The Five Strangest Solutions to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

In just a few weeks, statesmen from around the world will convene at an international peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference will coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's historic decision to partition Palestine into two states. Yet after six decades of diplomatic failures and fruitless peace plans, the attendees look set to consider only warmed-over versions of the same stale and unimaginative "two-state solution."

It's time to consider daring new ideas and radical new solutions. To that end, I present to you the five strangest proposals to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Olmert and Abbas, please take note.

Peace of Mind

According to the International Meditation Society of Israel, peace between Israel and her neighbors can be achieved without protracted negotiations or conferences. The key is transcendental meditation (TM). Practitioners of TM—including, famously, the Beatles—believe that by turning inward, one is able to unite with "the Source of all Being" and spread kindness all around. If enough people in a society practice TM, hatred and violence will dissipate.

Alex Kutai, a leader of the TM movement in Israel, has done the math. Kutai has determined that bringing peace to the entire Middle East will require that the square root of one percent of the region's population undertake transcendental meditation.

During Israel's 2006 war with Hizbullah, Kutai dispatched a "squadron" of 65 TM practitioners into the war zone to create a spiritual force shield of invincibility around the north of Israel. Kutai has challenged the government of Israel to demonstrate its commitment to peace by assemble 265 TM practitioners around the country. Two-hundred sixty-five is the square root of one percent of seven million, and thus should be sufficient to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. The government of Israel has yet to finance even a single practitioner of TM.

The No-State Solution

Forget the two-state vs. one-state debate. It is time to consider the anarchist-inspired no-state solution. Conflict between Israel and her neighbors is a result of the divisive and coercive influence of state power, the reasoning goes. Peace will come only when the the people of Israel/Palestine assemble into a non-authoritarian cooperative community of free individuals.

In Israel, political groups like Anarchists Against the Wall, Israeli National Traitor Anarchists, and Amoria have been at the forefront in advocating for this solution. According to Amoria, "AMORIA is the intentional community that we wish to create in Kna'an, the land that is called Israel by some and Palestine by others. We are anarchists, so we are opposed to the state system that oppresses all peoples on the planet and the planet itself. We sidestep this semantic political conflict by advocating not a one-state solution, or two-state solution, but a NO-state solution in the Land of Canaan."

Weed for Peace

At the First Israeli-Arab Joint conference at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Israel's Ale Yarok (Green Leaf) party unveiled its peace proposal: Get everybody in the Middle East high. Ohad Shem-Tov, the party's chairman, points out that marijuana has a unifying effect. "Many youths, Jewish and Arab, act the same due to cannabis," said Shem-Tov, and "this similarity creates a basis for common identity, identity that exists culturally as well owing to the music created around the use of cannabis. We believe this creates a basis for something that can in the future bring peace".

In 2006 the Green Leaf Party unveiled its other peace pipe initiative; a water canal that will carry water via Turkey, Israel, and Syria. The objective of the peace pipe is to distribute water in an equitable and just fashion to the Middle East. The hope behind this initiative is that this type of cooperation would go a long way in helping solve the problem of water scarcity in the region.

Bring Back the Brits!

What we need is a new British Mandate! Sounds crazy, but Britmandate.com (Hebrew), today viewable only via the Wayback machine, was an innovative site dedicated to bringing the Brits back to Palestine/Israel. Its webmasters contended that Israelis and Palestinians had shown themselves unripe for self-rule, and that the restoration of the British Mandate was the only way forward. Once the British had adequately tutored their swarthy Semitic charges in the nature of self-rule, and once both peoples demonstrated their fitness for self-government, the British would again withdraw. With Tony Blair's new post as Quartet special envoy to the Middle East, perhaps it is time to reconsider this idea.

Let Their People Go!

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused an uproar when he suggested that the Arab-Israeli conflict ought to be solved by sending the Jews back to Europe. But Ahmadinejad is not the only one thinking that mass emigration is the path to peace.

Middle East Solutions aims to "convert the present ‘lose-lose' conflict between Arabs and Jews into a ‘win-win' peaceful outcome for both sides." The organization recently launched its PAIR (Plan for Arab-Israeli Reconciliation) initiative, which entails dismantling Palestinian institutions, "reeducating" Palestinians about the facts of Jewish and Israeli history, and then a "phased, peaceful, long-term resettlement solution" in which the Palestinians are sent somewhere else. "Resettlement would be conducted in an orderly and carefully planned way, with full compensation for any property left behind, and with provision for new land, housing, employment, and general infrastructure to enable the resettled communities to acquire a decent standard of living."

Where exactly are the Palestinians being sent? Middle East Solutions prefers Saudi Arabia, but they're not particular.

So there you have it, the five strangest solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict: You can assemble a squadron of TM experts, create a society with no authoritarian governing body, get everybody high, bring back the British, or transplant whole populations.

On second thought, maybe we should stick to that two-state solution business after all.