From The New Republic, December 1 & 8, 2003:

WIESELTIER WRITES PASSIONATELY when he defends Israel from what he terms the “bi-national fantasy.”
And he is correct, in a way, to note that this idea of a single, multiethnic state from river to
sea “is not the alternative for Israel. It is the alternative to Israel.” But, and unfortunately,
a bi-national state is very much less a fantasy than his preferred solution of partition.

The West Bank and the Gaza Bank together, if ceded in their entirety, add up to an area less than
one-third the size of New Jersey, in two noncontiguous chunks. In a few years, the territories are
projected to have a combined population rivaling Israel’s, with no economy to speak of. For partition
to work—from the Israelis’ perspective, not the Palestinians’—a Palestinian state would have to
actually function. It needn’t be Luxembourg, but it cannot be Liberia. If every settlement were
disbanded and every inch of disputed territory ceded, it is implausible that anything other than
a failed state implacably hostile to Israel would result. The Israeli government correctly
understands this and has decided that the status quo is preferable.

But Israel can become a “modern, multiethnic state,” meaning it would no longer be the Jewish state.
But, if the transformation is undertaken deliberately, it needn’t amount (in David Frum’s phrase) to
“genocidal liberal- ism.” Israel’s legal framework could be reworked to make impossible any tyranny
through demography. Israel could define the criteria for the natu- ralization of noncitizen residents
to ensure an orderly assimilation of the redeemable majority. For the minority who, by virtue of past
behavior, could never be accepted as Israeli citizens, third-country options could be negotiated.
Participation in the armed forces could be restricted to second- or third- generation citizens.

Israel would, eventually, no longer be the Jewish state. But the Jewish state would not have died.
Instead, it would have given birth.

STEVE WALDMAN
Baltimore, Maryland
