Everyone can stay where they are in Israel Palestine

The argument

Some political analysts and scholars have suggested that Israel and Palestine form a confederation, which is a loose but united association of more than one state. The form matters to the argument: a confederation is designed for exactly the situation in which two populations have different interests and no appetite for merging, because confederations allow states to cooperate and coexist under a united government while maintaining their separate cultural identities. Neither side is asked to dissolve into the other, and neither is asked to leave. The practical content of the proposal is the border. Forming a confederation would create a "porous border" between the two states, allowing more freedom of movement for civilians, and proponents argue that the effects of that would compound: greater economic development, as people and trade move more easily; greater cultural overlap, as contact replaces separation; and greater freedom of residency for citizens of both states. A shared capital points in the same direction — an arrangement giving both peoples a stake in the same city could bring the two states closer together, instead of deepening their already existing divisions. The decisive advantage claimed for the model is what it does not require. Since both states would agree to coexist alongside each other, neither would have to move. Every rival solution that redraws the map has to relocate somebody, and uprooting either state would cause massive disruption to the lives and economies of both. The confederation approach avoids that cost entirely: under a confederation, Israelis and Palestinians could stay where they are, preserve their ethnic identities, and have more freedoms and opportunities than the present arrangement allows either of them. On this reasoning a confederation would not infringe upon Palestinians' and Israelis' rights to self-determination, and would allow the two states to peacefully coexist.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Sceptics argue the confederation model assumes precisely the mutual trust and security cooperation whose absence sustains the conflict. Porous borders and shared institutions require each side to accept the other's armed presence and freedom of movement, which deep security fears, asymmetries of power and unresolved questions of refugees, settlements and Jerusalem make extremely difficult to guarantee. Critics note that no confederation has been agreed despite the idea circulating for years, and that a loose union could reproduce existing inequalities under a new label rather than resolve them, leaving the plan attractive in theory but unworkable without the prior settlement it is meant to provide.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A confederation presupposes a level of trust and cooperation between the parties that the conflict's history has so far prevented, so invoking the model does not show it is achievable here. [Rejecting P2] Porous borders and freedom of residency depend on mutual security guarantees that neither side currently accepts, making the promised benefits contingent on the very peace being sought. [Rejecting P3] Avoiding relocation does not by itself resolve the core disputes over sovereignty, refugees and Jerusalem, which a loose union could leave unsettled.