America – Israel – Palestine: A Single Electoral Constituency

Had my father not been forced to seek refuge in Lebanon and leave the city of Acre, which has no fear of the sea, I would today be actively engaged in election campaigns, like my cousins who hold Israeli citizenship.

Instead, I carry a refugee identity document in Lebanon that offers me no opportunity to exercise my right to vote.

My daughter, however, who holds American citizenship, argues with her Republican-leaning husband, pointing out that the Democrats are no better when it comes to either domestic or foreign policy.

During election seasons, talk of national sovereignty, independence and prosperity abounds. Red and yellow lines are drawn to distinguish domestic from foreign policy, supposedly demonstrating the grandeur and nobility of national sentiment and an exceptional commitment to sovereignty.

Yet the electoral spectacle, with all its peculiarities, exposes these illusions of grandeur and power. Red lines disappear in an instant when President Trump, at a press conference, effectively "elects" his friend and nemesis, Netanyahu, outside the ballot box, prompting barely any protest from Likud supporters. This stands in stark contrast to the nervous reactions and fierce concern for Israeli sovereignty displayed by opposition leaders in the "Change Bloc", which proclaims its ambition to reform and rebuild, under the leadership of Gadi Eisenkot, of Moroccan origin, and his Yashar ("Upright") party.

And since the two parties competing for seats in the US Congress are racing to secure the backing of wealthy Jewish donors in America, those red lines acquire the remarkable ability to change color, allowing money to flow across them without obstruction.

So if American and Israeli voters were asked a simple question, whether any dividing line really exists between what is domestic and what is foreign in the two countries, I believe the answer would be obvious even before the votes were counted.

If this is the situation of the United States as a global power and Israel as a regional power, what, then, of the Palestinian people, who lack a state and cannot even aspire to approach the status of a geopolitical pole?

For Palestinians have a state on the land where they live, yet that state still has no recognized borders. They therefore cling to the armistice lines that preceded the June 1967 war.

Nor is there any boundary between Israeli domestic policy and the Palestinian "outside", given the flagrant violation of the Oslo Accords. This is not to mention the United Nations resolutions, which could be gathered into a thick volume to safeguard Palestinian rights.

Anyone following the Israeli election campaign can gauge the place of the Palestinian question in Israel's domestic politics simply by looking at the questions asked in opinion polls:

Do you support annexing the territories of "Judea and Samaria" and immediately extending full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank?

What should we do with the Palestinians who have not left? Should we hand over the administration of the West Bank to the Jordanian authorities while retaining Israeli sovereignty?

Yet expulsion and complete separation from the Palestinians remain the most popular answers and the ones most likely to attract votes. This is quite apart from the daily killings, in keeping with the maxim that "the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian."

The Palestinian Pole

Palestinians, meanwhile, have another way of exercising their electoral rights. In the West Bank, the questions take a different form:

Would you rather liberate Palestine from the river to the sea, or accept only part of it? Is liberating al-Aqsa more important than establishing a Palestinian state?

Do you reject the Oslo Accords while continuing to operate under the laws they established, or do you reject both?

And the questions about upholding historical rights go on endlessly, even as the boundaries of individual homes in East Jerusalem collapse, along with those of tents in Gaza, chicken coops in the villages and grazing grounds in Bedouin life. Even the boundaries of the olive tree, between its fruit and its branch, are being erased.

Such is the paradox of the absence of borders between Israel and Palestine.

If the conflict continues to pit the American and Israeli poles together against the Palestinians, then Palestinians deserve to regard themselves as a pole in their own right, despite the enormous disparity in strength and size, much like that between an elephant and an ant.

Palestinians are also entitled to choose ants as the emblem of their electoral campaign, provided they form a long column whose beginning is visible but whose end cannot be seen. In this way, we would achieve electoral parity with the elephant and the donkey, both bearing the Star of David.

For we would acquire the virtues of the ant kingdom: tireless, organized labor, and the patience to endure the destruction an elephant inflicts on anyone who lacks the exceptional wisdom to keep out of its path.

The truth requires us to acknowledge that the Palestinian pole receives relatively few votes in the United States. Yet the support of communities, of everyone who rises up for justice and of everyone who rejects violence has made the Palestinian flag widely recognizable. And if someone tries to outlaw it, it can simply be replaced with a slice of watermelon. Is this not an irresistible force capable of nullifying the effects of unjust laws?

In Israel, Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship without having chosen it account for nearly 17% of the votes across the "state". They have their own political parties and also participate in Jewish parties, whether Zionist or religious. The Palestinian question therefore cannot, as a matter of law, be treated as a foreign issue, as is the case with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Indeed, treating Palestinians as "outsiders" led some of them to cast their votes through suicide bombings in support of Netanyahu's victory over Shimon Peres. Hamas leaders themselves said as much during the elections that first brought Netanyahu to power, a position he still holds today.

Today, however, Hamas leaders are expressing a desire to participate in Palestinian elections through independent figures. From a historical perspective, this is a positive development after three decades during which Hamas ventured to the furthest extremes of violence, culminating in the ill-fated October 7 attack.

A Single Constituency

The solution requires neither great effort nor a vast body of legislation. All a cartoonist would have to do is draw an ant carrying the Palestinian flag beside the elephant and the donkey, both marked with a gleaming Star of David.

I therefore call on all supporters of democracy around the world to back the proposal to establish a single electoral constituency for the three peoples: Americans, Israelis and Palestinians.

There is nothing new about the idea. A significant proportion of Palestinians and Jews living in Greater Israel, or historic Palestine, already envisage a one-state solution based on the principle of one person, one vote.

And since the United States and Israel share a common situation in this regard, Palestine's lack of borders leaves its people divided like colonies of ants that recognize no boundaries and that neither the elephant nor the donkey can destroy.

For the American Union alone enjoys the status of a sovereign superpower, endowed with hegemony and exceptional rights. The reality is that Israel is a state with unlimited autonomy and absolute protection, while Palestinians enjoy only the most restricted form of self-government, despite having no borders.

A single electoral constituency might therefore offer a way out for everyone.