ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Palestinos e Judeus discutem Estado binacional como solução de conflito

2013-02-06T00:07:00.000-02:00

Há cerca de três meses, de forma sigilosa, um grupo de intelectuais árabes e judeus se reuniu em Viena para discutir uma idéia que vem ganhando terreno nos últimos anos: o fim iminente da solução de dois Estados.

Partindo do princípio de que as condições políticas e geográficas enterraram as chances de um Estado palestino viável, os participantes propuseram o estabelecimento de um só Estado para judeus e árabes, com direitos iguais para todos.

"A idéia de que a solução de dois Estados é a única alternativa está em crise", diz o cientista político palestino Bashir Bashir, que organizou o encontro. "Precisamos ser corajosos e pensar de forma criativa."

Professor da Universidade Hebraica de Jerusalém, Bashir reconhece que a partilha da Palestina histórica continua sendo a solução mais popular entre israelenses e palestinos e a preferida da comunidade internacional.

Mas ele afirma que "há uma adesão crescente de vozes influentes dispostas a romper o paradigma" e a considerar outras fórmulas, como um Estado binacional.

Acima de tudo, o debate sobre a morte dos dois Estados fornece um diagnóstico do ambiente de desalento criado pelo impasse entre palestinos e israelenses.

Muitos círculos palestinos consideram a luta contra a ocupação israelense uma causa perdida, que deve ser substituída pelo princípio de democracia cívica: "uma pessoa, um voto", nos moldes da campanha que derrubou o apartheid, sistema segregacionista sul-africano.

A solução de um só Estado ressurgiu no meio acadêmico internacional a partir de um artigo do historiador britânico judeu Tony Judt, publicado em 2003 na "New York Review of Books".

Numa era de sociedades multiculturais, argumentava Judt, "a idéia de um Estado judeu, em que judeus e a religião judaica têm privilégios exclusivos e não judeus são excluídos, tem raízes num outro tempo. Israel, resumindo, é um anacronismo".

Embora o modelo de um só Estado não faça parte da agenda de líderes palestinos e israelenses e tenha crescido muito mais no campo das idéias, a crise do paradigma citada por Bashir é evidente.

Vinte anos após o histórico aperto de mão entre Yasser Arafat e Yitzhak Rabin, que deveria ter pavimentado a solução dos dois Estados, o processo de paz está totalmente paralisado.

Apesar da intensa condenação internacional, o governo de Israel mantém a expansão de colônias na Cisjordânia ocupada, onde 350 mil colonos judeus vivem em meio a 2,5 milhões de palestinos. Enquanto isso, extremistas se fortalecem nos dois lados.

"A ocupação de Israel nos empurra para uma realidade de um Estado", diz Ghassan Khatib, ex-porta-voz da Autoridade Nacional Palestina. "Não será solução - só uma nova fase da crise, porque esse Estado será regido por um sistema de apartheid."

Desde o primeiro dos Acordos de Oslo, assinados por Rabin e Arafat em 1993, os governos israelenses adotaram o princípio dos dois Estados, sobretudo para escapar de uma armadilha demográfica.

Como a taxa de natalidade dos árabes é mais alta, a tendência é que até 2020 haja mais palestinos que judeus entre o Mediterrâneo e o Rio Jordão, os limites da Palestina histórica que incluem Israel e territórios ocupados.

O demógrafo Sergio DellaPergolla, professor da Universidade Hebraica de Jerusalém e autor da projeção, alerta que isso poria em xeque o caráter democrático de Israel, pois a minoria judia controlaria uma maioria árabe sem direitos iguais.

Para ele, a única forma de evitar isso é insistir na solução de dois Estados. Dadas a hostilidade histórica e as diferenças culturais entre os lados, a proposta de um Estado binacional é irreal, diz.

"Um Estado binacional entre Brasil e Argentina daria certo? Claro que não", compara. "Essa proposta é uma forma elegante de defender a eliminação de Israel."

O cientista político Bashir pensa exatamente o oposto: após 45 anos de ocupação, israelenses e palestinos estão se tornando inseparáveis. Ele conta que o encontro em Viena não definiu o formato de um futuro Estado binacional, só princípios de convivência.

"O formato é questão de engenharia institucional. Há muitas opções", diz Bashir. "Se a segregação é moralmente inaceitável, a alternativa é pensar sob a ótica binacional, que insista em direitos individuais e coletivos para todos."

Por: Marcelo Ninio

Creation of two states does not guarantee lasting peace

2012-12-09T18:54:00.000-02:00

Israel did not wait long to reveal its first response to the United Nations General Assembly’s overwhelming recognition of Palestine as a non-member state, almost immediately announcing its intention to push forward with plans to build housing for Jewish settlers in E1, an area of the West Bank just to the east of Jerusalem.

Although it is sometimes misleadingly referred to as “disputed” or “controversial,” settlement construction in E1 is no more and no less of a contravention of international law than settlement construction elsewhere in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. What makes this development significant is E1’s location, sealing tight the gap between East Jerusalem and Israel’s largest settlement, Maale Adumim, further to the east.

That gap is the last remaining link for Palestinians between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank; it also occupies the interface among and between the Palestinian communities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem — which, apart from being the cultural, religious, social and economic focal point of Palestinian life, is also one day supposed to be the capital of Palestine.

