1. The administration of the Military Government in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will be abolished.
2. In Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district administrative autonomy of the residents, by and for them, will be established.
3. The residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district will elect an Administrative Council composed of eleven members.
4. Any resident, 18 years old and above, without distinction of citizenship, or if stateless, is entitled to vote in the election to the Administrative Council.
5. Any resident whose name is included in the list of the candidates for the Administrative Council and who, on the day the list is submitted, is 25 years old or above, is entitled to be elected to the Council.
6. The Administrative Council will be elected by general, direct, personal, equal and secret ballot.
7. The period of office of the Administrative Council will be four years from the day of its election.
8. The Administrative Council will sit in Bethlehem.
9. All the administrative affairs of the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district, will be under the direction and within the competence of the Administrative Council.
10. The Administrative Council will operate the following Departments:
- a. The Department of Education;
- b. The Department of Religious Affairs;
- c. The Department of Finance;
- d. The Department of Transportation;
- e. The Department for Construction and Housing;
- f. The Department of Industry, Commerce and Tourism;
- g. The Department of Agriculture;
- h. The Department of Health;
- i. The Department for Labor and Social Welfare;
- j. The Department of Rehabilitation of Refugees;
- k. The Department for the Administration of Justice and the Supervision of the Local Police Forces; and promulgate regulations relating to the operation of these Departments.
12. The Administrative Council will elect its own chairman.
21. These principles may be subject to review after a five-year period.--December 15, 1977, HOME RULE, FOR PALESTINIAN ARABS, RESIDENTS OF JUDEA, SAMARIA AND THE GAZA DISTRICT (Top Secret; Sensitive) in FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1977–1980, VOLUME VIII, ARAB-ISRAELI DISPUTE, JANUARY 1977–AUGUST 1978 [Hereafter: "Home Rule"]*
In Omri Boehm's short book, an extended pamphlet really, Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel, Begin's "Home Rule" plan -- quoted in its entirety above -- plays a crucial role (see pp.143-150). And as Boehm notes, the plan is usually treated as "a step on the way to Oslo's failed Palestinian Authority." (150). However, Boehm (recall also this digression) would like to treat it "as a step beyond Oslo." Crucially, "the plan did not offer the Palestinians a sovereign state, but something unimaginable today--and this [is] why we must heed it: it offered fully citizenship to every Palestinian, every one whom would "entitled to vote for, and be elected to, the Knesset." To Israelis it guaranteed full freedom of movement and economic liberties in the West Bank and Gaza, conceding likewise that Palestinians would be free to live, settle, work, and purchase land on the full territory....Begin's plan could just as well have been known as the One-State Program." (144)
The "Home Rule" document is presented alongside the discussion that prime minister Begin had with President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance about the plan, and so it is very much worth following the link to it. For, it makes clear that the question of sovereignty was deliberately postponed because of incompatible claims (by Israelis and Palestinians) and because of security concerns by the Israelis. Unlike some (see this editorial in the New York Times), I think Begin is willing to conceive of de jure sovereignty for the Palestinians downstream. But the discussion with Carter also makes clear that part of the point of the plan is to prevent a Palestinian military buildup on the West Bank (so de facto an attenuated sovereignty).
Here, I want to postpone detailed discussion of Boehm's important book. Boehm goes beyond Begin's Home Rule by envisioning a genuine confederation (my word not his--he describes his own plan as a one state "federation" (p. 150) or a binational federation) between Israelis and Palestine. But before I get to that in a series of follow up posts, I want to reflect a bit on "Home Rule." Somewhat naively (but hopefully not mistakenly), I'll treat the record of the discussion between Begin and Carter as background to it.
It is worth noting from the outset that "Home Rule" makes demands on Jordan, and creates certain faits accomplis relative to it. In particular, it would require Jordan to give up its claims on the West Bank, and it would require that it would grant Palestinians political rights in Jordan even thought they would be living outside its borders. As "Home Rule" notes in understated fashion this still needed to be negotiated, and this was not on the direct horizon then.
I don't think we should treat "Hume Rule" cynically in light of the foregoing. For we should note that at some point some Palestinians would have had a choice to become citizen of one of two states and have to choose for which of the three parliaments/council they would claim political rights. Interestingly enough, when Jordan and Israel did end up making their peace (without any Palestinian involvement) in 1994, it was far less favorable for individual Palestinian freedoms.
Another important feature of "Home Rule" is that it sets up a department for the rehabilitation of refugees. This suggests that Begin was willing to accommodate a principle of return of Palestinian refugees. Begin's response to Carter on the matter of immigration (and de facto return of refugees) is most illuminating:
President [Carter]: Who would control immigration?
