Apparently, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, issued a set of tweets last November enunciating a new approach in confrontation with Israel (see Daniel Politi, "Iran's Khamenei: No Cure for Barbaric Israel but Annihilation," Slate (9 Nov. 2014), at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/09/iran_s_khamenei_israel_must_be_annihilated.html). In addition to endorsing continue violent confrontation with Israel through the agency of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as continued struggle on the boundaries of the Jewish state by armed paramilitaries like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Khamenei introduced, as the centerpiece to a new strategy, the idea of holding a worldwide referendum, among all present and former inhabitants of Palestine, of all religious denominations (i.e. Islamic, Jewish, Christian, other) on the nature of governance in this geography and, specifically, whether such an electorate approves of the presence of a Jewish state, constituted in accord with ideological Zionism.
Several criticisms of these tweets might be relevant here. First, notwithstanding the fact that Iran is nominally constituted as a republic with parliamentary democratic institutions and an elected presidency, the preeminence of religious authority by Islamic jurists as the ultimate authorities on fundamental questions of Sharī’ah law, overriding the primacy of civil legislative enactments, and Khamenei's place within a political structure that effectively subordinates the democratic process as "un-Islamic" renders him a peculiar and cynical defender of the democratic process in regard to Palestine. Beyond this, the realization of a worldwide referendum on the existence of Israel represents a virtual logistical and procedural impossibility with regard to organization of polling mechanisms, validation of credentials for participating members of the electorate, and verification of results. It goes without saying that any country currently recognizing the existence of Israel would be hard pressed either to endorse participation in such a referendum by individuals living on its soil or to accept the results if they yielded disapproval for Israeli existence.
Most importantly, the larger focus of Khamenei's arguments seems oriented toward reversing almost a century in the production of historical facts regarding the settlement of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state on its territory as if the current state of Israel had never happened and as if there were no palpable obstructions to the literal deconstruction of Israel. Assuming the delegitimization of Israel in a referendum, the suggestion that a successor state in Palestine might be empowered to expel millions of Jewish immigrant families, sending them to their former home countries in Europe and elsewhere, is patently ludicrous. On the one hand, it imagines the existence of fictitious national lineages connecting Twentieth century Jewish settlers of Palestine to the European nation-states from which they came when, in many circumstances, the populations of these nation-states were so anxious to retain and support their former Jewish countrymen that they turned a blind eye to their mass murder by the Nazis. On the other hand, it fundamentally miscomprehends the nature of the connection produced by Jewish settlers to Palestine over the course of the Twentieth century, as if nearly one hundred years in the Jewish re-colonization of Palestine amounted to a pure act of geo-political strip-mining without any tangible efforts to create durable social structures and emplace the infrastructural residues of the intense labor and the collective emotional/ideological commitment required to create a new nation from scratch in this otherwise harsh geography. Whatever can be said about the Jewish populations that settled in Palestine during the Twentieth century, including in regards to the violence exercised by these immigrants to displace existing Arab Palestinian populations from their land, their claims to the land and the labor exerted to construct a modern society in Palestine have to be permanently recognized, regardless of what sort of political formation governs over this geographic space in whose interests. The settlers of the old kibbutzim and their descendents enjoy as much claim to Palestine as do the residents of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordon, and many other places, who retain family connections to the soil of Palestine and long to come home.
Finally, and most practically, assuming a worldwide referendum on Palestine and the existence of Israel could be undertaken, and that such a referendum delegitimized Israel, who on earth would enforce the results against the already existing Jewish Zionist state, especially in view of its regional military hegemony and its globally hegemonic ally? If the U.N. cannot currently enforce its existing resolutions mandating the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state against the flagrant violation of the land rights of such a state in the occupied territories, then it goes without saying that the U.N. would be incapable of enforcing a referendum mandating the destruction of Israel on land the U.N. had actually reserved for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. No individual countries are going to step in to defend any claim to the delegitimization of Israel against both the Israeli military and that of the U.S. In this regard, the very notion of a worldwide referendum on the existence of Israel by populations presently or formerly residing in Palestine is ridiculous.
Getting passed these criticisms, however, I really do think that Khamenei is on to something in bringing up the proposal of a referendum. The dimensions need to be truncated, however, and the fundamental terms of what is stake need to be more rigorously specified. That is to say, I think that the Palestinian populations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza territories need to undertake a referendum on the specific conception of the Palestinian state and whether they reject the notion that a Palestinian state remains possible at this moment in their history. In such terms, the populations of the occupied territories would be casting ballots for or against the two-state solution, and, by presumption, if such a resolution failed, mandating that the political leadership of the Palestinian people should seek citizenship within a single political entity encompassing both the occupied territories and the current state of Israel (i.e. the one-state solution).