In moving forward with long-threatened plans to develop E1, Israel will be breaking the back of the West Bank and isolating the capital of the prospective Palestinian state from its hinterland. In so doing, it will be terminating once and for all the very prospect of that state — and with it, by definition, any lingering possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Oddly enough, the Palestine recognized by the United Nation is only an abstraction; the one that Israel is now about to throttle is much more real, at least insofar as the throttling will materially affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a way that mere recognition does not.

However heavy the blow to Palestinian aspirations, an equally heavy political price for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s E1 plan will be paid by Israelis. For by terminating the prospect of a two-state solution, Netanyahu will also be sealing the fate of an exclusively Jewish state.

As cannier Israeli politicians (Ehud Olmert among them) have long warned, maintaining the existence of Israel as a Jewish state fundamentally requires perpetuating at least the idea of a Palestinian state, even if only as a deferred fiction kept alive through endless negotiations.

Once the fiction of a separate Palestinian state is revealed to have no more substance than the Wizard of Oz — which the E1 plan will all but guarantee — those Palestinians who have not already done so will commit themselves to the only viable alternative: a one-state solution, in which the idea of an exclusively Jewish state and an exclusively Palestinian one will yield to what was really all along the preferable alternative, a single democratic and secular state in all of historical Palestine that both peoples will have to share as equal citizens.

A campaign for rights and equality in a single state is a project toward which the Palestinians will now be able to turn with the formidable international support they have already developed at both the diplomatic and the grassroots levels, including a global boycott and sanctions movement whose bite Israel has already felt.

For Palestinians, in any case, one state is infinitely preferable to two, for the simple reason that no version of the two-state solution that has ever been proposed has meaningfully sought to address the rights of more than the minority of Palestinians who actually live in the territory on which that state is supposed to exist.

The majority of Palestinians live either in the exile to which they were driven from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948, or as second-class citizens of Israel, where they face formidable obstacles as non-Jews in a state that reserves a full spectrum of rights only for Jews.

For Palestinians, the right to return home and the right to live in dignity and equality in their own land are not any less important than the right to live free of military occupation. A separate state addressed only the latter, but there can never be a just and lasting peace that does not address all those rights, even if it means relinquishing the prospect of an independent Palestinian state.

What must be added here is that if a one-state solution offers the last remaining key to a just and lasting peace, Israeli Jews will pay what will turn out to be only a short-term price in exchange for many long-term gains. Like Palestinians, they will lose the dream and the prospect of a state exclusively their own. But — also like Palestinians — what they will gain in turn is the right to live in peace.

By Saree Makdisi – Herald Tribune

Criação de dois Estados não garante paz duradoura

2012-12-09T16:26:00.002-02:00

Israel não esperou muito para revelar sua primeira resposta ao reconhecimento esmagador pela Assembleia Geral da ONU da Palestina como Estado não membro, anunciando quase imediatamente sua intenção de dar andamento aos planos para construção de moradias para colonos judeus em E1, uma área da Cisjordânia ao leste de Jerusalém.

Apesar de ser chamada de modo enganador como “disputada” ou “controversa”, a construção de assentamentos em E1 é simplesmente uma violação da lei internacional tanto quanto a construção de assentamentos em outros pontos da Cisjordânia ou de Jerusalém Oriental. O que torna esse desenvolvimento significativo é a localização de E1, fechando a separação entre Jerusalém Oriental e o maior assentamento de Israel, Maale Adumin, mais ao leste.

Essa separação é a última ligação para os palestinos entre o norte e o sul da Cisjordânia; ela também ocupa a ligação entre as comunidades palestinas de Ramallah, Belém e Jerusalém Oriental –que, além de ser o foco da vida cultural, religiosa, social e econômica palestina, também seria algum dia a capital da Palestina.

Ao prosseguir com os há muito ameaçados planos para desenvolvimento de E1, Israel quebrará a espinha da Cisjordânia e isolará a capital do sonhado Estado palestino do restante do país. Ao fazê-lo, ele exterminará de uma vez por todas a própria perspectiva desse Estado –e com ele, por definição, qualquer possibilidade restante de uma solução de dois Estados para o conflito israelense-palestino.

Estranhamente, a Palestina reconhecida pela Organização das Nações Unidas é apenas uma abstração; aquela que os israelenses estão prestes a estrangular é muito mais real, na medida que afetará materialmente as vidas de centenas de milhares de palestinos de uma forma que o mero reconhecimento não afetará.

Por mais pesado que seja o golpe contra as aspirações palestinas, um preço político igualmente caro pelo plano E1 do primeiro-ministro Benjamin Netanyahu será pago pelos israelenses. Pois ao eliminar a perspectiva da solução de dois Estados, Netanyahu também selará o destino de um Estado exclusivamente judaico.

Como políticos israelenses perspicazes (Ehud Olmert entre eles) há muito alertam, a manutenção de Israel como um Estado judaico exige, fundamentalmente, a perpetuação ao menos da ideia de um Estado palestino, mesmo que apenas como uma ficção adiada, mantida viva por negociações intermináveis.

Assim que a ficção de um Estado palestino separado é revelada como tendo tanta substância quanto o Mágico de Oz – o que o plano E1 praticamente garante – restará aos palestinos que ainda não o fizeram se dedicarem à única alternativa viável: uma solução de um só Estado, no qual a ideia de um Estado exclusivamente judaico e um exclusivamente palestino dará lugar àquela que era a alternativa preferível o tempo todo, um único Estado democrático e secular em toda a Palestina histórica que seria dividida por ambos os povos como cidadãos iguais.

