Dr. Mordechai Kedar: “The Eight State Solution is the Best”

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the director for the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation) and a lecturer in the Arabic department at Bar Ilan University, believes that the two-state for two-people solution is out of touch with the Middle East reality. He believes that an eight-state solution better reflects the sociology of the Middle East.

“The eight-state solution is based on the sociology of the Middle East, which has the tribe as the major corner stone of society. We should follow this characteristic of Middle Eastern culture as the basis for the Israeli-Palestinian solution,” Kedar declared. “Hamas started an emirate in Gaza, which is a full state. They have a judiciary, education ministry, army, police, industry, etc. They have every thing a state needs. They are a state.”

Kedar does not believe that it is realistic for Gaza to ever be reunited with the West Bank, as the history, culture and tribes are entirely different. In fact, Kedar stresses that even the tribes that populate Hebron, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilyah and Jenin are very different from each other, even though all of these cities are located within the West Bank. A Palestinian woman from Ramallah will seldom marry a member of a rival tribe located in Nablus.

Kedar stresses that the idea of a nation-state as it exists in Europe is alien to Middle Eastern culture. Countries such as Syria and Iraq were artificially constructed by colonial powers, without taking the Middle Eastern tribal culture into consideration. Groups that hate each other were forced to become part of the same country. This has brought great instability to the Middle East, as numerous Middle Eastern countries that were artificially constructed are now on the verge of collapse in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Kedar fears that the international community is making the same mistake that the colonial powers did following World War I by trying to force the two-state solution upon the Israeli and Palestinian people. While the west believes that it will bring peace and stability, Kedar emphasizes that this belief holds no validity upon any careful examination of the Middle Eastern reality.

“They don’t share almost any thing. Even the language is different from city to city. They have a different culture. Hebron is different from other places in the West Bank. They are much more traditional. The same is true in Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. These states never succeeded to be based on the collective loyalty to the state over the tribe,” Kedar explained.

“There is no Syrian, Iraqi, or Libyan people. They are all tribes that fight each other all the time. Why should we create another failed state,” Kedar pondered. “Look at the inter-fighting within Fatah. There is almost an all out war over there.” This does not even address the tensions between Hamas, Fatah, the Islamic Jihad, etc. “A Palestinian state will end up like Syria, Iraq and Libya and will become victim to Islamist Al Qaeda like organizations.”

To the contrary, Kedar noted that the Gulf emirates are stable, due to the fact that each of these countries is ethnically homogeneous. “They are not stable because of the oil. Oil doesn’t contribute to stability. Iraq has oil and it isn’t stable. Dubai has no oil and it is stable for it is populated by one tribe,” Kedar stressed. Kedar believes that the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to create eight city-states that would be based on tribal affiliations rather than terror organizations such as Hamas and Fatah, who has a terrorist past and still routinely praises terrorism in their media and educational system.

Kedar stressed that the tribes are only interested in living their traditional lives and peace can be possible with the creation of eight homogeneous Palestinian tribal emirates. Israel would annex the areas where there are very few Arabs and grant the few Palestinians living in those areas Israeli citizenship. “A homogeneous society is the source of wealth and stability, while a heterogeneous society creates feuds, problems, fights and poverty at the end of the day,” Kedar concluded. American decision makers should seriously consider his peace proposal.