The Two-State Solution 2a: Ethnic federalism and its discontents



Swarthmore College has a fascinating online exhibit about the Jewish "autonomous region" created by Stalin in Birobidzhan, Siberia. Stalin's vision for the Jews was, naturally, highly anti-religious; although he spoke the language of national self-determination, his goal was to fit Jews into the scheme of Soviet territorial minorities rather than to promote or protect Jewish culture.



Birobidzhan was actually Stalin's second choice; the initial plan to resettle Soviet Jews in agricultural colonies began in Ukraine, the Crimea and Belarus, where more than 200,000 Jews established collective farms during the 1920s. Resistance from local populations, however, forced Stalin to redirect the Jewish settlement project to a more isolated area. Birobidzhan was chosen for its sparse population, its location near the Chinese border and the availability of exploitable natural resources.



Of course, the very isolation and inhospitability of Birobidzhan - combined with Stalin's failure to provide adequate support - ensured that relatively few settlers would come. Nonetheless, about 30,000 did so, including more than 1000 foreign Jews. These received the standard Soviet national minority package, which offered little in the way of real self-determination but did permit education and cultural activities in Yiddish. Stalin's tolerance of Jewish culture did not extend to religious rights; there was no synagogue in Birobidzhan until 1947. The Yiddish language was favored over Hebrew in order to promote national over religious identity - ironically, the same reason that Hebrew was favored by many Zionists.



Nor did the isolation of Birobidzhan protect its Jews from Stalin's depredations. During the great purges of the late 1930s, many of the leaders of the Birobidzhan project were imprisoned or executed, and Jewish cultural institutions were closed down. Although there was some revival of cultural rights after the war and even a minor influx of Jewish settlement, this ended in 1948 with Stalin's renewed assault on Soviet Jews, which featured book-burnings reminiscent of the Middle Ages. By that time, Israel had also taken on the role of the Jewish national home. The Jewish Autonomous Region still exists - the only specifically Jewish political entity other than Israel to be established in modern times - but Jews are a small fraction of the remaining population.



The Birobidzhan project, however, may still have relevance today as an example of how "ethnic federalism" can succumb to excessive centralism and authoritarian rule. As such, it is a cautionary warning against the increasingly common suggestion that Israel and Palestine form a binational federal state. The argument commonly made in favor of such a solution is that the separation of powers and local autonomy inherent in a federal system will prevent the Jewish character of Israel from being overwhelmed by a Palestinian demographic majority. I've previously argued, however, that a federal system - like any other constitutional system existing within the borders of a single nation-state - is only viable as long as the central government retains the commitment to enforce it.



Birobidzhan, I believe, is a case in point. The 1918 constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, of which Birobidzhan was part, was on its face a progressive document that guaranteed national self-determination to its constituent regions. Regional and local councils were, in theory, provided with broad power to "decide all questions of purely local importance." Under Stalin, however, this constitution was worth exactly as much as the paper on which it was written. Jews are zero for one with respect to the capacity of ethnic federalism to protect their self-determination.



Would an Israeli-Palestinian federation be like the Soviet Union? Very likely not, if only for lack of a Stalin-like figure with absolute political authority. Nevertheless, the experience of ethnic federalism even under less totalitarian central rule is not encouraging. The Forum of Federations lists 25 countries with federal political systems. Of these, seven - Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Spain and the United Kingdom - have federal structures that are, at least in part, based explicitly on ethnic boundaries. Pakistan, with its federally administered tribal areas, might qualify as an eighth.



Spain can be counted out as an example for an Israeli-Palestinian federation, because the self-determination granted to the Basque and Catalan autonomies exists within the confines of a specifically Castilian national hegemony. The record of the other seven is hardly inspiring. In Ethiopia, ethnic federalism has been widely criticized as a figleaf for one-party rule, enabling the ruling party to co-opt restive minorities by expanding its patronage base. The Pakistani tribes owe their autonomy more to the ruggedness of their homeland and the number of AK-47s per capita than any commitment to constitutionalism on the part of the Pakistani government. Nobody can be sure how long the tripartite Bosnian federation will last after the peacekeepers leave, and the record of Serbia in protecting its minority populations is, to say the least, not a model that Israelis or Palestinians would want to follow.