Uma campanha por direitos e igualdade em um Estado único é um projeto no qual os palestinos poderão contar com apoio internacional formidável que já desenvolveram tanto na esfera diplomática quanto de base, incluindo um movimento para sanções e um boicote global que Israel já sentiu.

Para os palestinos, de qualquer modo, um só Estado é preferível a dois, pelo simples motivo de que nenhuma versão proposta da solução de dois Estados tratar de modo significativo dos direitos da minoria árabe-palestina que de fato vive no território no qual o Estado supostamente existiria.

A maioria dos palestinos vive ou no exílio, para o qual foram expulsos durante a criação de Israel em 1948, ou como cidadãos de segunda classe em Israel, onde enfrentam obstáculos formidáveis como não judeus em um Estado que reserva o espectro pleno de direitos apenas para os judeus.

Para os palestinos, o direito de voltar para casa e o direito de viver com dignidade e igualdade em sua própria terra não são menos importantes do que o direito de viver livre da ocupação militar. Um Estado separado trataria apenas deste último, mas nunca haveria uma paz justa e duradoura sem tratar de todos esses direitos, mesmo que signifique abrir mão da perspectiva de um Estado palestino independente.

O que deve ser acrescentado aqui é que se uma solução de um Estado oferece a última chave restante para uma paz justa e duradoura, os judeus israelenses pagarão um preço a curto prazo em troca de muitos ganhos a longo prazo. Como os palestinos, eles perderão o sonho e a perspectiva de um Estado exclusivamente deles. Mas – assim como os palestinos – o que eles ganharão em troca é o direito de viver em paz.

Por: Saree Makdisi – Herald Tribune

Jesus, a Jew or a Gentile?

2012-02-05T22:32:00.006-02:00

Are in error those who believe Jesus was a Gentile and not a Jew. Statements of this nature smell pure anti-Semitism to be aimed away from Judaism the figure of the greatest master of the whole Christian family, regardless of denomination or subgroup. Jesus, or Yeshua bar Yosef, a direct descendant of the house of King David, whose birth was prophesied centuries before his coming, was born in Bethlehem of Judea, the son of Miriam and Yosef, Jewish believers in Gd, and so was Jewish and never denied his origin, his history, his roots and his culture.

To despair of the vast majority of Christians, Catholics or Protestants, fundamentalist or not, ever, at any time, claimed to be God, but only the Son of Man or Son of the Living God, as indeed all of humanity is. Nor has created a religion and even less a religious institution. At no time was against the "mitzvot," the commandments of his religion, or against the precepts of Jewish time. He was presented to the temple on the seventh day after birth for "brit-milah" or circumcision ceremony and made his "bar-mitzvat" at 13 years old in Jerusalem.

He always had free passage in the synagogues and in the Great Temple and always made it clear that he had not come to destroy the Law but to comply with it, without, however, bow to any kind of prejudice, common then and now, as well as subservience demanded by so-called doctors of the Law Despite having good relationships with some of the elders of the Great Sanhedrin, or Council of Elders of the Great Temple, provided Rabbi positioned himself so, and very properly and firmly against corruption alarming , against hypocrisy, lies, deception of the divine laws, and especially against the oppression of the powerful over the weak.

For this reason he was hated and persecuted by a whole variety of people who saw the uneducated Galilean a real threat to the "modus vivendi" and the "status quo" effect. However, on the other hand, was revered by crowds of unhappy slaves, the sick and marginalized of all social order. He walked with the poor, the simple and the persecuted and ate with the socially discriminated, as the tax collector and the prostitute. His holiness and knowledge of natural laws that science still has failed to discern, healed the sick and dying brought the ante-chamber of death, but because of the mysticism and blind faith of a majority weary of waiting a messiah at any price, was climbed the rank of miracle worker and reviver of the dead.

He preached pure love, tolerance and forgiveness and a life lived as a righteous man is expected of a faithful follower of the Jewish Mosaic Law and the Holy Torah. He died a victim of the hate dispensed by the powerful to those who have no commitment to lie, with foolish pride, the prejudice and wickedness. His life was the most beautiful love poem that never has heard and his message can be summed up in "Love Gd above all things and your neighbor as yourself, Jew or Goy," a Jewish commandment before being Christian, but forgotten by all races and peoples as if it was a mere decadent and revolutionary slogan without real value these days.

His message and call to universal love and to the most vigorous moral code that we have news, of which testified to the last drop of blood on the wood of the Cross, were abducted by phalanges of men of the world, victims of greed, vanity, pride and the most cruel wickedness. He was promoted to the status of God and in His name all sorts of ills and evils were freely practiced and innocent blood, even millions of Jews like himself, gushed fed through the fields and squares throughout the centuries, as the rivers flowing into the sea.

Yeshua bar Yosef, son of Miriam and Yosef, born a humble Jew in Bethlehem of Judea, was not a god, but was not an ordinary man. Anyway, did not descend from the highest heavenly home just to dwell among us and live a limited and small life. Neither came to earth to save us from a supposed and doubtful hellfire, but rather to bring to all mankind, regardless of religious denomination, creed, origin and race of each one, vigorous and real subsidies for a hard and incessant work that must be done inside our human essence in order to become us worthy for one day inhabit the house of HaShem, the New Jerusalem in Heaven.

By LauLimor

Jesus: Judeu ou Gentio?

