject to Palestinian law. In this way, the Palestinian and the Israeli majorities in each of the territories of the Federation would not be threatened.”
“Momentum towards a realistic solution has to be created outside the political structures that both the Palestinians and the Israelis have created, since those structures have thus far been unable to resolve the problem of this hundred year old conflict” he said.
Both Nigel Roberts and Riccardo Bocco hope that the next step for the project would be to convene public intellectuals from Israel and Palestine to discuss not only this report, but the various other future alternatives. They also see the value of convening diplomats around a discussion of realistic alternatives to the failed two state solution.
Riccardo Bocco and Nigel Roberts’s presentations of the report were followed by interventions by Yael Berda and Ibrahim Saïd. Yael Berda is Associate Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at Hebrew University, Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University, and board member of A Land for All. Ibrahim Saïd is Adjunct Professor at the International Institute in Geneva and Director of Think-ahead, a not-for-profit research organisation that specialises in the analysis of international aid policies and practice.
The event was moderated by Grégoire Mallard, Director of Research and Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
The interventions by the panelists were followed by a question & answer session with the audience.