Review: David Friedman’s New Book “One Jewish State”

David Friedman’s new book, “One Jewish State,” presents a view for peace in the region that doesn’t rely on the long-argued-for two-state solution.

By: Andrew Pessin

After several decades of a successful legal career, David Friedman became the U.S. ambassador to Israel in 2017 under then-President Donald Trump and orchestrated major diplomatic advances, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and helping to broker the 2020 Abraham Accords. In his new book, One Jewish State, Friedman presents ongoing challenges and obstacles, which has already inspired a new party vying for seats in the upcoming World Zionist Congress elections aptly named One Jewish State.

Friedman challenges “the most widely accepted but fatally flawed concept in Middle Eastern diplomacy: the two-state solution.” Though the two-state appeal from a certain perspective is clear, the case against it, from the pro-Israel perspective, is compelling. The Palestinians just don’t want it. They never have. The Palestinian leadership and most Palestinians do not accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders. Any state given to them will only advance their agenda of destroying the Jewish state. If that wasn’t clear before the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it is indisputably clear now. Israel gifted them Gaza, and Hamas used it to produce mass murder. That is what they did with their proto-“state” and what they say they will do with any future state.

For anyone who supports Israel and the right of Jews to live in this region in safety, a Palestinian state should be a non-starter.

So, what’s left if we jettison the two-state solution? Basically “one state.”

One Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” is obviously off the table for the pro-Israel side. Friedman does not consider a “binational state,” but one can speculate why: That is not a Jewish state, and his starting point is that there must be a Jewish state. That leaves, then, the “one Jewish state.” The basic idea is that Israel must exert its sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. (Gaza is a separate and difficult case, as Friedman acknowledges in a chapter devoted to it, which we shall not treat here.)

In addition to the main negative argument above, there are positive arguments for the idea. These boil down to this: Only under Israeli sovereignty will Palestinians be able to lead full lives of dignity and prosperity, ultimately producing a peaceful outcome for all. Israel is a vibrant democracy “with a track record of respecting the civil, religious and human rights of its minority population, almost all of which is Arab.” Most Arab-Israeli citizens “patriotically support living in their country,” where their standard of living, opportunities and prosperity are orders of magnitude greater than that of their Arab neighbors in surrounding countries, including in the territories administered by Palestinians themselves. The idea is to extend the same situation—i.e., Israeli sovereignty, to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

With one essential difference. Israeli Arabs are full citizens of Israel with equal rights. Palestinians in Judea and Samaria cannot be. A secure Jewish state cannot swap the security risk posed by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria for the demographic risk of making them full citizens. They may become “residents” of Israel but cannot become full citizens.

Here we reach the point at which critics will explode, “Apartheid!”

Friedman addresses this through a deep dive into the case of Puerto Rico, which he sees as a possible model for the “One Jewish State.” Roughly, Puerto Ricans stand to the United States as Palestinians in Judea and Samaria might stand to Israel. The United States has sovereignty while Puerto Ricans have extensive rights of self-government but not collective national rights to vote in U.S. elections. Why does it work? Because Puerto Ricans live better than they would if they were entirely independent. They derive political, economic and civil benefits, and enjoy all the same basic civil rights as any U.S. citizen but pay less in federal taxes in exchange for not being full citizens. With Israeli sovereignty, Palestinians would have the civil rights guaranteed by Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity without the collective right to self-determination; they would pay less Israeli taxes; and they would not vote in national elections.

Friedman also asks which is a better option for Palestinians: Creating a Palestinian state that is likely both to fail by every metric and be overrun by terrorists and thus reproducing Gaza or absorbing those living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and providing them resident status?

He presents data about Israeli Arabs noted above, using them as a model for the future Palestinian residents in Judea and Samaria, reiterating that most Israeli Arabs have no desire to become citizens of a Palestinian state. Friedman openly addresses complications with and obstacles to his analysis as there is no perfect solution to anything. However, the evidence points to the conclusion that Israeli Arabs prosper under Israeli sovereignty and prefer it to the alternative. It’s possible that Palestinians, too, might prefer life under Israeli sovereignty in conditions of imperfect equality than that under Palestinian sovereignty.

It could work. Those who persist in calling it “apartheid,” Friedman insists, show “that they don’t understand apartheid.”

But wait—what about the Palestinians? Would they ever accept such a scenario?

As the evidence shows, they desire the destruction of Israel, and therefore they shouldn’t be given a vote—now or in the future “One Jewish State.” Friedman starts from the premise that the Palestinians, with their hundred years war on the Jews, have lost the privilege of their own state. There can’t be an Israeli victory in this war unless the Israelis know what they are fighting for, and Friedman makes a compelling case that that should be for the “One Jewish State.”

Currently, the public square and the dominant world opinion, along with the view of the United Nations and the current U.S. administration, is that Judea and Samaria belong to the Palestinians as part of a “two-state solution.” It follows that Israel is in the wrong in “occupying” it and that Israel is unilaterally obligated to withdraw. This worldview is contestable in every detail, but one advantage of having a single Jewish state is that it pushes back against all that. If Israel asserts its sovereignty over the territory, should it later choose to withdraw and should it choose to accept a “two-state solution” doing so would be a concession that then demands some concession from the other side in return.

Ironically, for those still clinging to a two-state solution, getting behind the one-Jewish-state idea might be the best, or only, way to get it.

(JNS.org)