2012-01-27T20:11:00.007-02:00

Incorre em erro quem defende que foi Jesus um gentio e não um judeu. Afirmações dessa natureza cheiram puro anti-semitismo por ter como objetivo afastar do Judaísmo a figura do mestre maior de toda a família cristã, independentemente da denominação ou subgrupo. Jesus, ou Yeshua bar Yosef, descendente direto do Rei David, cujo nascimento fora profetizado séculos antes de sua vinda, nasceu em Belém da Judéia, filho de Miriam e Yosef, judeus crentes em HaShem, e foi Judeu sim e jamais negou sua origem, sua história, suas raízes e sua cultura.

Para desespero da grande maioria dos cristãos, católicos ou protestantes, fundamentalistas ou não, jamais, em tempo algum, afirmou ser Deus, mas tão somente o filho do Homem ou filho do Deus Vivo, como de resto toda a humanidade o é. Tampouco criou uma religião e, menos ainda, uma instituição religiosa. Em momento algum se posicionou contrário às “mitzvot”, os mandamentos de sua religião, ou contra os preceitos judaicos da época. Foi apresentado ao templo no sétimo dia após o nascimento para a realização do “brit-milah” ou cerimônia da circuncisão e fez o “bar-mitzvat” aos 13 anos em Jerusalém.

Sempre teve trânsito livre nas sinagogas e no Grande Templo e sempre deixou claro que não viera para destruir a Lei, mas para dar-lhe cumprimento, sem, entretanto, curvar-se a qualquer natureza de preconceito, comuns naquela época como hoje, assim como à subserviência exigida pelos chamados doutores da Lei. Apesar de ter bom relacionamento com alguns dos anciãos do Grande Sanhedrin, ou Conselho de Sábios do Grande Templo, na condição de rabino posicionou-se sim, e com muita propriedade e firmeza, contra a corrupção alarmante, contra a hipocrisia, a mentira, a mistificação das Leis divinas e, sobretudo, contra a opressão dos poderosos sobre os mais fracos.

Por esse motivo foi odiado e perseguido por toda uma casta de gente que via no inculto Galileu uma real ameaça ao “modus vivendi” e ao “status quo” vigente. Entretanto, por outro lado, foi venerado por multidões de infelizes, de escravos, de doentes e de marginalizados sociais de toda ordem. Andou com os pobres, com os simples e com os perseguidos e comeu ao lado de gente mal vista e discriminada, como o cobrador de impostos e a prostituta. Sua santidade e conhecimento de leis naturais que ainda hoje a Ciência não logrou vislumbrar, curou doentes e trouxe moribundos da ante-câmara da morte, todavia por conta do misticismo e da fé cega de uma maioria sedenta de um messias a qualquer preço, foi galgado ao posto de fazedor de milagres e ressuscitador de mortos.

Pregou o amor puro, a tolerância e o perdão incondicional e viveu uma vida de homem justo como se espera de um Judeu seguidor fiel da Lei Mosaica e da Sagrada Torah. Morreu vítima do ódio dispensado pelos poderosos àqueles que não têm compromisso com a mentira, com o orgulho tolo, com o preconceito e com a impiedade. Sua vida foi o mais belo poema de amor de que jamais se teve notícia e sua mensagem sintetiza-se no “Amai a HaShem sobre todas as coisas e ao próximo como a si mesmo, Judeu ou Goy”, um mandamento judaico antes de ser cristão, porém esquecido por todas as raças e povos como se fora mero e decadente slogan revolucionário, sem valor real nos dias que correm.

Sua mensagem e chamamento ao amor universal e o mais vigoroso código de moral de que se tem notícia, do que deu testemunho até a última gota de sangue no lenho da cruz, foram seqüestrados por falanges de homens do mundo, vítimas da cobiça, da vaidade, do orgulho e da mais cruel impiedade. Elevaram-no à categoria de Deus e em seu nome toda sorte de males e maldades foram livremente praticados e o sangue inocente, inclusive de milhões de Judeus como ele, jorrou farto pelos campos e praças através dos séculos, como rios que correm para o mar.

Yeshua bar Yosef, filho de Miriam e Yosef, nascido um humilde Judeu em Belém da Judéia, não foi um deus, no entanto não foi um homem comum. De qualquer forma, não desceu dos mais altos páramos celestiais apenas para habitar entre nós e viver uma vida limitada e pequena. Tampouco veio ao mundo para salvar-nos de um suposto e duvidoso fogo do inferno, mas antes para trazer a toda a humanidade, independentemente da denominação religiosa, do credo, da origem e da raça de cada um, subsídios vigorosos e reais ao trabalho duro e incessante que nos cabe no burilamento interior e no engrandecimento de nós mesmos a fim de nos tornarmos dignos de um dia habitar a casa de HaShem, a Nova Jerusalém Celestial.

Por: LauLimor

One-State Solution in reality

2011-11-13T21:35:00.010-02:00

The "two-state" option is clearly the default option, for a variety of reasons: - The politicians have invested their efforts in promoting this solution for decades. - The power of the politicians on both sides of the conflict will be preserved only if there remain two separate countries. - There is no popular movement promoting a "one-State" solution. -Neither side seems to possess the necessary tolerance towards the other to make a "one-State" solution possible. I've read many articles and essays regarding a one-State solution for the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. They all seem to have one theme -by winning the battle for land the evil Zionists have reversed thevictory of the War of Independence. By making impossible there-partition of the country they have doomed the Jews of Israel tominority status in the re-born, unified State of Palestine.

I would like to present a somewhat different perspective on the matter.

