The conflict over the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has long been at a stalemate. While many issues make a two-state solution difficult, particularly the intertwined controversies of settlements, borders and security, most core concerns are tied to land. With growing pessimism on all sides,¹ voices across the political spectrum, both in Israel and among Palestinians, have discussed the need for alternatives to a two-state solution. While usually framed in terms of justice or pragmatism, less discussed is what such ideas might mean in terms of governance. Even with a two-state solution, issues about divided-identity communities would likely remain as large numbers of Israeli citizens could maintain residence on the West Bank, and Israeli Arabs/Palestinians might seek to forge ties with a new Palestinian state. While not endorsing any solution, this article reflects on how cases of nonterritorial governance can provide models and lessons relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Nonterritorial governance can be seen as a form of network governance. Its key characteristics are poorly defined hierarchies, fuzzy boundaries, and ties between groups representing different types of identity and forms of legitimacy. For several reasons, this approach is particularly well suited to ethnopolitical conflicts. First, its conceptualization of relations as substance helps overcome challenges posed by starting with "autonomous individuals." Identities are not just social but relational, and their significance is most apparent through relationships. Second, through interactions, individuals affect and are affected by identity, norms and conceptions of interests, and it is through creation of and participation in networks that one can talk about groups. Third, formal institutions may be created through rules and legal procedures, but they are still enacted by individuals who carry with them network ties, notions of legitimacy and informal norms. This helps foreground some common problems with post-conflict settlements. Finally, the language emphasizes governance over government. Often ethnonational groups, even if they want or have territorial autonomy, deeply crave recognition, space for their community to develop, and effective participation in the state. As it links individuals, nonterritorial governance recognizes that issues often most important to ethnonational groups (language, education and culture) do not require territory and thereby help lessen tension over symbolic claims to land.

Despite deep distrust between the Palestinians and Israelis,² key structural factors make nonterritorial governance relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian case. Reflecting Ottoman practices around confessionalism, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority already employ territorial and nonterritorial forms of governance, providing a base on which to build. The institutional arrangements emerging from the Oslo Accords and subsequent documents echo existing territorial and nonterritorial arrangements for various European ethnic and national groups. And for both Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, this social network is physically mapped onto networks of noncontiguous towns and villages. After a review of governance in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Lebanese case will be used to illustrate one form of sectarian-networked governance that could appear in a binational state. The article will then briefly draw on the cases of Norway and Belgium to discuss other alternatives to two clearly distinct states.

NONTERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE

Recognizing that state behavior no longer reflects hierarchical Weberian ideals, modern theories and practice of network governance emerged in the face of complex issues involving different types of actors, uncertainty over public-goods provision, and the need for stability and long-term interaction among key stakeholders in order to promote socialization and reduce transaction costs. Network governance can allow governments, companies, nongovernmental organizations and others to better share information, learn from each other, and coordinate policies and programs.³ They also are flexible enough to incorporate identity-based groups and parcel out discrete tasks to them. Networks, therefore, are not replacing hierarchical organizations, but can increase their collective capacity.

Network governance resembles the "composite states" of the Middle Ages,⁴ in which the ruler governs through myriad distinct relations, providing sub-actors with considerable autonomy and allowing flexible rule. The term also has been applied to current weak states, particularly Afghanistan and Iraq, where strong religious or ethnonational groups hold enough power to negotiate formal and informal contracts with the center. Nexon provocatively argues that all states are agglomerations of networks; therefore "treating composite polities — of various forms — as ideal types will probably prove more productive than using the 'nation-state' as the benchmark against which to judge contemporary political communities."⁵ This critically recognizes the degree to which governance does not reflect formal rules and institutions, but takes place through individuals acting according to norms, notions of legitimacy and personal ties. In other words, the "state" is enacted through cultural practice.⁶

Advocates of nonterritorial governance for ethnonational groups seek to bring the composite nature of states into the open, making it more formal, more transparent, and more democratic. Recent European models have drawn on the early twentieth-century writings of the Austro-Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Bauer,⁷ who themselves were inspired by idealized versions of the Ottoman millets. Confronting rising nationalism in Austria-Hungary, Renner and Bauer believed nations could not be physically separated to enact meaningful territorial autonomy. Their solution was to separate nation and state. Arguing that individuals have a natural right to access and a duty to support national culture, they proposed local representative bodies for national groups with powers to tax, own property, and issue decrees regarding areas of competency as worked out with the state. In addition to educational and cultural programs, this could include courts with specified jurisdictions. Local bodies would be connected to regional and state-level entities. The assumption was that dense, informal networks within the communities already existed, and that the new bodies would merely formalize them. Renner was convinced that under this system, there would be more harmonious relations between nations, as none would have incentives to oppress others or directly compete over resources. This in turn would help create competitive, denationalized political parties. Territorially based governments would maintain control over foreign policy, security and economic issues. This would mean, for example, that school standards as an economic issue would be set by the state, while the content would be set by the national bodies. The center also would ensure each national government had adequate resources. Regarding relations between territorial and nonterritorial bodies, in areas in which one nation dominated, the two institutions would be closely intertwined, while territorial bodies would be far weaker in heterogeneous areas.⁸

Such an approach necessitates attention to the creation of groups, the linkages holding them together, and the power dynamics inside and across networks. Groups and entities are constituted by individuals in a relational identity that has been given social significance and have boundaries that establish a clear inside and outside.⁹ The interior space encourages formation of links among individuals with similar identities, and a group — whether a social class, ethnic group, university department or other category — exists to the extent that individuals have formed links and networks according to the category and recognize a limited number of individuals (brokers) who have the legitimate power to speak for the group and interact with outsiders on its behalf. In this way, one can think in terms of networks within groups and networks of groups. Brokers are key to other network functions: maintaining flows of information and resources, creating and enforcing norms, preserving linkages, and gathering resources from outside the group and distributing them to inside sub-groups.¹⁰ This process of making and maintaining groups with different religious orientations has become increasingly important in Israeli politics. In the last two Israeli elections, there were clear debates over whether certain religiopolitical networks and their brokerage arrangements strengthen or corrupt the state. Network approaches also have implications for understandings of Palestinian identity as well.

