A Swiss-Style Canton System

For more than a century, the Israel-Palestine conflict has centered on competing claims to land, identity, and self-determination. Today, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has become a de facto single state. Obstacles to a two state solution are almost insurmountable, including the fact that the West Bank has more than half a million heavily armed and ever more geographically dispersed Jewish settlers. Moreover, thousands of Palestinians have employers in the settlements and work permits in Israel. It no longer makes sense to describe “Israel” and “Palestine” as different lands. They are now just two names for the same land.

Any effort to sell the one-state idea, however, needs to address legitimate concerns about rights of self-government and religious traditions. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis want to merge and become the same people. They value their unique traditions.

The Confederation of Switzerland provides a compelling one-state blueprint. With nine million people living in 15,940 square miles—comparable to Israel-Palestine’s 11,000 square miles and fifteen million—Switzerland’s twenty-six cantons enjoy significant autonomy, with their own laws and cultural identities. They have accommodated wide diversity in language (German, French, Italian, and Romansch) and religious affiliations (Protestantism, Catholicism, and secularism). A rotating seven-member Federal Council, elected by a bicameral parliament, handles national affairs, with each member taking turns as president for just one year.

Switzerland succeeds by emphasizing local governance and freedom of movement. This model, which stresses compromise, has helped navigate through conflicts once more intense than those in Israel-Palestine. The Swiss cantons escaped the worst of the violence of the Reformation era (despite two short inter-cantonal religious wars), and during the Thirty Years’ War their population was stable, in contrast to a 15–20 percent decline in the neighboring Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg lands (Wilson 2009; Höpflinger 2025). Today, Switzerland consistently ranks near the top of the Cato Institute and Fraser Institute’s (2025) Human Freedom Index.

The Federal Forum of Israel-Palestine, a coalition of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, champions a similar federalist vision (see Figure 1 for the proposed canton map). Its core principles include acknowledging the unbreakable historical, cultural, and religious ties of Jews, Muslims, Druze, and Christians to the entire land and enabling all peoples to exercise autonomy within a single federal framework, guaranteed by equal rights and “one person, one vote” (Federal Forum 2025).

Support for the canton system in the region dates to the 1930s, when Itamar Ben-Avi proposed a “Free State of Palestine” for the British Mandate, characterized by multiple Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cantons (Dubnov 2025). In 1947, Judah Magnes, president of the Hebrew University, urged the United Nations to implement cantonization, envisioning a “thriving peaceful Switzerland, situated at the heart of this ancient highway between East and West.” The United Nations, however, opted for partition, a decision that has fueled ongoing violence. A few prominent voices continued to push for federalism. During the 1980s, for example, economist F. A. Hayek proposed designating Jerusalem as the capital of a “Palestine federation … the common spiritual home of the three great monotheistic religions” (Van de Haar 2025).

Figure 1
Israel-Palestine Map (as suggested by the Federal Forum of Israel-Palestine)

Source: Rafi Gessel, Federal Forum of Israel-Palestine.

In recent years, discussion about the canton idea has revived in Israel-Palestine. Although the movement is still small, changing conditions on the ground favor it, including more widely dispersed settlements. For those seeking a way out, the canton model is well suited for both reconciliation and compromise. This entirely homegrown movement is pressing forward even as the international community clings to the dead-end two-state approach.

The model offers something for nearly everyone, including Jews fearful of losing an overwhelming majority. If Israel-Palestine had a system of thirty or so cantons as proposed by the Federal Forum (see Figure 1), some might choose to become mini “Jewish states,” officially recognizing Jewish identity, while others might emphasize secular values and proclaim official languages (Hebrew, Arabic, or both). Like the Romansch in Switzerland, small minorities, such as Christians, might aspire to high office. Freedom of choice would be paramount: Settlers could stay put, coexisting peacefully with Palestinian neighbors under a unified system with equal political rights. Barriers, including eight hundred checkpoints, would be dismantled, encouraging free trade and building trust. Israel-Palestine, following the example of other resource-poor countries such as Switzerland, could maximize its unique advantages, including its well-placed location as an international crossroads.