Firstly, Ariel Sharon's "Disengagement" from the Gaza Strip has turnedthe tables on the opinion that the "settlers" cannot be removed fromthe West Bank. I can attest to the fact that the Settlers are beside themselves now that it is clear that the Likud party can no longer berelied upon to stand in the way of their expulsion. If 8500 settlerscan be expelled in a week chances are the 85 to 100 thousand who will not be annexed to Israel within the framework of the "Geneva Accords"can be expelled within the 30 months specified in the agreement.

Secondly, Yossi Beilin's "Geneva Accords" can easily follow theprecedent set by his "Oslo Accords" by being adopted by the Laborparty the moment they regain power. Thus the "Two State" solution isalive and well in my opinion.

In light of the fact that the options facing the residents of Israeland the Occupied Territories are becoming increasingly substantial andconcrete, the window of opportunity to choose between them is rapidly closing.

The "two-state" option is clearly the default option, for a variety of reasons:- The politicians have invested their efforts in promoting thissolution for decades.- The power of the politicians on both sides of the conflict will bepreserved only if there remain two separate countries.
- There is no popular movement promoting a "one-State" solution.
- Neither side seems to possess the necessary tolerance towards theother to make a "one-State" solution possible.

Though I expect a Labor government to adopt the Geneva Accords astheir policy, I doubt even they would accept it in its pure form. Iwould expect them to insist upon the following modifications:

1) Financial – the Geneva Accords in their present form wouldbankrupt Israel. Israel cannot agree to give a blank check to aninternational panel of "experts" to decide how many billions ofdollars Israel owes the Refugees in compensation. At best Israel wouldagree to finance the relocation of the Settlers (if the U.S. and/orother benefactors arrange long term loans to cover the cost). Assuggested in the Accords, the infrastructure Israel abandons in theterritories will have to serve as adequate compensation. After all, from Israel's point of view, had the UN partition plan been adopted bythe Arabs in 1948 no refugee problem would have arisen and the endresult would for the Palestinians would have been far superior to that which they would achieve with the acceptance of the "Geneva Accords" today.

2) Territorial – the principle presented in the Geneva Accords as tothe borders being the pre -1967 armistice lines, with a 1:1 land swapadjustment to accommodate the annexation of large numbers of settlers has merit. I suspect that Israel would find it in its interest thatareas in the Galilee adjacent to the border and populated largely by Israeli Arabs be included in the swap.

3) Refugees – Israel will undoubtedly reject the premise that it must accept refugees equal to the average accepted by third-party countries. At best Israel might agree to consider accepting a number of refugees on the basis of family reunification, where the refugees are relatives of Israeli Arabs.

4) Jerusalem – If Israel is to retain the Jewish Quarter of the Old City then it will prefer the Quarter to be isolated from the Arab Quarters and open to the Israeli sector outside the Old City, rather than open to the remainder of the Old City and isolated from the Israeli sector outside the Old City. This will also simplify security and sovereignty issues.

5) Security – Israel will continue to object to any foreign military presence in Palestine. Once Israel withdraws from the territories, an international military force can only provide the Palestinians with immunity from retaliation for attacks against Israel. Paradoxically, from Israel's perspective, their presence would encourage attacks against Israel rather than preventing them. I suspect that some of the security concessions Beilin negotiated into the Accords, such as the "Early Warning Stations", are superfluous and will be replaced by
airborne and satellite surveillance.

I doubt that even Labor will be able to conclude negotiations without most of these modifications being included in the final agreement. If accepted then the Palestinians will have achieved the following:
- End of the "occupation"
- Removal of all settlers and Israeli military forces from the occupied territories
- Creation of a sovereign Palestinian State, free of the corrupting influence of Zionist culture and society
- Initiation of the process of resettlement and compensation of the Refugees - Eventual construction of an express highway and probably rail line connecting the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- Opening of international airport and construction of commercial seaport

Israel will have its separation, even reducing the percentage of Arabs in its population. It will rely on the IDF to guarantee quiet from across the wall isolating it from the alien Arab society beyond.Politically and economically it should be significantly better off than it is today.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, will be on their own to meet the challenge of building the society and environment they aspire to. Unfortunately, confidence in their ability to build a successful and flourishing country is low. Experience has shown that the Palestinians tend to blame their failures on others rather than expending the effort required to succeed. I would wish them all possible success, though I fear the Palestinian State will be plagued by violence, hunger, poverty, overcrowding, and rampant political corruption; in other words a continuation of the current situation in the Gaza Strip since the "disengagement".

The second option is not currently a practical reality; however it could become one with effort on the part of its proponents. The realistic one-State option which could come about would differ substantially from that described in the articles I've read promoting a one-State solution. Their authors seem to think Israelis will raise their hands and say "Zionism is dead; long live the secular State of Palestine". I don't think so. The politics of democracy don't work that way. The process of change in a democracy requires the accumulation of political power and involves forming alliances and finding common interests. This will not happen overnight and these newly elected Arab parliamentary representatives will have to contend with seasoned opponents.

A likely scenario would take the following form:
- Israel officially annexes the occupied territories.
- Institutions and functionaries of the PA are integrated into parallel institutions of the Israeli government.
- The vast majority of Palestinians are registered as Israeli citizens, equal in rights and responsibilities to the existing Israeli Arab population.
- Following parliamentary elections the proportional representation of Arabs in the Knesset increases substantially.
- Due to this increased parliamentary clout legislation is passed accommodating the needs and desires of the Israeli Arab community, without harming the interests of the Israeli Jewish community.