ISRAEL AS A COMPOSITE STATE

In conceptualizing autonomy by identity groups, it is necessary to understand how Israel already reflects ideas of a composite state with rights and obligations determined by identity category. These categories are partly religious as Druze, Christians, Muslims and Jews are subject to different laws and embedded in different social institutions. The Jewish community is further divided by religious differences, and this has particular relevance for the education system and neighborhood concerns. There is also a geographic dimension with variations in governance between the 1967 borders, areas annexed after 1967, the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The West Bank is divided into A, B and C zones, and not only are the powers of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government different in each, but Israeli and non-Israeli citizens are governed differently in each. Since 2007, there have generally been rival Palestinian Authority governments in Gaza and the West Bank. This section will attempt to map out the important differences, particularly in political representation, the law and education.

The three main currents of twentieth century Zionism can help explain the basic contours of contestation over Israel's identity and geography, as they shed light on the formation of dense, lasting and distinct networks. Labor Zionism dominated from the decades before independence to the 1970s; its leaders were largely Ashkenazy Jews who emigrated, or whose parents emigrated, from Central Europe. At its core was a left-wing economic program and a belief that public life should be informed by their Jewish identity. Reflecting this, Labor Zionists were deeply involved in creating the kibbutzim, the labor movement and social-welfare organizations tied into the state. However, the demographic base of Labor Zionism has shrunk over time.¹¹ Revisionist Zionism under Vladimir Jabotinsky stood in opposition to Labor Zionism. Part of the split in the 1930s was over the imagined boundaries of Israel; Labor Zionists envisioned a state from the sea to the Jordan River, while the Revisionist Zionists' dream included both banks of the Jordan. Revisionist Zionists were also more conservative economically and, in a sense, more nationalist. In the early years, they created organizations to parallel those of the Labor Zionists.¹² Israeli politics is now dominated by their descendants, whose Ashkenazy base was broadened with Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. Currently one can speak of a relatively moderate faction of Revisionist Zionists represented largely by Likud,¹³ and a more radical faction that draws support from the settler movement. In the 1990s, the million Jews who emigrated from the former Soviet Union (now constituting 10-15 percent of the population) and created their own institutional life, largely gravitated towards one of the Revisionist Zionist perspectives.

Religious Zionists, many of whom long opted out of state involvement for religious reasons, began organizing politically in the 1970s. While somewhat divided between Ashkenazy and Sephardic Jews and by degrees of orthodoxy, the Haredi are a significant and growing segment of the population (now 11 percent of the population and expected to rise to 18 percent by 2030¹⁴). While Religious Zionists are a comparative minority, religious Jewish identity remains central for many Israelis. In one recent poll, only 44 percent of Israelis said they would choose democratic principles over Jewish law.¹⁵ At the same time, over the past five years there have been intense debates over Haredi and public policy, touching in particular on military service, welfare and gender.

"Israeli Arabs," the state designation, constitute almost 20 percent of the population. How to refer to this population is a matter of contention. Polling on self-identification is not always useful; surveys provide differing options, and the answers fluctuate with political events. Still, a vast majority refer to themselves as Israeli; most at least partly identify as Palestinian (this is truer for Muslims; the Arab identity is more salient for many Christians); and Druze tend to self-identify as Druze.¹⁶ Whatever the label, there are widespread feelings of discrimination,¹⁷ and the gaps in literacy, health and economic status between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis provide clear evidence. The place of Palestinian Israelis in Israel is a frequent discussion topic among both Arabs and Jews. While many Israeli Arabs (and some Jews) believe the term "Jewish Democracy" is an oxymoron (Smooha refers to Israel as an "ethic democracy"¹⁸), in 2003 Israel's Basic Law was changed to bar Knesset candidates who did not agree with Israel's status as a "Jewish Democracy," effectively narrowing discussion on Israel's identity. Unlike most Israelis, Arabs — except for the Druze — are not required to serve in the military, and very few volunteer. This reflects both Jewish suspicions of the Arab population and Arab disengagement from the state. Given the importance of the army in socialization and in connecting individuals from different communities, a result is that few networks cross the Arab and Jewish populations. Mutual suspicions and deep fears of the other are the resultant causes and effects. These separate networks in daily life, which result in few — and weak — ties, are becoming more pronounced; this, in turn, is increasing distrust. Polls of Israeli Jews show anti-Arab sentiment on the rise; over half are afraid to travel and shop in Arab areas,¹⁹ and two-thirds fear they or their families could be hurt by Arabs.²⁰ Unsurprisingly, polls also show that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believe Jews should be privileged and — if there were a two-state solution — Israeli Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate as they would be more loyal to Palestine than Israel.²¹ On the other side, 80 percent of Arabs want greater integration and equal rights.²²

Israel's diversity is reflected in the Knesset. The proportional representation system with a very low threshold has led to a volatile party system with splits representing ideology, area of origin, and the nature and degree of religiosity. Labor and Meretz represent the remnants of Labor Zionism; Likud is the most direct descendent of Jabotinsky's Revisionism. Until it disappeared, Mafdal was considered the party of Sephardic nationalists. Our Home emerged out of the network of settler organizations. Yisrael Beitanu began as a party of Russian immigrants. In the Religious Zionist stream, Shas, which has extensive education and social-service organizations, has long been the party of Orthodox Sephardic Jews. United Torah Judaism broadly represents Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, in particular the Haredi. Many Israeli Arabs support Labor and other leftist parties; partly this is ideological, but the unwritten rule that Arab parties will never be allowed into a governing coalition dampens support for them. Until the March 2015 election, there were also several "Arab" parties in the Knesset, including one (Taal) that tilted towards Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank's Palestinian Authority, and another (the United Arab List) that tilted away from it. The range of diversity and the role of identity politics are primary reasons coalition governments are so difficult to form and maintain.