Modern Russia is possibly the most intriguing analogy, because ethnic federalism there has been at least a partial success. During the post-Soviet era, there has been some real devolution of power to the regions, and this has been accompanied by an increase in cultural rights for certain national minorities. In other cases, however, Soviet-era Russian irredentism has prevented minorities from realizing their right to self-determination even within their own republics. The legacy of Russification has been most controversial in Latvia, where more than a third of the population was ethnically Russian at the time of independence, but its effects have been even more profound in many of the Russian Federation's autonomous republics. In some of them, ethnic Russians are now a majority or a plurality, and - particularly where the Russian and indigenous populations are near parity - this has led to active repression of local cultures. In the Republic of Mari, for instance, the Mari - a Finnic ethnic group - make up 43 percent of the population, while ethnic Russians are 47 percent. The Russians, who make up a majority of the urban population and dominate the republic's economy, have solidified their political control during the post-Soviet era, defunded many Mari educational and cultural institutions and systematically purged ethnic Mari from the provincial government.



It may not be too alarmist to envision similar developments taking place in an Israeli-Palestinian federation. Most initial proposals for such a federation call for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely Jewish and the other to be almost entirely Arab. However, these proposals also call for an unlimited right of return to the Palestinian areas of the federation. Given the comparative population density of Israel and the Palestinian territories, combined with the guarantee of internal freedom of residence, it is inevitable that the Arab population will spill over into the Jewish canton. Unless freedom of movement within the federation is restricted - a measure that would make federalism essentially pointless - this irredentism will ultimately affect the balance of power in the Israeli canton and consequently in the federal state as a whole.



But what about Belgium and the United Kingdom? Irredentism doesn't seem to be much of a concern there, and ethnic federalism has proven more viable than in Russia. Both countries, however, have important characteristics that distinguish them from others in which ethnic federalism has been attempted. The UK and Belgium both have strong and well-established traditions of democracy and rule of law, ethnic tensions have been subdued to the point where separatist violence is no longer common and the constituent nationalities have had well over a century to get used to being part of one country. Moreover, federalism in these countries was the result of a devolution of power, and was thus viewed as a partial concession to national self-determination rather than a forced marriage. And even with these favorable conditions, many remain discontented with a federal solution, as shown by the continuing Flemish separatism in Belgium.



An Israeli-Palestinian federation is, I think, more likely to go the way of Russia than of Belgium or the UK. Several aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship practically guarantee instability - the recent history of violent conflict, the inherent tension between Jewish economic dominance and Arab demographic dominance, weak rule of law among Palestinians, authoritarian political traditions on the Palestinian side (and arguably, to some extent, on the Israeli side) and irredentism among Palestinians and the Israeli right. It is difficult to imagine a constitutional structure that would reliably preserve the self-determination of both peoples within the context of a single nation-state, even with a strong federal system.



To be sure, this outcome is not certain. However, before taking any step as drastic as unifying two warring nations, a thorough risk assessment is necessary. Specifically, it is necessary to ask (1) what's the worst that could happen, (2) how likely is it that the worst will happen, and (3) how easy will it be to undo the damage if the worst does happen. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, the worst that could result from a federation is large-scale repression or civil warfare, and - if the above examples are any guide - the likelihood is at least moderate. Moreover, an Israeli-Palestinian federation will create such an entanglement of territory and institutions that it will be practically impossible to undo - which means that even moderate risks must be undertaken with extreme care.



In the end, the risks of binationalism aren't worth the rewards, particularly since many of the same rewards can be obtained through an EU-style arrangement where Israel and Palestine share institutions but have the protection of Westphalian sovereignty. As long as the nation-state remains the basic geopolitical unit, the two-state solution is the only arrangement that can be relied upon to protect both parties' national interests, both through internationally guaranteed sovereignty and by providing a state to which Palestinian refugees could repatriate without raising irredentist fears. If Israeli and Palestinian self-determination are worth preserving - and I believe that they are - then the only viable solution, at least in the short to medium term, involves separate states. A two-state solution will be messy and in some ways unjust, but any other plan will be more so.