What would not occur, at least not within the first few decades following annexation, is the formation of an Arab dominated parliamentary coalition, which converts the Jewish State of Israel into the "bi-national" State of Palestine. Be assured that initially the Arab representation in the Knesset will be in the minority, and the Jewish majority will do all in its power to maintain their majority. To do this you can be certain that they will not allow the law-of-return for Jews to be repealed or for a similar law to be enacted for Arabs. If anything they will attempt to enact immigration laws which maintain a balance between Arab and Jewish immigration, in order to sustain the Jewish parliamentary majority in the Jewish State.

This may seem racist however I have yet to find an example where the politicians in a democracy commit political suicide by assisting a minority to overpower them politically. Short of achieving the power to dominate the Jewish population however, the Arab community will have sufficient political power to achieve social and economic parity with the Jews, making them the most prosperous Arabic community in the region.

In time the interaction between the two communities will have evolved into a relationship of mutual benefit and respect; where equal opportunities and prosperity will be combined with the ability to live according to the culture and lifestyle each individual desires.

These are the two options on the table as far as I can see, and one of the two will likely become a reality within the next few years. I can guarantee a tremendous number of Rightist Zionists who would prefer the one-State option over relinquishing their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria; as well as Orthodox Jews who consider Judea and Samaria the heartland of biblical Israel, and cynics who expect Katyusha rockets to rain upon Israel as soon as Palestine becomes a State. Perhaps there are those from the Peace movements who also believe that unification is morally superior to separation.

The key question however is, given a true understanding of their choices, are there any Palestinian Arabs who would prefer the one-State option? Only they can cause it to come about – either through substantial grass-roots support, or by allowing negotiations over the Geneva Accords to fail, thereby causing the Israeli Right to seize power and annex the territories unilaterally.

I've read over and over how Israeli Arabs are second class citizens.This has always seemed strange to me for several reasons. Firstly, every time I hear of a legal case where Arab Israelis sue for equal treatment the courts find in their favor. Secondly, far from the pitiful image second class status evokes, most Israeli Arab neighborhoods and villages I've seen have been filled with large, lavishly decorated homes. And lastly, I have been led to believe Israeli Arabs treasure their citizenship and would object strenuously to its revocation. If this is true perhaps it would be wise to ask them what they find so agreeable about being second class Israeli citizens. In fact it would be likely that Israeli Arabs faced with possible revocation of their Israeli citizenship as part of the Geneva deal would also support the one-State option (the Geneva Accords in its original form includes the revocation of the Israeli citizenship of Arabs living in East Jerusalem).

Personally, I've always been a proponent of co-existence. In my view the "leftists" who criticize settlers as undemocratic, are the ones who cannot abide the idea of living alongside Arabs. I harbor no hatred towards anyone. I do have difficulty showing tolerance toward those who have no tolerance towards me, whether these individuals are those Arabs who want to shoot me, blow me up or merely chase me away; or Jews who have difficulty with the fact that I am religious or that I see nothing wrong with a Jew living in an area which, 38 years ago, was occupied by Jordan for 19 years. Yet if the decision is made that I will have to abandon the home I spent the last 15 years building with my own hands, and the community I have become an integral member of, then I will adapt, with no regrets, to my new home. It's up to you now. Choose well, for both our sakes.

By C. Handler (Samaria)
handlevy [at] gmail.com

Netanyahu and the one-state solution

2011-11-13T21:22:00.002-02:00

Israel's unwillingness to compromise on key issues might annul a two-state solution, making only power-sharing viable.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently addressed US legislators. He has told members of Congress that he supports a two-state solution, but his support is predicated on four negative principles: no to Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 borders; no to the division of Jerusalem; no to the right of return for Palestinian refugees; and no to a Palestinian military presence in the new state.

The problem with Netanyahu's approach is not so much that it is informed by a rejectionist worldview. The problem is not even Netanyahu's distorted conception of Palestine's future sovereignty, which Meron Benvenisti aptly described as "scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world, and limited to the height of its residential buildings and the depth of its graves. The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control..."

Rather, the real problem is that Netanyahu's outlook is totally detached from current political developments, particularly the changing power relations both in the Middle East and around the world. Indeed, his approach is totally anachronistic.

Netanyahu's not-so-implicit threat that Israel will continue its colonial project if the Palestinians do not accept some kind of "Bantustan solution" no longer carries any weight. The two peoples have already passed this juncture.

The Palestinians have clearly declared that they will not bow down to such intimidations, and it is now clear that the conflict has reached an entirely new intersection.

At this new intersection, there are two signs. The first points towards the west and reads "viable and just two-state solution", while the second one points eastward and reads "power sharing".

The first sign is informed by years of political negotiations (from the Madrid conference in 1991, through Oslo, Camp David, Taba, and Annapolis) alongside the publication of different initiatives (from the Geneva Initiative and the Saudi Plan to the Nussaiba and Ayalon Plan), all of which have clarified what it would take to reach a peace settlement based on the two-state solution. It entails three central components:

1. Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 border, with possible one-for-one land swaps so that ultimately the total amount of land that was occupied will be returned.

2. Jerusalem's division according to the 1967 borders, with certain land swaps to guarantee that each side has control over its own religious sites and large neighborhoods. Both these clauses entail the dismantlement of Israeli settlements and the return of the Jewish settlers to Israel.

3. The acknowledgement of the right of return of all Palestinians, but with the following stipulation: while all Palestinians will be able to return to the fledgling Palestinian state, only a limited number agreed upon by the two sides will be allowed to return to Israel; those who cannot exercise this right or, alternatively, choose not to, will receive full compensation.