A defining advantage of the canton approach is the centrality of geography over rigid ethnic or religious divisions. Predictable cantonal boundaries would allow demographics to shift naturally without necessitating the periodic readjustments that plague power-sharing systems. It would give settlers and Palestinians the necessary security for commerce rather than conflict and create safety valves by enabling people to “vote with their feet.”

Decentralization would also help diffuse such intra-Jewish tensions as the still simmering antagonisms from the mass protests over judicial reform in 2023. “Where I live,” observed Phil Saunders, an Israeli member of the Federal Forum, in personal communication with the author, “there are fundamentally different kinds of Jews who do not agree on almost anything. Decentralization is needed here because even if there were no Arabs in this land, before October 7 this country was on the verge of civil war.”

Critics point out that the Swiss model arose in radically different circumstances from those prevailing in Israel-Palestine. While true, the same could be said for Britain’s Westminster parliamentary system and the U.S. federalist system. They, too, had unique histories, but that has not prevented emulation by countries with such diverse histories as Japan, India, South Korea, Israel, and Germany. Nor is it prerequisite (as some also assert) that the federal units first be longtime allies. Within living memory, the EU came to include former bitter enemies.

A more serious objection is that deep-seated historical hatreds rule out peaceful coexistence. The best answer is to point to the success of the Arab citizens of Israel, now about 20 percent of the nation’s citizens. Despite discrimination, they have lived alongside their non-Muslim neighbors for decades. Arab Israelis are more than 25 percent of Israel’s doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and dentists. They participate in Knesset elections, join governing coalitions, and dominate local governance in Nazareth and other cities (Van Koningsveld 2025). Benefiting from the rule of law and a market economy, they have made significant gains, despite continuing gaps between their incomes and Jewish incomes. Between 1999 and 2019, the average real hourly wages for Arab Israelis rose by 51 percent, and they now have higher incomes than Arabs in all neighboring countries except for Saudi Arabia (Weiss 2023).

Global precedents reinforce the case for optimism. There are multiple examples of former antagonists living in relative peace: Bosnians, Rwandans, and Northern Irelanders. By enhancing security, a canton system incentivizes cooperation over confrontation.

One good way to give Palestinians a stake in any transition plan is deceptively simple: privatization. The benefits would not only address past grievances but also create a vast shareholder class. Any plan might emulate the highly successful “Czech miracle” by distributing voucher coupons to Palestinians for purchase of shares in privatized firms or investment funds (Hazlett 1995). Israel-Palestine is ripe for such an approach. Governmental entities own not only electric and water utilities, railways, and ports but also 93 percent of the land of Israel and as much as 60 percent in the territories. Privatization could both integrate Palestinians into the broader economy and empower Jewish settlers by making them full owners (rather than leaseholders) of their land.

Promoters of a federalist alternative repeatedly face the same objection: “That sounds interesting, but it has little chance any time soon of being implemented.” The best response to this objection is to entirely agree with it. The members of the Federal Forum wisely focus on the long term rather than becoming overly distracted by daily headlines. They are patiently planting the seeds by introducing the idea, knowing that the facts on the ground are in their favor. The consequences of vast numbers of disfranchised and enfranchised living alongside one another will have to be faced sooner or later. Over time, the likelihood increases that diverse groups on both sides will start considering a canton model as the most realistic off-ramp.

References

Cato Institute and Fraser Institute. 2025. Human Freedom Index.

Dubnov, Arie M. 2025. Speaking Cantonese: The Pasts and Futures of the Federalist Idea in Israel/Palestine. Global Perspectives 6 (1): 144789.

Federal Forum. 2025. Building a Shared Future for Israel-Palestine.

Hazlett, Thomas W. 1995. The Czech Miracle: Why Privatization Went Right in the Czech Republic. Reason, April 1.

Höpflinger, Francois. 2025. A Short Population History of Switzerland.

Van de Haar, Edwin. 2025. F. A. Hayek and Liberal International Order. Journal of International Political Theory 22 (1).

Van Koningsveld, Akiva. 2025. Swell of Arabs in Israeli Health Care Since 2010, Study Suggests. Jewish News Syndicate, February 3.

Weiss, Avi. 2023. A Picture of the Nation: Israel’s Society and Economy in Figures. Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, June.

Wilson, Peter. 2009. Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War. Allen Lane.