A Middle East union: solving it inside a regional framework
Israel and a Palestinian state, alongside their neighbours, join an EU-style regional framework, with open trade, shared infrastructure, security guarantees and eventually freedom of movement, so that borders matter less and the conflict is settled as part of a regional bargain.
What happens to Israeli Jews
Israel accepted as a normal part of the region, with its security embedded in alliances, and a market of hundreds of millions; but open borders raise the demographic fears that drive the conflict.
What happens to Palestinians
A state that isn't a small enclave but part of a large open economy, with the Arab world's weight behind the settlement; but the risk that normalisation happens without them, as critics say happened with the Abraham Accords.
What it requires
- A two-state or confederal settlement as the entry ticket
- Arab states offering full normalisation in return, as the Arab Peace Initiative did in 2002
- Regional security arrangements that also contain Iran and its allies
- Decades of economic integration before political union, as in Europe
Who supports it
The Arab Peace Initiative (Beirut, 2002) offered full normalisation with Israel in exchange for withdrawal to the 1967 lines, a Palestinian state and an 'agreed' solution for refugees; Israel never formally accepted it. Shimon Peres's 'New Middle East' (1993) imagined an economic union after Oslo. The Abraham Accords (2020) and the planned India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (announced September 2023, weeks before October 7) are partial steps toward regional integration ⚠. No government runs on political union.
What history says
- The European Coal and Steel Community (1951): former enemies bound together by shared industry
- The Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional bloc of Arab monarchies
- The Abraham Accords' trade and tourism links
The hard questions
- Would regional integration settle the conflict, or let governments work around it, as some say October 7 was meant to prevent?
- Can Europe's post-war path be repeated where the wars aren't over?
- Who would enforce security inside a union that includes enemies of each other?