About the Project
The Shared Homeland Paradigm (SHP) is a three-year project funded by a £1 million “responsive mode” grant from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC,) and pursued in collaboration with our partner, A Land for All (ALFA,) a political initiative advocating a vision of “two states, one homeland.”
The Shared Homeland Paradigm project aims to develop a new conceptual basis for configuring space and rights in Palestine-Israel, with a view toward charting a path from the current “one-state reality” to a two-state confederation built upon the values of equality, mutual self-determination, liberty of movement and residence, and sovereign partnership.
Conceived to enhance the conceptual clarity and policy depth of the vision of our partner organization, ALFA, The Shared Homeland Paradigm involves a phased program of research, scenario development, and engagement with civil society and policy audiences. Our goal is to develop and mainstream a paradigm that offers a practical and compelling alternative to the moribund separation-based two-state solution that the international community has championed for several decades, as well as to one-state models that have yet to command broad-based support.
At a time when despair about the possibility of a peaceful future in Palestine-Israel is fuelling the horrific violence on the ground, the project helps meet the urgent need for a fresh vision grounded in defensible values and elaborated through careful research and sober policy analysis. By joining together as scholars from disciplines (law and urban planning) and backgrounds (Palestinian and Israeli) that are not in conversation often enough, we also hope the project will model the spirit of partnership we envisage for Palestine-Israel.
Our project offers a bridge for the international diplomatic community from the moribund concept of a two-state solution to one capable of realisation and grounded in values worthy of support.
Extended content
At its core, this project is an effort to rekindle political imagination by bringing into conversation not only two national communities but also an array of disciplines, including urban planning and law. The project is designed to develop the The Shared Homeland Paradigm through the vectors of space and rights, with a view toward understanding their interaction, opportunities and challenges it presents. Recognizing space as a social product allows us to see the ways it is shaped by power relations, formal processes of exclusion and inclusion, structural violence and (de)colonization. Conversely, recognizing the spatial dimensions of rights, particularly in a territory as jurisdictionally fragmented as Palestine-Israel, helps elucidate that access to water, electricity and social services, is not a neutral fact but, rather, the result of policy and power hierarchies. Both lenses are crucial to the development of scenarios that not only contemplate the sharing of space but also the abolition of spatial-racial hierarchies produced by colonial policies.
Although the vision The Shared Homeland Paradigm is developing contemplates achieving self-determination for both peoples through the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel with borders based on the 1967 line, it is premised upon the paradigm of a shared homeland, rather than one of separation. What that means, at a basic level, is that all Israelis and Palestinians would enjoy freedom of movement and residence across both states—their common homeland. The paradigm also assumes the erection of a confederal framework encompassing joint institutions robust enough to guarantee individual and collective rights and facilitate cooperative management of issues of mutual concern. This fundamental reimagination of the two-state solution offers a path around longstanding deadlocks regarding the issues of borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees.
The First Phase
During the The Shared Homeland Paradigm’s first phase, our project team has commissioned studies analyzing comparative experience in other relevant contexts from experts in a range of fields. We are also in the process of developing an alternative lexicon to guide how we use language—in the context of the project and, more broadly, in discourse about the future of Palestine-Israel.
The Second Phase
This work, along with research undertaken by our team regarding current circumstances in and proposals for Palestine-Israel, will serve as the foundation for the project’s second phase—scenario development. The scenarios will explore how a shared homeland paradigm would operate in practical detail, giving particular attention to the lived reality of Israelis and Palestinians. Although The Shared Homeland Paradigm is not intended to be a utopian exercise, the scenario development process will focus initially on developing a vision for the future. At a later stage of the scenario development process, a transition plan outlining necessary legal, institutional, and infrastructural changes will be developed.
The Third Phase
The third phase of the project will focus on engagement with policy audiences and civil society. Our aim is both to elicit critical feedback that can help refine our work and to broaden and deepen the conversation about how to build a just and inclusive future in Palestine-Israel.
Recognizing that addressing all dimensions of the situation in Palestine-Israel is infeasible in a project of this scale, The Shared Homeland Paradigm focuses on three issue clusters that enable deep exploration of features that distinguish the shared homeland paradigm from other models: (1) citizenship, residency and mobility (CRM); (2) transnational/transboundary urban territories (TUT); and (3) environmental cooperation (EC.)
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