I was talking with John Papworth about Israel over breakfast this morning. Fourth World Review ran an article by Kirkpatrick Sale a couple of years ago which called for the Israel Experiment to be ended as it clearly wasn’t working. A year ago John followed this up with a piece that Professor Leopold Kohr had penned thirty five years ago in his daily blog in the San Juan Star. It was not called a blog back then but it had much the same style and the Kohr Columns provide an excellent model for any would-be bloggers.
The Jewish lobby and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are two of the most powerful organisations in America. AIPAC is described in a recent report by Harvard Professor Stephen Walt as a ‘de facto agent of a foreign government [that] has a stranglehold on the US Congress’. The report on The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy also mentions that ‘pressure from Israel and the lobby was not only a factor behind the decision to attack Iraq but it was critical…the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.’
In The Breakdown of Nations written in 1945 Kohr explains the principle of cantonisation in the Swiss Confederation. He returns to this idea in the San Juan Star column…entitled Israel’s Tactical Error in Fourth World Review. Cantonisation, Kohr explained, is the way to address the problem of Israel and Palestine. Disbanding the Israel Experiment was not on Kohr’s agenda. Instead he wanted to move forward with a Buen Consejo approach.
For Leopold Kohr the answer was to concentrate the bulk of Israel’s Arab population in two or three large city-states in the fashion of Swiss cantons such as Geneva and Zürich, or of the Hanseatic city-states of Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen within the framework of Imperial Germany. These could be granted complete internal autonomy while remaining externally affiliated with the rest of Israel in a common market and defence union. In this way they would remain culturally separate from Israel and politically and structurally separate from the other Arabic countries.
Settling the Palestinians in large urban concentrations would also solve a host of other ‘Palestinian problems’. More than three quarters of any city’s inhabitants earn their living by engaging in transactions with each other. So building vibrant working cities would eliminate the vexing idleness and hatred-creating problem of Palestinian unemployment.
Moreover since urban occupations yield very much higher incomes than rural occupations the urbanised Arabs would experience a higher standard of living than elsewhere in much of the Arab world. The other 25% would earn their living through increasing commercial ties with the other partners of a highly efficient Israeli Confederation. The result of this would be that the Palestinians who now have a vested interest in the destruction of Israel would in the future have a vested interest in her preservation in order to ensure the continuation of their newly won affluence.
In his article Kohr then takes the same line as he took when proposing the idea of Academic Inns. The cantonisation of Old Palestine makes obvious sense so the only question is how to finance it. To the task of building three large cities Kohr brings a similar approach to the one adopted by The Duke of Buen Consejo. Kohr reasons that if the Palestinians are to create a feeling of belonging their cities must not just be ordinary urbanisations but communities offering graceful architecture and a sophisticated style of living. They must not be glorified refugee camps in concrete perpetuating the Palestinians’ feelings of subjection. Instead they should rival the best of Israel’s own cities thereby strengthening the bonds of a union among equals. Kohr sees no reason for this to present a problem.
These new splendid Palestinian cities would not be built in the modern way with foreign aid and reinforced concrete so they end up looking like the outskirts of Babylon. Instead they would be built in the old-fashioned way…the way that Venice, Salzburg and Rome were built…with the loving hands of those who intend to live there. The way to replicate the aesthetic joys of Venice, Salzburg and Rome is to use local material beginning with the alleyways and not the superhighways. These Palestinian cities can be built with no more than the means of subsistence for a labour force that costs as much when it lies idle as when fully employed. And these Palestinian cities can be built as fast as ancient Thebes which raised itself after every war from destruction to splendour within the span of two or three years.
Would that American Jewry and its AIPAC hedge funds have the imagination in diplomacy that the State of Israel has in military strategy. Expelling the Palestinians increases the problem. Leaving the Palestinians where they are doesn’t work because there are too many of them to be absorbed in a country specifically established as a haven for the Jews.
But the cantonisation of Old Palestine and the creation of splendid Palestinian cities is an idea whose time has come. It is the solution to what has become an American problem. But there is no sign of the statesmanship necessary to deliver so creative a solution. Instead Harvard University is distancing herself from its own report on The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy and agreeing to the Academic Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government who authored the report stepping down to become an ordinary professor. The Congressional Order of Merit would be a better idea…and a new job heading up a new American Peace Corps and a new Marshall Plan for Old Palestine.