Pondering the implications of such a referendum realizing the approval of a one-state solution as the preferred choice of Arab Palestinians, there are multiple different directions in which such a collective decision could be taken. One direction that seems axiomatic during a period in which militant Salafism has taken center stage might involve nurturing the ideological commitment of Palestinian communities to engage in violent confrontation with Israel for control of the totality of the land. This might be the view currently represented through the Hamas movement and it might even be consonant with the views expressed by Ayatollah Khamenei, although I would tend to concede a more rational view to the latter. Historically, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its allies, prior to the PLO's 1993 recognition of Israel, held such a view, somehow believing that armed struggle through low-intensity warfare/"terrorism" could restore Palestinian claims to the land under the Israelis' feet. In my view, the position that Palestinians should achieve control of the totality of Palestine through armed struggle with the Jewish state is ill-conceived, grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of the capacity of Israel to both wage in overwhelming violence against Palestinian militants (and the civilian communities with whom they reside!) and to endure the prospect of permanent war as a condition for the realization of the Zionist project. Moreover, the nominal disengagement of the Jewish state with the permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, however rhetorical, confers a morally advantageous position of the Israeli government in its assertion that, contrary to Palestinian demands for the totality of the land, a two-state solution is the only avenue for peace.
There are, however, other alternatives to advance a single-state solution in Palestine while enabling Palestinians to hold the moral high ground. Emphatically, if Palestinians en masse were to reject the impractical farce that Israel has advanced as a two-state solution, then they could, instead issue the demand that Israel annex the West Bank and Gaza and incorporate their populations as citizens within a fully secular, pluralist democratic state, configured to ensure the full equality before the law and in the political process for all citizens, Jew, Christian, or Muslim Arab. In my mind, the implications of issuing such a demand would compel Palestinians in the occupied territories to undertake a total reconceptualization of their strategy in confrontation with Israel - one does not engage in violent struggle with a state from whom one is seeking to be recognized as a citizen and a countryman.
Moreover, certain practical considerations to a rethinking of the struggle for Palestine must also obtain. Notably, the entire political edifice of the Palestinian Authority (PA) would have to be autonomously and unilaterally dismantled. There is no reason to perform quasi-state functions when you have ceased to aspire to the existence of a separate state. The PA should discharge all of its bureaucratic personnel and its security forces, compelling the Israeli Defense Forces to undertake the business of performing security within the totality of the occupied territories or watch the archipelago of Palestinian settlements in the West Bank and Gaza degenerate into a state of abject anarchy. With specific regard to Gaza, Hamas would have to agree to unilateral disarmament or be forcibly disarmed by PA/Fatah forces as a concluding action to ensure, for the world, that the Palestinian people in the occupied territories concede the necessity of renouncing armed struggle against Israel in categorical terms.
The Fatah movement would have to reconstitute itself into a political organization committed to incorporation into Israel and Israeli annexation of the very soil that it had initially established itself, as the PLO, to violently contest in its struggle against the Zionist state. More fundamentally, Fatah would have to agitate for the Israelis to confer full rights of citizenship on the populations of the occupied territories under a basis of full political and legal equality. It should, likewise, advocate for the constitutional reconfiguration of Israel as a fully secular, pluralist democratic state, with a defined civil legal code and a separate, parallel sectarian judicial establishment to incorporate enforcement of both Jewish ecclesiastical principles and Islamic Sharī’ah. The latter separation of juridical apparatuses appeals to the broader concern that institutional continuities, fundamental toward the Islamic character of the Palestinian people, would have to be secured outside of the civil legal apparatus of a constitutionally secular state.
Furthermore, the active contestation of Palestinians in the occupied territories against Israel/for citizenship would need to change in regard to both form and substance. In a formal sense, Palestinians would have to cultivate methodologies of confrontation stressing non-violent techniques (e.g. strategic non-cooperation in the mode of Indian satyagraha), grounded in both a commitment to political inclusion and equality and a belief in the fundamental consistency of non-violent struggle with specifically Islamic principles (i.e. holding simultaneously the necessity of jihad and its fundamentally non-violent character as a principle of struggle for righteousness in God's name). Substantially, in addition to full sectarian religious freedom, the struggle must be oriented toward the exercise of a platform of basic individual liberties, including the capacity of Palestinians to engage in free movement within the occupied territories as well as within the current Israel proper. Palestinians could also issue claims on diverse specific privileges conferred by the Israeli constitution on Israeli citizens, including demands for inclusion in social programs.
