FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

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As pointed out by several commentators,15 the vision docu~
ments represent a significant change of emphasis. The docu~
ments are by far the most explicit indication that the Palestini~
an establishment no longer believes that even fully~developed
liberal democracy could change/improve their position in
Israel. The emphasis in our texts is not on the familiar liberal
democratic concept of a "state of all its citizens" but on the
model which approaches to the concept of non~geographic
federalism, in line with the models established in Belgium, Ma~
cedonia, and in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agree~
ment (1998).
Stormy Debate
The Israeli Jewish reaction to the vision documents has in most
cases been very negative. 16 The evident Palestinian nationalis~
tic narrative of the documents has been seen as a threat to
Israel's self~definition and justification for a Jewish nation~
state. By defining Israel as the outcome of a colonial project,
the Zionist~Jewish narrative is totally ignored. Even most of the
liberal voices in Israeli Jewish society strongly reject some of
the salient ideas of the vision documents. Typically, the con~
cept that "Israel is the nation~state of the Jewish people" is
understood as a red line. l7 Further, many critics state that it is
illogical to recognize the legitimacy of a Palestinian nation~
state (on the occupied territories) while denying Israel's legiti~
macy as a Jewish nation~state. If in the future there were a
Palestinian nation~state in the West Bank and Gaza alongside
Israel that, in turn, would be transformed into a bi~national
state or consensus democracy, Palestinians would have one
15 See, e.g., Waxman & Peleg, 2008, 58.
16 Waxman &Peleg. 2008, 64.
17 See e.g. Gavison 2007 and Rubinstein 2007. For some exceptions, see Ka­
miner 2007.
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