Israel's continued unwillingness to fully support these three components is rapidly leading to the annulment of the two-state option and, as a result, is leaving open only one possible future direction: power sharing.

The notion of power sharing would entail the preservation of the existing borders, from the Jordan valley to the Mediterranean Sea, and an agreed upon form of a power sharing government led by Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and based on the liberal democracy model of the separation of powers. It also entails a parity of esteem - namely, the idea that each side respects the other side's identity and ethos, including language, culture and religion. This, to put it simply, is the bi-national one-state solution.

Many Palestinians have come to realize that even though they are currently under occupation; Israel's rejectionist stance will unwittingly lead to the bi-national solution. And while Netanyahu is still miles behind the current juncture, it is high time for a Jewish Israeli and Jewish American Awakening, one that will force their respective leaders to support a viable democratic future for the Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. One that will bring an end to the violent conflict.

A matança dos inocentes

2011-08-28T19:38:00.009-03:00

Morte de crianças assinala a
escalada do conflito entre
israelenses e palestinos


Desespero: funeral de Iman Hijo, bebê palestino de 4 meses, vítima de um morteiro israelense que caiu em sua casa	Enterro dos dois garotos judeus: crianças mortas tornam-se ícones para ambos os lados

O pesadelo do conflito olho no olho entre palestinos e israelenses pôde ser medido a cada dia pelas crianças engolidas no turbilhão de violência. Numa das últimas incursões israelenses em Gaza, Iman Hijo, um bebê de 4 meses, morreu após um morteiro israelense atingir sua casa, em Gaza. Dos 22 feridos no ataque, incluindo a mãe e a avó de Hijo, outros dez eram crianças. No dia seguinte, dois garotos judeus, Kobi Mendel e Yosef Ishran, ambos de 14 anos, foram apedrejados e esfaqueados nos arredores de um assentamento na Cisjordânia. O crânio deles foi esmagado e os corpos, encontrados numa gruta na manhã seguinte, desfigurados. Menos de 24 horas depois, outro bebê palestino, de 3 meses, foi ferido por estilhaços de uma bomba israelense na fronteira de Gaza com o Egito. Quase um quarto das mais de 450 mortes nos sete meses da última Intifada, o levante palestino, envolve menores de 18 anos.

Reema Ahmed, 3 meses, com a mãe: sorte ao sobreviver à explosão de uma bomba

O modo como essas crianças perdem a vida a cada confronto é coerente com a escalada do conflito. As crianças já não são apenas atingidas por balas de borracha no tumulto dos protestos palestinos ou vítimas de terroristas suicidas em Israel. Morrem no meio de ataques com armamento pesado, como ocorreu com os bebês palestinos, ou massacrados com fria determinação por terroristas, como se deu com os meninos israelenses. Dos dois lados, as crianças mortas são usadas como símbolo de luta, e a sede de vingança de seus conterrâneos gera ainda mais violência. Foi o que aconteceu com Mohammed Jamal Aldura, menino de 12 anos morto pelos israelenses diante das câmaras de televisão, e com a garotinha Shalhevet Pass, de 10 meses, alvejada na cabeça por um franco-atirador palestino.
Muitas famílias tentam fugir dessa violência se mudando para bem longe das zonas de risco. Com a generalização do conflito, contudo, não há para onde correr. Os que ficam na linha de tiro – geralmente em áreas próximas a assentamentos judeus nos territórios árabes ocupados desde a guerra de 1967 – permanecem vulneráveis aos ataques de ambos os lados. Como a maioria dos bombardeios e das trocas de tiro ocorre à noite, a população acorda de madrugada com o estardalhaço de helicópteros e foguetes explodindo no quintal. Com isso, uma geração de crianças cresce apavorada e sem amparo emocional. "O que estamos vendo aqui são crianças sem esperança no futuro", diz Eyad el-Sarraj, diretor do Programa de Saúde Mental de Gaza. Ele calcula que mais de 100.000 pessoas (10% da população total de Gaza) passaram por algum tipo de tratamento mental no instituto coordenado por ele. Quase metade da população de Gaza tem menos de 14 anos e inventa maneiras mirabolantes para conviver com a violência. Sarraj conta que um dos reflexos mais evidentes da guerra é um dos passatempos preferidos da molecada: brincar de árabes e judeus que se matam, uma versão bélica do inocente pega-pega. "A auto-estima dos palestinos está tão baixa que os garotos sempre preferem ser o judeu, mais poderoso."


*Yosef Ishran (à esq.)* e o amigo Kobi Mendel (à dir.): morte bárbara e comoção em Israel**