Politically, in unilaterally relinquishing aspirations for a separate sovereign Palestinian state, Palestinians in the occupied territories should both demand expansion of the current Israeli knesset to incorporate representation from the occupied territories on a basis of proportional representation by population. As such, local groups should autonomously stage elections for such representatives during Israeli parliamentary elections, even inviting sympathetic international observers to evaluate the legitimacy of electoral results. To the extent possible, such political strategies might incorporate cooperation with existing Arab-Israeli parties and, thus, further problematize the political status of Arab Israelis in an effort to broaden the base of the Arab electorate within Israel. Critically, if a partisan alliance between Arab-Israeli citizens and the Palestinians of the occupied territories, supporting the peaceful integration of Arab populations committed to the principle of equality and secular governance, can be effected, then it might induce Jewish parties, particularly Likud and the other parties of the right, to engage in the sort of acerbic, sectarian nationalist rhetoric and outright anti-Arab bigotry that would reveal the true anti-secular, anti-pluralist, and anti-democratic character of Zionism to the entire world, even more clearly than Netanyahu's campaign in the Likud's recent electoral triumph has demonstrated.
The ideas expressed here are suggestive of the broader principle that Zionism, as the principle that the survival of Judaism is predicated on the existence of a sovereign Jewish state, is inherently inconsistent with the secular, civic republican, democratic principles embodied in the liberal Enlightenment, and that, by forcing Israel to concede the incongruity of its constitutionally foundational principle with those of its principal supporters, a transformation in the strategical goals of the Palestinians vis-à-vis the Zionist state will elevate the moral stature of the Palestinian cause. Emphatically, if Palestinian Arabs, en masse, renounce calls for the violent destruction of Israel and, instead, plead before the court of global public opinion, for citizenship and equal rights in a singular state, encompassing the territories that Israel is already occupying illegally, then Israel would be forced to either unilaterally abandon the occupied territories in their entirety as a prelude to the actual formation of a viable Palestinian state, or it would have to deal with the international repercussions of the reality that it is forcibly occupying the soil of populations against whom it is actively denying the rights of citizenship despite their expressed desire for inclusion. The Arab Palestinians of the occupied territories would become a people truly colonized in their own country against their collective will.
Beyond this, an actual decision to annex the occupied territories and grant their populations full citizenship introduces the demographic nightmare for Israel, enforced by the differential birthrates of Palestinian households versus those of Israelis - that is to say, within a few generations, Israeli Jews would be a minority within their own country. Whatever such a country might be called, it would certainly cease to be a Zionist state if its constitutional principles really embraced the principle of democratic rule by the majority. From this point, the protections accorded to Jewish religious practices within a constitutionally parochial sectarian state prioritizing Judaism would have to be subjected to the promises of the liberal Enlightenment that basic human freedom of conscience inheres to the human condition and must be defended by a rigorously secular state against religious prejudice. In these terms, we might question whether Islam could tolerate such a situation. Historically, there is abundant evidence for the practice of both extreme religious tolerance and repression of alternative faith traditions by Muslim leaders and by Muslim majorities. Judging Muslim commitments to the democratic process, embracing liberal conceptions of individual rights, from a unique historical moment in which political and radical/militant Salafism has assumed such a prominent position in our imaginations of Islam would be patently unfair in our Western appraisals of the Muslim world, per se, or the Palestinian people, specifically.
We cannot know precisely whether an eventual elevation to power of a Muslim majority in Palestine/Israel would lead to a new outflow of Jewish populations and a rebirth of Zionism with alternative geographic aspirations, but an active engagement by Western states in the development of political processes, a secular constitutional tradition, and a cultural commitment to liberal principles within such a single state might better secure the eternal character of religious liberties for Jews in Palestine/Israel. And if a new Muslim Palestinian majority were to renege on the promise to respect the religious diversity of their country and realize the exceptional contribution that unabashed pluralism conferred on Palestine's political, economic, and cultural development, then the West might once again enjoy the contributions of millions of Jewish newcomers and, hopefully, learn to disavow our long and disgusting legacies of anti-semetism!
In these terms, I have hope that Ayatollah Khamenei is right. The practice of democratic choice might just be what is needed to destroy Israel in its current form as a Zionist state. However, if a successor state did not consequently embody a broader commitment to the sort of secular liberalism that would enable Jews, Muslims, and others to live together in Palestine/Israel in peace, with a mutual commitment to the development and continued wellbeing of themselves and their posterity, then it might be better simply to endure the continued agony of the present struggle of Israelis and Palestinians, unvarnished with the recurring pretension that a pathway to peace through the two-state solution actually exists.
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