Israel's court system separately serves 14 recognized religious communities (of which 10 are small Christian Arab groups); every individual must have a religious identity. The religious courts have jurisdiction over wide areas of family law and are sometimes used informally to resolve disputes outside their jurisdiction. Israel's Supreme Court intervenes in cases in which two parties in a dispute fall under different religious courts or if a dispute arises as to whether the case should be under the jurisdiction of the religious courts at all.²³

 

Governance of the West Bank

Current West Bank governance reflects historic legacies and competing imaginings. Before 1947, both Labor and Revisionist Zionists believed the West Bank should be part of a future State of Israel. However, the 1947 UN partition plan included it as part of a new Arab state. In the aftermath of Israel's War of Independence, Jordan annexed the West Bank, Israel gained control of it in the Six-Day War (1967), and significant settlement activities began after the Yom Kippur War (1973). With these changes, views of the West Bank shifted. By the 1960s, Labor Zionists had reconciled themselves to an Israel without the West Bank, Revisionist Zionists gave up their dream of the east bank, and most Palestinians would accept the 1948 borders.²⁴ So, while everyone was willing to compromise their maximalist demands, the land claims still conflicted. Overlaying these competing historical narratives is a complex legal system, barriers, intertwined settlement patterns, and segregated road networks. How many people live in the West Bank is a matter of dispute. A common number used for Israeli Jews outside the 1967 borders is 600,000, although this includes those in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, illegal settlers and small numbers on the Golan. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of legal settlers is about 375,000. According to the Palestinian Authority, there are well over 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank, a number that includes about 200,000 in East Jerusalem (Palestinians in East Jerusalem are eligible for Israeli citizenship, but few are). However, this may also include the very large number of Palestinians who have legal residence in the West Bank but live and work outside the region.

Before the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was increasingly integrated into Israel. This is not just because of the settlements; a large percentage of Palestinians worked in Israel, and there was relatively free movement throughout the entire space between the sea and the Jordan River. The legal systems differed, though. Because the West Bank was under occupation, it was governed by Israeli military law, with Jordanian law in a secondary place for the Palestinians. Even today settlers are technically subject to Israeli military law, though they have increasing access to Israeli civilian courts.

After Oslo and the Second Intifada, West Bank governance changed significantly. It is divided into Areas A, B and C. Area A includes the major Palestinian urban centers — less than 20 percent of West Bank land, but over half the Palestinian population. In Area A, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has power over both civilian matters and security, and Israeli Jews are not allowed there without special permission from the PA. In Area B, mostly smaller towns or land near Israeli settlements, the PA has control over civilian matters, but not security. Area B constitutes about 20 percent of the land and about 40 percent of the Palestinian population. There are some Jewish settlements in Area B, although many are illegal under Israeli law. As Areas A and B comprise hundreds of small, non-contiguous territories, the system already gives the PA a nonterritorial feel. Area C is under Israeli control and constitutes just over 60 percent of West Bank territory. Almost all Jewish settlements legal under Israeli law are in Area C, although there are also around 100,000 Palestinians living in Area C (the PA claims 150,000; Naftali Bennett, head of Our Home, claims only 50,000). Jewish settlers have no official institutional representation. However, the Yesha Council represents and advocates for the settlers, tying the mayors, councils and business people of the settlements into a powerful organization.

 

Education and Social Services

Theorists of nationalism and communal identity place great emphasis on the importance of schools in forming communal identity, and a strong public school system has been seen as critical for building modern states. Schools also increase network density within communal groups, as they promote long-term social ties among both students and parents. Israel's complicated, historically rooted school system reflects these ideas. Before the mandate, there were only a few public primary schools in Palestine, mostly operating in Turkish, and a growing number of private schools that taught in Arabic and had a religious orientation (Muslim or Christian). Under the mandate, Britain expanded the public primary-school system, changed the language to Arabic and incorporated many of the private Islamic schools into the public system. Still, by 1946, only 22 percent of children were in public schools.²⁵ However, while the British authorities controlled the Arab schools, a parallel network of autonomous Jewish schools emerged. As early Zionists were conscious of education's role in identity formation, schools were built around creating a community with a common language (modern Hebrew) and a common understanding of Israel as the Jewish homeland.

After independence, many existing divides were maintained. Acknowledging the secular-religious divide between Jews, the State Education Law (1953) separated the state and state-religious streams. The state stream, operated by the Ministry of Education, includes secular Jewish schools as well as Arabic-language schools and minority schools for the Druze and Circassians.²⁶ The state-religious stream long consisted mainly of the Mizrahi schools, Orthodox Zionist schools that predate independence and decided not to become part of the state school system. While publicly funded and nominally overseen by the Ministry of Education, they operate with considerable autonomy.

By 2000, the share of K-12 students in all state schools was down to 60 percent, a number that has continued to decline.²⁷ The rest were in "non-official recognized" or "non-official not recognized" schools. While the "non-official recognized" includes kibbutzim schools, most are religious, either ultra-Orthodox or run by small Christian sects; most of the "not-recognized" schools are ultra-Orthodox. The most important non-official recognized schools are run by the Fountain of Religious Education, which is connected to the Shas party and has moved towards being a second state-religious stream. Shas, an extensive provider of social services as well as a powerful political party, has used its influence both to increase its reach over certain Orthodox communities and to make inroads into more secular immigrant communities.²⁸ While non-official schools are not guaranteed state funding, because they represent such a large percentage of the student population and their parents wield considerable power in the fractious Israeli political scene, they receive state support. In fact, despite the lack of government oversight over the schools, some studies show they receive more money per pupil than schools in the state stream.²⁹ The autonomy of the various Orthodox Jewish schools has been a matter of debate, particularly by secular and nationalists Jews, who believe these schools focus too much on religious instruction and do not adequately prepare students for the modern economy. In the 2013 campaign, Yair Lapid, head of the centrist secular Yesh Atid party, called for the government to mandate more math, science and English in these schools.³⁰

