A big, fat, utopic solution for Middle East

Haul out your What-If's and let's go utopic!


A new state is born in the Middle East. I don't have a name handy, so let's call it Semitia. The neighboring countries agree to respect its borders and the international community guarantees, with the commitment of armed intervention, its security.


Israel and Palestine are merged. No more West Bank, Gaza or settlements or whatever -- everyone is free to settle wherever he wants.


The new state has not specific religious affiliation. No national affiliation either. Taking a leaf from the American genesis book, the new state declares itself as secular, with its people free to practice their religion as they see fit, the refuge and melting pot of any citizen that is accepted into the polity.


A colossal outcry against such a preposterous idea is heard from Israel, that wants a "safe haven for Jews", and the Arabs who see this as a threat against their own, nationalistic-religious states. The United States President, wisely and forcefully [this might be the most utopic part], imposes his country's will onto the warring sides and has his way. Europe, the Third World and the whole United Nations follow suit. [insert here your own political fantasy anecdotes about how Hamas or Sharon react to the plan, but make sure they end with the Americans prevailing]


...Twenty years down the road, the old enmity and suspicion lives on but is not stronger than black/white animosity in South Central. Lots of inter-marriages have began to sprout up, to the horror of old timers. Sport teams regularly sport persons of all ethnic backgrounds. The best player of Maccabi is currently a Jewish kid with an Arab mother. A census taken by the U.N. finds that 17% of the people (35% of those under 25) already consider themselves as Semites rather than Palestinians or Jews. A full 82% of the population characterizes the old suicide bombers and the army sweeps as "stupid stuff".


The economy of the Semitia is booming and becomes the envy of the region. The country opens negotiations with the European Union for membership within 5 years. The model of inter-ethnic accomodation is found to be workable, after all! The intelligentsia all over the world proclaims Semitia the moral capital of the world.


In an emotional moment, New York and New Jersey legislatures take a vote to emulate the Jewish/Palestinian example and merge -- but the idea is abandoned as too preposterous.

Anyone with political power who has ideas like that usually gets assasinated.

Would this country be a democratic form of government by constitution? Would there be any safeguards against this country losing its democratic foundation (assuming it had one in the first place)? Would the populace be likely to vote in such a way as to gradually turn it into an Islamic theocracy (a huge step backwards IMO)? And here we get into one of the fundamental conflicts between Islam and the modern world--Islam is still mired in much rigid medieval thinking which inhibits (in fact sabotages) its efforts to advance and succeed in the modern world. So this may be a "beautiful" idea, but even if it could be instituted, could it ever work? By the way I don't believe ANY Islamic state will EVER have a chance to catch up to the West until they find a way to free themselves of the shackles of their rigid religious/philosophical system, and sadly, this will always cause some significant degree of festering, seething, "Arab rage."

Don't both semitic peoples claim to be descendants of Abraham--Jews through Jacob and Arabs through Esau?

In the early 1930s, an organization called Brit-Shalom favored a bi-national state. It ceased to exist in 1933 becasue of "internal friction, leading to the resignation of several of its founders; strong public criticism of their views; disillusionment at the indifference of Arab nationalist circles to their proposals; and the growing plight of European Jewry with the rise to power of Nazism." (Yosef Gorny, Zionism and the Arabs 1882-1948 .


Later, Martin Buber and Judah Magnes made similar arguments, both brilliantly, but they were both outside of the mainstream of Zionist leadership, which by that time (1940s) had decided that force was going to be needed to create a Jewish state.