Prime Minister [Begin]: This Council. Going back to Resolution 242, there is no contradiction. On immigration, this is a problem that the Administrative Council could deal with, but only reasonable numbers of new immigrants could be accepted. We could only accept new immigrants up to the point where our own security would not be affected
At the time, there were 350,000 refugees (by Begin's lights--that number may be controversial). It's a bit of shame Carter does not follow up at this point to clarify whether Begin's concern with security here means that he would like to have some means to keep out PLO fighters (see also below) or whether he means that beyond some point the numbers of refugees cause a demographic threat. Interestingly, enough in the follow up discussion Begin suggests that he hopes some Palestinians might go to Kuwait. (In context that's wishful thinking.)**
It's unfortunate that there is no mention of compensation (of lives and property) to Palestinian victims of 1948 and 1967. This would show, I think, enormous goodwill and also provide genuine recognition for the victims. (It also might allow Israelis who were forced to flee many Arab lands after 1948 also claim some compensation.) It would be odd for the State of Israel to decline this because it is willing to accept compensation from Germany for Nazi crimes.
Even so, as Boehm notes, by creating freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, freedom to buy and sell land, and a whole range of individual political freedoms :Home Rule" has been the most liberal political plan that has circulated in the long, torturous history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. In particular, the underlying vision gives all individual Palestinian non trivial rights to determine their own social and political future. In addition, it gives the Palestinian council authority over lands under its jurisdiction including the right to "expropriate land"--something clarified by Zbigniew Brzezinsk. And this really would have undermined further expansion of Israeli Settlement program (in occupied territories).
Begin has had a bad press among the intelligentsia inside and outside of Israel. And Boehm (who is by no means a Likudnik, as we will see in future posts) is right to stress that Begin is, as Begin said to the Knesset defending "Home Rule," motivated by "fairness to all men of goodwill...here we proposal total equality of rights--anti-racialism" (p. 149). And that Begin clearly and explicitly wants to avoid ending up in a situation like Rhodesia then characterized by white minority rule and a form of Apartheid. And "Home Rule" really is one of the rare occasions where liberal principles were proposed to start a genuine road to peace and true equal rights.
However, "Hume Rule" also has some obvious drawbacks. This becomes clear when one realizes that the capital of the elected Palestinian council is supposed to be in Bethlehem. Begin's explanation is that there shouldn't be "two capitals" in Jerusalem. He does not explain why, but presumably because he does not want to share sovereignty of it. He then adds for good measure that Nablus is also ruled out (without any explanation, but perhaps because he did not want to help Mayor (and pro PLO) Bassam Shakaa's then rising influence), but that Ramallah is an option.
This is notable for two reasons: first, this suggests that while Begin could explicitly imagine giving up sovereignty over the the West-bank (and Gaza), he was unwilling to contemplate the same over East Jerusalem. The fact that there could not be two capitals in Jerusalem also suggests, second, that he did not conceive of Hume Rule as a federation of equals. Of the three entities involved in it -- Jordan, the Palestinian council, and Israel -- Israel was supposed to be and remain pre-eminent West of the river Jordan.
This is also clear by an important omission in "Home Rule." Namely the overall responsibility for security. At one point Begin clarifies:
We think that this is a fair proposal because it did not decide on sovereignty.
While the Palestinian council will have jurisdiction over police forces, Israel will have a near monopoly on real firepower. So, of the two parliaments Israel and the Palestinian Council, only one will have a real military power. And the point of that was to keep out those that rejected Israel's right to exist (then the PLO) and their firepower. To be anachronistic, this would be a confederation of un-equals. And part of the strategic point is to divide the Palestinians between those willing to accommodate themselves to Israel and the rejectionists. Unlike the negotiations with Sadat, when it comes to the Palestinians, Begin is unwilling to negotiate with the enemy.
And while I personally do not doubt Begin's good will and earnest desire for peace -- even if the occasion for "Home Rule" was prompted by a desire to provide President Sadat with something he could "he take credit for his trip"--, in a way Home Rule's drawbacks do anticipate some of the the crucial underlying problems of Oslo: by excluding some Palestinians from the political process, the rejectionists on the Palestinian side had sufficient arms and veto power and an incentive to doom Oslo from the start, which, in turn, brought the Israeli rejectionists to power for a generation.
So, to sum up, I agree with Boehm that many of the principles of Home Rule are essential to a future liberal Zionist program. As regular readers know, that despite my own skeptical liberalism, and my mitigated Zionism, I have long claimed that Zionism is the effect of the failure of liberalism (and this is why it's interesting to political theory) and that there never was a truly liberal Zionism in Israel ((recall here and here), especially here and here; and here), except as a very small minority (recall here). So, "Hume Rule" is the exception to my position. The question to which I turn in a future post, is whether the argument and underlying vision of Boehm's Haifa Republic can really avoid the obvious problems with "Home Rule" and to what degree it is a promising vision for the future now that conditions have changed dramatically. To be continued.
*The discussion between Begin and Carter clarifies that the "stateless" mentioned in "Hume Rule" are Palestinians in Gaza, who at the time were stateless.
**By 1977 there was already a sizable (and relatively flourishing -- despite many obstacles to their civil and political rights) Palestian diaspora in Kuwait. But the Kuwaiti government had already ruled out further immigration by Palestinians. (See here for background.)
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