The autonomy of religious Jewish schools also has attracted the Arab community's attention as many wonder why it has so little input into the curriculum of the Arab schools. In the Ministry of Education, there is a separate division for Arab Education, and most Palestinian Arabs in Israel attend schools overseen by this division. A Consultative Council for Arab Education provides some oversight, but, other than learning Arabic and having some instruction in Arabic, there is little to distinguish these schools from other state schools. Also, Israel's Arab community often points out the significant discrimination towards Arab schools in terms of resources.³¹ While many view these issues in the context of larger discrimination claims, Arab education has a problematic legal standing, and Arab schools, for a variety of reasons, are viewed with suspicion by some Israeli Jews. The Israeli government took over the existing Arab schools at independence, but, with the subsequent violence and dislocation of the Arab community, there were active debates through the 1950s about the legal status and role of Arabs in Israel. Partly reflecting this, the 1953 law never explicitly established Arab education; instead it set out policies for "non-Jewish" education, including stating the curriculum should be "adapted to the special conditions" of the community. Given the Jewish community's own focus on education in identity formation, it is not surprising that the state exercises tight control over Arab education, even to the point of security-service involvement in the naming of school principals.³² Among the demands issued by prominent Arab groups, an autonomous school system is frequently one of them.

Adding to this mélange of schools is the education system in the West Bank. For Jews, the school system is to a large extent an extension of the Israeli school system, although with a preponderance of "non-official" schools. The school system for the Palestinian population remains complicated. After 1967, the public schools fell under the military administration, which largely retained the Jordanian curriculum. As there was no clear process for changing the curriculum, it remained in place for decades. Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was granted primary responsibility for schools. With the help of UNESCO, in the early 2000s a new curriculum was finally put in place.³³ However, in addition to these schools, after 1967 many schools were established by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); they continue to operate about 350 schools in the West Bank and Gaza with 300,000 students and their own curriculum and governance.³⁴

While not as much of a focus as education, social-services provision can be an important locus for exploring issues of communal autonomy, being tied to solidarity and state capacity. As in education, many pre-independence organizations created by the Jewish community either became incorporated into the state or became quasi-public agencies; very few significant independent social-service agencies primarily for Arabs existed during the Mandate. However, in the past 25 years, there has been a marked rise in independent social-service nonprofits, especially ones serving Arab and Orthodox populations.³⁵ These patterns are clear in the health-care sector. In the first decades after independence, health-care provision was explicitly viewed as part of incorporating new immigrants into the Jewish state.³⁶ Currently, all citizens must obtain health insurance from one of four funds, now largely unmoored from their origins in either the Labor or Revisionist Zionist movements. Unlike the funds, many hospitals still reflect their religious roots (in both Israel and the West Bank). For example, a number were founded by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century and still have ties to their global church community, while others were created and are still run by longstanding Labor Zionist organizations. In the West Bank and Gaza, the health-care system has significant parallels to the school system. There is a health-insurance fund under the PA Ministry of Health, which covers about half of the population; the UNRWA and NGO sector, much of it funded by the international community, covers most of the other half.³⁷

 

Communal Autonomy in Israel

While Israel does not have the formal bodies of nonterritorial autonomy, there are many religious/ideological networks that provide a degree of autonomous communal life, and powerful community brokers operate through or with allied political parties. This is most clear in Orthodox communities, which are often concentrated in specific neighborhoods and often have dense networks of politicians, schools and social services. The Yesha Council helps tie settlers together, both providing and helping to coordinate education and other services. The Palestinian Authority, with its education and social-service system spread across a geographic patchwork on the West Bank, most resembles the kind of nonterritorial institutions described by Renner and Bauer. However, the Arab citizens of Israel are often left out of the powerful Jewish political networks. With very few legitimate brokers, their own networks are relatively weak. So even with an array of social-service organizations, civic groups and cultural institutions, they have comparatively little capacity to provide the autonomous communal life that other groups enjoy. Still, the pattern is that the deep embeddedness of identity in society is creating denser ethno-sectarian networks; these networks are gaining greater institutional form, and are increasingly recognized by and linked to the state. In this context, the recent comments by Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be found in "functional divisions" and not "territorial divisions" makes perfect sense.³⁸

A UNITARY STATE OR LEBANONIZATION

Given the complications of a two-state solution, it is not surprising that the "one-state" solution is gaining favor. One poll shows that about 30 percent of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe it is time to examine a single state in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights.³⁹ In Israel, this position incorporates a variety of rationales. While some secular leftists view this as a commitment to full democratic equality as well as a way to break the power of religious communities, some conservative Zionists see it as the only way to maintain a strong Jewish presence on the West Bank. People like Israeli President Rueven Rivlin simply believe Jews and Palestinians are too intertwined to separate.⁴⁰ While Israeli society would change in important ways, these perspectives assume that Israeli governance would continue. While one could easily imagine the Arab/Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank being incorporated into the existing institutional structure, it might intensify existing centripetal forces that are leading towards greater networked governance and informal autonomy by identity communities. In this way, Israel could become even more like Lebanon, its neighbor to the north.

 

Structure of Lebanon

The differences between Lebanon and Israel are significant, the comparative strength and coherence of the Israeli state being the most obvious contrast. Still, the dominance of sectarian networks in government and governance make Lebanon a useful case. Lebanon's sectarian communities have wrested specific responsibilities from the state, but, unlike Renner and Bauer's ideas of coherent communities overseen by bodies with specified powers elected by the community's members, the Lebanese system combines inflexible formal institutions with ad hocism in the execution of state policies and programs. This raises questions about whether community governance is coherent, whether state capacity is increased, whether the practices promote rent-seeking and state capture, and whether the liberal individualism of citizens is enhanced — as individuals have some power to employ rational instrumentalism in deciding how much and in what ways they want to be enmeshed into and governed by their community.

Lebanese confessionalism, the practice of pre-allocation of seats and offices by sect, dates to an 1860s conference organized by the European powers, each of which had ties to different sects and wanted to enshrine their influence in a new regional council. The practice expanded before independence and was embedded into the new state. The core rationale was not just to ensure representation of all major sects, but to guarantee the dominance of the Christian Maronites. While there has not been a census in Lebanon since 1932, the Maronites are no longer a majority, or even a plurality. The scholarly consensus leans toward the Sunnis being a plurality at the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 and the Shia likely a plurality today. It is also important to recognize the ways in which the civil war deepened sectarianism. As the already weak formal institutions further declined in power, the civil war not only mobilized the population along sectarian lines, but sectarian organizations emerged to take the place of the state.

Ending the civil war, the Taif Accords (1989) built on the pre-war confessional system and allowed sectarian organizations to maintain pieces of the state they had captured. Under Taif, the powers of major offices were modified, but the allocations remained the same: the president is a Maronite, the prime minister is a Sunni, the speaker of parliament a Shia, and the Druze and Greek Orthodox are given other offices. The parliament is now split evenly between Muslims and Christians, although the Christian seats are allocated to seven sects and the Muslim to five; the confessional elections prevent the emergence of any real nonconfessional, secular parties. Also reinforcing sectarianism and, as in Israel, reflecting Ottoman practice, Lebanon has always had religious courts with responsibility over family law.

The existence of confessionalism and its permeation of civil society does not mean each sect is unified.⁴¹ The most institutionalized are the Druze, reflecting their relative geographic separation, unique religious beliefs, and the power of the Jumblatt family and the Progressive Socialist Party. The Christian institutions are relatively coherent by sect, with the Maronites and various Orthodox and Roman Catholics each having their own networks of schools, churches, clinics, and the like, but the Maronites are splintered politically. The Shia are riven politically by the Amal-Hezbollah split. While the Sunnis historically were more reliant on state institutions and less mobilized, the rise of the Hariri Foundation, begun by the late developer and former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, has given the Sunni community a focal point outside the state. The foundation and the Hariri family have close ties to Saudi Arabia; while not as formal as Hezbollah's ties to Iran's religious leaders, this does promote the notion of a transnational Sunni community that counterbalances the transnational Shia community.

 

Education and Social Services

The education systems share similarities with those of Israel. In the late nineteenth century, European missionaries established schools targeting Christians and Druze. While a few private Sunni schools appeared, Sunni and Shia children generally relied on the handful of state schools. At independence, the Lebanese government simply added schools to the existing system. Currently, Lebanese schools are divided between public, free private (government-subsidized) and private, with about 40 percent of students going to public schools. About 15 percent of students attend free private schools, over half of which have a distinct sectarian character. The remaining 45 percent attend private schools, over half of which have a confessional orientation. In total, about a third of Lebanese students attend a confessional school.⁴² The data suggest most Christians and Druze attend confessional schools, and most Sunnis attend public schools. While most Shia also attend public schools, an increasing number attend confessional schools as many Shia schools have opened in the past 20 years, and Shia social organizations now provide scholarships.

The rise and diversity of the Shia-run schools is illustrative of calculations in Lebanese sectarian politics. The Shia schools that arose during the civil war reflected both the general disintegration of the public school system as well as specific interests of organizations. Hezbollah schools reflected the party's longstanding efforts to build a different kind of Shia community, one that took seriously its message of spiritual discipline. For Amal, not having its own schools put it at a disadvantage vis-à-vis both other sects and other Shia groups. Creating schools was a way to reproduce an Amal elite, compete with Hezbollah for influence in the Shia community, and gain more influence over education policies and budgets.

Sectarian politics and the weak state impact schools in other ways. The curriculum is an important site for identity construction and contestation. In theory, all schools share a common core, but there is plenty of room for schools to tailor their curriculum. There have long been efforts to impose a single narrative of citizenship and history as a way to diminish sectarian divides, but civics and history are the only subjects that are supposed to teach a common curriculum from common texts. Even this attempt is viewed as a failure, due to lack of oversight of schools and teachers and the widespread use of supplemental materials. Politicians often have considerable influence with the placement and promotion of teachers and principals. Organizations that have both a political party and an education wing often block government "interference" in their schools.⁴³

There are some similarities in the health-care sector. Until independence, health care was exclusively provided by religious organizations. In 1964, the government created a National Social Security Fund (NSSF) modeled on European welfare systems. However, instead of the state's providing care, the government would sign service contracts with private groups and would focus on ensuring quality and coverage. The government's ability to regulate the private sector, keep up with payments, and work at the local level largely ended with the civil war.⁴⁴ In some areas, existing local organizations continued to function despite the adverse conditions; in others, ad hoc volunteer groups sprung up and over time coalesced into larger organizations; in still others, local militias, which needed to care for their own soldiers, expanded services to soldiers' families and other supporters.⁴⁵

The current system is an expensive hodge-podge of variable quality. Hospitals are mostly private and historically have had some sectarian orientation. While partly financed by government reimbursements and individual co-payments, many heavily depend on international donations from co-religionists for their operations. Local clinics are often run under government contracts by charitable organizations with ties to a political party or religious sect. While some groups that are both political parties and providers of social services — like Amal and Hezbollah — run hospitals, their clinics are seen as far more important for their social mission and political support. Because of this, there is no political will to rein in and effectively regulate these health-care providers; in addition, there is considerable collusion to ensure increasing amounts of government funds go to them. Even attempts to rationalize the geographic distribution of clinics and their services have run into unofficial quotas to ensure sects and parties get their "fair share" of clinics.

Finally, there are ongoing reports of discrimination in access to education, social services and health care, although it is nuanced — not simply a matter of organizations providing for their own sect. In both schools and hospitals, there is more capacity in Christian institutions than there are Christians to serve, so to survive financially they must reach out to everyone. The Hariri Foundation and Hezbollah are considered among the most political in determining where to put local organizations and which individuals to serve, although the calculations are very different. Hariri seeks to lead a broad coalition and is therefore much more strategic in targeting important non-Sunni communities. Hezbollah seeks greater influence over the Shia community and therefore often establishes new programs in areas where Amal has extensive operations.⁴⁶

 

Possible Lessons

In some ways, there already has been creeping Lebanonization in Israel, particularly in the education system. A one-state solution that was merely the incorporation of the West Bank and equal citizenship would likely further this trend. A reconfiguration of Arab political parties would be expected, although the basic lines may remain similar. Still, one would expect Arab parties to become more prominent. The influx of new Arab citizens should significantly increase the size of the parties, and there would be a variety of new incentives for Palestinians to vote for these parties. At some point, they would be necessary for a coalition government. So, one would expect Arab communities to demand — and be in a better position to achieve — the kinds of school systems that Shas and other orthodox groups enjoy. This would be most likely if the current school system under the Palestinian Authority remained intact. As is in the case of Lebanon and to a certain extent Israel, schools and some social-service programs would likely become intertwined with these Arab political parties. Given the strength of Israeli health care and the weaknesses on the West Bank, it is unlikely for it to become as politicized as in the Lebanese case. While the Palestinian Authority would be dissolved, one might expect the emergence of a group of local Palestinian leaders similar to the Yesha Council, although it is unclear whether they could gain informal access to the state to the extent the Yesha Council has. For all of these reasons, one would expect greater density and powers of networks based on communal identities and more political parties on all sides with close ties to education and social-service providers, magnifying existing possibilities of state capture in Israel. However, there are two key differences from the Lebanese case: Israel maintains a secular population that can be effectively mobilized in defense of coherent state institutions, and the communal networks would be more fluid and flexible than in Lebanon. Still, while the Israeli state is comparatively strong, a one-state solution that merely expanded the current state would greatly compound the existing strains on it.

THE NORWEGIAN MODEL

Particularly over the past decade, some Israeli Palestinians have pushed for nonterritorial autonomy, a possibility the Israeli government raised in the 1980s.⁴⁷ These calls express the need for control over education and culture as well as a greater voice in land-use planning. Creating and networking such formal institutions into the state could ease incorporation of non-citizen Palestinians into the state and, unlike the possible fracturing and capture of the state as in the Lebanese model, could increase state capacity. Several European states have experimented with minority nonterritorial autonomy; this usually involves an elected council with a guaranteed voice in education and other minority priorities and sometimes control over cultural funds and even schools. Norway's Sami Parliament has the most power of any minority council, and, while the Sami are a small minority (about 40,000), the parliament's institutional form is instructive.

 

The Case of the Sami

Primarily spread across the Lapland region of Norway, Sweden and Finland, the Sami are the only European group recognized as indigenous people under international law. While Europe's minority-rights regime can be characterized by its liberalism and public-goods approach, international indigenous-rights documents are more collectivist. The tension between liberalism and collectivism is apparent in Norwegian policies, and this tension makes the case particularly suitable for the realities of Israeli communal life. While in the past, the Sami were subject to intense Norwegianization, after the Sami mobilization in the 1970s an article was added to the Norwegian constitution that states: "It is the responsibility of the authorities of the State to create conditions enabling the Sami people to preserve and develop its language, culture and way of life."

The nonterritorial Sami Parliament was created in the late 1980s. While a state body, it operates with considerable autonomy. The parliament sets policy, particularly on education, culture, economic development and youth. The Sami Council (president, vice president and three parliamentary representatives) oversees the 140-member bureaucracy; related boards monitor state cultural funds and language use. The parliament's members are elected by Sami across Norway. About 10 Sami organizations and most major Norwegian political parties run candidates. While the Norwegian Sami Confederation (NSR) has consistently won the plurality of seats, over time the Norwegian Labor party has achieved rough parity. Because of the broad acceptance of Sami rights as legitimate and their ties to political parties, there are well-developed consultation procedures between the parliament and the Norwegian government on matters that might impact the Sami and traditional Sami lands. Another sign of its acceptance is the growth of its budget from several million dollars in 1989 to over $50 million by the late 2000s. Even if the Sami Parliament does not have clear sovereignty or veto power, Norway has clearly moved towards a more deliberative democracy.⁴⁸

 

Education and Land

Sami language classes reappeared in the early 1970s. After reports showed how a lack of Sami language and culture in the schools negatively impacted Sami children, the government created a Sami Education Board in the Ministry of Church Affairs and Education. Since Norway's comprehensive education reform in 1998, Sami students' rights depend on where they live. Students in the Sami language area in the north have the right both to study Sami as a language and to learn other subjects in Sami. These rights are also granted to students outside the Sami area if there are adequate numbers of students; otherwise, students merely have the right to study Sami.⁴⁹ In addition, in Sami schools, history, literature and social-science courses are supposed to incorporate aspects of Sami culture. Recognizing that Sami culture is part of Norwegian culture, Sami children are not only expected to be bilingual and prepared to be active members of Norwegian society, but learning about the Sami also became part of the curriculum for all Norwegian students. In 2000, the Sami Education Council was moved from the ministry to the Sami Parliament, giving the parliament greater control over the Sami curriculum's content. Still, as the state curriculum guidelines are quite detailed, many Sami complain the parliament's power to alter the Sami curriculum is limited.

One unusual feature of Sami governance is its role in land issues. In Finnmark County, where most Sami live, about 95 percent of the land was state owned. The Finnmark Act (2005) created a new private body, the Finnmark Estates, to which most of this state-owned land was transferred. The Finnmark Estates is run by a six-member board, three members elected by the Sami Parliament and three by the Finnmark County Council. The board elects a chair, and if there is a tie, a representative from the County Council will be chair in odd years, a member of the Sami Parliament in even years (generally the chair has alternated every year). Voting is by majority, although the chair has the power to break ties. In some cases, two members can demand that a matter be referred to the Sami Parliament; if it does not uphold the board's decision, the matter is decided by the Norwegian king. There is also a three-member Control Committee that ensures the body conforms to state laws and oversees its finances; one member is appointed by the Sami Parliament, one by the Finnmark County Council and one by the king.

The main purpose of the Finnmark Estates is to ensure local control over land, delineating in detail ownership and rights of use. It is also expected to manage the lands in an economically responsible fashion. The Sami Parliament is allowed to develop guidelines on how to evaluate projects, including how they will impact Sami economic interests, Sami culture or other issues of particular interest to the Sami. These guidelines must be used by the Finnmark Estates, by the Finnmark County Council in zoning changes, and by the state when evaluating projects. The Finnmark Act also opened new issues. One regards land outside Finnmark. As far more outside land is in private hands, questions about a potential role of the Sami Parliament in land regulation are more complicated. Another is mining rights. The 1972 Mining Act allows for free prospecting for certain minerals, such as gold and copper, while assigning landowners rights to other minerals, including many industrial materials and stone. The Finnmark Act transferred mining rights on the previously state-owned land to the Finnmark Estates and gave the Sami Parliament greater powers over new mining operations.⁵⁰ While the Sami Parliament is concerned about environmental regulations on mine operations, the Sami Parliament has also wanted a mineral tax, giving it an independent source of financing.

 

Possible Lessons

Even under a two-state solution, there may be efforts to better institutionalize Israel's Palestinian community. If Israel incorporated the West Bank and Gaza, there would be severe pressure, at a minimum, to allow the Palestinians significant nonterritorial autonomy, and the existing Palestinian Authority institutions could be modified into a Palestinian Autonomous Parliament to serve this role. Voting for the Palestinian Legislative Council could include not only Arabs in East Jerusalem, who are already allowed to vote, but could be expanded to all Palestinians in Israel. The division for Arab education in the Israeli Ministry of Education could be disbanded and all Arab schools be placed under the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority could also take over public translation services into Arabic, oversight of laws ensuring Arabic as an official language, and other language issues. Most social-welfare programs, which have been problematic in the Palestinian territories, could be incorporated into the Israeli systems.

Governance of "land" would be trickier, although certainly negotiable. In the cities and towns on the West Bank that already have Palestinian majorities, there is no inherent reason they could not be incorporated under existing Israeli laws that provide for local self-government. The West Bank is currently divided into 11 governorates, which barely function, partly due to the divisions of land into the different areas. The incorporation of the West Bank into Israel could spark a revitalization of regional governance in the West Bank as well as in the rest of Israel. As in Finnmark, in governorates in which there is either a significant Palestinian or settler presence, special boards could be created to deal with controversial issues like local roads, water and land use. The Palestinian Authority could also be guaranteed extensive consultation rights on a range of policies. The Oslo Accords already specify that there will be consultation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government on such issues as water, regional development, energy, etc., so this would merely be a new institutional form for this agreement.

The Sami Parliament, instead of radicalizing the Sami or weakening the state, which some feared, brought Sami issues into the political mainstream. As a result, in some ways the Sami are now treated as another powerful interest group, like labor federations or the chamber of commerce. However, it does continue to enshrine the privileged position of the ethnic Norwegians. There is no guarantee that the transformation of the Palestinian Authority into a similar body that enshrines nonterritorial autonomy would do the same. However, it is a model that could address some of the basic concerns on both sides and overcome some of the rationale for the current stalemate by focusing on governance and representation instead of territory.

AUTONOMY IN A BINATIONAL STATE

Nonterritorial autonomy for the Palestinians may address important issues with regard to self-governance. It would also help ensure Israel's status as a Jewish state by effectively enshrining the Palestinians as the minority. However, it is unlikely to satisfy Palestinian demands for sovereignty and their own control over land. Turning Israel/Palestine into a binational state on the model of Belgium, with its mix of territorial and nonterritorial autonomy, might then be the solution. Depending on the form, this model might find favor with important segments in Israel. How to preserve Jewish control over the West Bank settlements without turning the Palestinians into citizens has long been a conundrum, particularly for the settler movement. Benny Elon, for example, proposed dismantling the Palestinian Authority, granting Palestinians Jordanian citizenship with Israeli residency, and granting Arab "settlements" autonomy. In the 2013 election, Naftali Bennett advocated full annexation of Area C and giving all Palestinians in Area C citizenship; the Palestinian Authority would have full autonomy in Areas A and B, and the legal status of the Palestinians in these areas would remain as it is now. With their clear endorsement of territorial autonomy and the need for nonterritorial autonomy, it is a relatively short step to a model like Belgium.

 

Territoriality in Belgium

Belgium has one of the most developed systems of territorial and nonterritorial autonomy. There are three territorial units (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels), each responsible for such areas as economic development, agriculture and the environment, and each with its own powerful elected bodies. In addition, there are three "nonterritorial" (or "community") units for the French, Dutch and Germans. On top of this is a weak federal government responsible for the national budget, most foreign policy, and coordination. The system was initially driven by fears of linguistic assimilation into French on the part of both Dutch speakers, in the face of spreading French educational institutions in Flanders, and the German community, who lost much of their linguistic autonomy after World War II. When the federal regions were created in 1963, Flanders became almost monolingual in Dutch, Wallonia monolingual in French except for the German linguistic region, and the capital of Brussels mixed between French and Dutch.

In 1971, the three community bodies were established to oversee culture, language and other social matters. Over time, the regions and community councils gained more power, particularly over education. Currently both the regions and community councils have independent tax authority, which guarantees a degree of financial autonomy, and there is a federal-level solidarity fund to help ensure they have adequate resources.⁵¹ The complexity of the system is overcome by both the competencies of each body and the overlap in personnel. As in the Sami case, in addition to power over the curriculum and teachers, the community councils are involved in language protection, media and the protection of significant sites. The councils also run programs that are "personalizable": youth clubs, daycare for children and the elderly, and sports. While the federal government maintains a strong role in health care, much of the system is split among the regions and the community councils; how the responsibilities are shared depends on the council. In general, the communities have roles in overseeing the care of the elderly and people with disabilities, health promotion and some disease prevention. However, some of these roles have shifted from the communities to the regions over time.⁵² Finally, unlike other cases, in Belgium the community councils can sign foreign treaties and maintain international relations on issues within their competencies.

Calling the cultural councils "nonterritorial" is slightly misleading, though, because of where they operate and their make-up. In Flanders, the regional council and the cultural council are the same; the only difference is that when they operate as the cultural council, they also have powers related to the Flemish in Brussels. The French council consists of the Wallonia council plus the Francophone members of the Brussels council. Only the German council is directly elected. While there is a party that has long advocated for extensive German autonomy, it generally only wins about 20 percent of the seats and is dominated by German-speaking members of major parties.⁵³ There have been calls to directly elect all three of the community councils on the theory that it would allow citizens more accountability over language and educational issues. The regional councils also are encroaching on the powers of the cultural councils because of the latter's budget limitations.⁵⁴ Furthermore, the operation of the cultural councils is largely bounded by territory; the French council has no programs in Flanders, the Dutch council does not operate in Wallonia, and the German council is confined to nine districts. The "personal principle" of individual free choice is largely confined to Brussels, where parents really could send their children to Francophone schools and then to Dutch after-school programs. The question as to why this personal principle does not apply across the entire state — one of the points for Renner's proposal for Austria-Hungary — is very real; in fact, it was subject to a landmark case by the European Court on Human Rights. The answer goes back to fears of assimilation on both sides. As the now normal stalemates over forming governing coalitions at the national level indicate, there are some real governance problems.

 

Possible Lessons

In many ways, the formalization of a Jewish-Arab binational state is the closest option to the status quo. One could imagine Areas A and B, perhaps with territory from Area C and the Arab-majority areas around Nazareth, being set as the Palestinian region and the rest becoming the Israeli-Jewish region. Jerusalem, like Brussels, would have a special status and could be the capital of both regions. The Knesset and Palestinian Authority would be transformed into regional councils with a set of coordinating institutions placed over them. As is true of Belgium, one would expect the two regions to maintain distinct party systems. Unlike Belgium, the Arab and Jewish cultural councils would have to operate across the entire state (certainly, there would be no fear of assimilation, as in Belgium) and one could imagine small councils for the Druze and Bedouins being created. As in the initial concept of Renner and Bauer, ethnonational members across the territory would vote for their own cultural council, which would primarily have jurisdiction over education, religion, language, important cultural/religious sites, and certain health and welfare functions. It might be easier to come to agreement on a border, as it would be an internal boundary instead of an external one.

CONCLUSION

At a time of considerable pessimism about the political and practical viability of a two-state solution, mixes of territorial and nonterritorial autonomy provide alternative models. Each of these approaches begins with views of states as composites instead of a bounded hierarchy of the Weberian ideal-type. Since Israel already strongly exhibits aspects of a composite state, it is easier to imagine how Palestinians could be incorporated into it. These models show that it is possible for each community to maintain governance over education, religion, social support and other matters of critical importance for communal identity. Cooperative governance over land can also work. These approaches reorient the debate away from geographic lines to questions of representation, brokers, competencies of bodies, and how individuals and institutions are networked.

However, there are real trade-offs and risks in each model. Informal autonomy in Lebanon and the collusive behavior of its powerful brokers have increased sectarian divisions, entrenched identity politics, and led to a severely dysfunctional state. While Israel is a stronger state with greater flexibility around governance arrangements, aspects of Israeli governance are already trending towards a Lebanese model, and a one-state solution could deepen and accelerate these trends. The Norwegian case might have real promise, given the legitimacy of its representatives for both the state and the Sami community, its deep ties into governance networks, and its commitment to liberal values. However, it is unclear how it would work for a "minority" that would be nearly the same size as the titular majority. It would also continue narratives of the Jewish identity of the state in ways that many Palestinians would find difficult to accept, and, as pointed out earlier, would not give Palestinians control over land in ways they currently demand. A binational state with both territorial and communal autonomy would address these concerns. However, if even Belgium struggles to make its institutional system function, it is particularly difficult to imagine creating and maintaining the consultation and compromise as well as the intertwining and overlapping institutions in the Israeli-Palestinian case. Finally, throughout this paper, questions about Gaza and the security concerns surrounding Hamas, Islamic Jihad, some radical settler groups, and others have been ignored. While the distrust between Jews and Arabs is significant and growing, making a one-state solution a real challenge, creative forms of governance could reverse the rising hostility on all sides.

What still drives talk of a two-state solution is the deep desire of Israeli Jews to live in a state in which Judaism is at the core of its identity and the goal of the Palestinians to have a state in which they feel like full citizens. None of these models definitively solves this, but forms of communal autonomy might be an acceptable compromise. Even if a two-state solution moves forward, issues related to Israel's large Arab population and the burgeoning number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank will have to be addressed. Under this scenario, nonterritorial autonomy for minorities would still make sense. It is also likely Israel would maintain close ties to the remaining Jews in West Bank, and there would be increasingly dense networks between Palestinians in Israel and on the West Bank and Gaza. Hungarians and other states in Europe have found ways to keep ties and some responsibility for their co-ethnics across borders, a policy that is easier with the cooperation of each government and the institutionalization of the minority. While no solution is ideal, it is time to think creatively about lessons from the range of models in other states.