Enquanto as bombas caem, as duas figuras capazes de colocar fim à matança vivem um impasse. É bem possível que os líderes palestinos já não tenham condições de controlar a infinidade de grupos paramilitares ou civis, armados com todo tipo de arma, do fuzil ao carro-bomba, que atacam os israelenses para vingar seus mortos e externar sua insatisfação com a falta de governo. Nestes últimos tempos, também secaram os cofres da Autoridade Palestina e do governo autônomo de Gaza – e, conseqüentemente, a capacidade de dar empregos. Para piorar, eram os judeus do outro lado da fronteira que empregavam boa parte dos árabes. Com as fronteiras fechadas pelos conflitos e agora com o embargo a Gaza e com o muro de separação ao redor da Cisjordânia, o desemprego disparou, aumentando a insatisfação popular. A situação agrava-se com a decisão dos governos israelenses de não deixar ataque sem resposta e só voltar à mesa de negociações se os palestinos depuserem as armas e abdicarem de suas exigências prévias.
O Exército israelense considera como forças inimigas não apenas o Hamas que domina Gaza, mas também o Fatah, a organização dirigida pelo líder palestino. Na prática, isso significa sinal verde para que os israelenses ataquem áreas sob jurisdição palestina e prédios da Autoridade Palestina, o que era impensável há tempos atrás. A estratégia, de ambos os lados, é a guerra de desgaste. Israel quer fazer com que a reação custe caro aos palestinos. Já os árabes querem tornar insustentável a presença dos judeus nos territórios ocupados. Na lógica palestina, quanto mais israelenses forem assassinados nesses assentamentos, pior fica a posição de do governo israelense. Nessa queda-de-braço, a única certeza é que mais crianças morrerão no fogo cruzado.

Por: Cristiano Dias

Is still possible a Two-State solution?

2011-08-14T21:26:00.002-03:00

Hello, I'm Israeli-Palestinian

2011-07-24T22:29:00.018-03:00

Ali Jarbawi has long seen the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, as the best solution to the Middle East conflict. But the professor of political science from Bir Zeit university in the West Bank is not sure any more.

Jarbawi believes the two-state solution is on the verge of extinction, leaving Israelis and Palestinians facing a new reality – the prospect of life in a single binational state.

Jewish settlements, built in the West Bank, have entangled the people, making a solution based on two states look increasingly unlikely. Now, says Jarbawi, the separation barrier Israel is building deep inside the West Bank and which Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu wants to turn into a boundary between Israelis and Palestinians is final evidence that Israel is not interested in allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

"Most Palestinians prefer the idea of separation because they want their own state," Jarbawi told IPS. "But Nethanyahu's idea of a two-state solution is to squeeze us into cantons in the West Bank. Given the choice between cantonisation and a one-state solution, Palestinians will go for the latter. We are at the edge of the two-state solution closing down."

The apparent collapse of yet another U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East, the seemingly unending Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting, and the approach of demographic parity between Jews and Arabs living in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea have all raised questions about the future and longevity of the two-state solution. These questions are being raised among Palestinians and Israelis, and on the pages of the world's leading newspapers and journals.

Jarbawi is not the only Palestinian warning about the imminent death of the two-state solution, which has long been supported by the international community as the preferred model for ending the conflict. Palestinian Prime Minister cautioned recently that if Nethanyahu took unilateral steps that included absorbing large chunks of the West Bank into Israel, the Palestinians would abandon their demand for their own, separate state and call for a single state with Israelis.

Pointing to Israel's settlement policy and the West Bank separation barrier, Palestinian Authority Chairman has warned that "time is running out for the two-state solution."

Some in Israel have dismissed these comments as a tactical ploy by Palestinian leaders to scare Israeli Jews. The threat: if Israelis do not agree to the creation of a Palestinian state, then higher Palestinian birth rates will ensure that in a decade Jews will be a minority in the area west of the Jordan River. There are currently 5.2 million Jews living in Israel, and 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, and a further 1.2 million Arabs who are citizens in Israel.

The Israeli left has long warned of what it calls the "demographic threat," arguing that if settlement construction does not cease and Israel fails to relinquish its control over the West Bank, it will ultimately slide into an apartheid-like reality.

Israel, they contend, might survive for some time, but it will cease to be a democracy, and like South Africa will become increasingly isolated and will ultimately crumble. The death of the two-state solution, therefore, effectively means the death of the Jewish state.

Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo peace accords – an unofficial peace plan unveiled last year that is based on the idea of two states – has warned that his latest plan is "perhaps the last chance for a fair division of the land between Jews and Palestinians before the creation of a Palestinian majority west of Jordan that will effectively make the country binational."

But this thinking has now also begun to penetrate right-wing ranks in Israel. Ehud Olmert of Kadima party said in an interview that "more and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution."

Olmert said this meant a change from a struggle against occupation as they see it to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. "That is of course a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one," he said. "For us it would mean the end of the Jewish state."

Some on the far right in Israel propose transferring Palestinians to Jordan, but they are a small minority. Jewish settler leaders, not unaware of demographics, have been suggesting various solutions, including giving Palestinians voting rights in Jordan.

That is a non-starter, given Palestinian demands for self-determination, Jordan's fear that it could become a Palestinian state – 60 percent of Jordanians are Palestinian – and the international community's backing for an independent Palestinian state.

Some commentators have suggested that the demographic fear is now driving Sharon's latest plan announced last week to unilaterally dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

In making his decision, Nethanyahu might have read a recent poll that indicated Israeli Jews' fear of a binational scenario. The survey conducted at Tel Aviv University found that 67 percent of respondents feared a binational reality. Seventy-eight percent of Jews said they favoured a two-state solution; only 6 percent said they support a binational state.

Not surprisingly, support for a binational state among Palestinians is higher, at around 30 percent. With demography on their side – Palestinian birth rates are higher than Jewish ones – they would ultimately become a majority in a single state.

Arafat was also on record saying that "the womb of the Arab woman is my best weapon." Some Israelis point to this as proof that he had never been committed to the idea of two states.

Some Palestinian intellectuals and Israelis on the far left actually espouse a one-state solution, arguing it is preferable to separation. With the two peoples merged into a single entity, they contend, many of the vexing problems that now make the conflict seemingly insoluble would melt away. There would be no reason to argue over delineation of borders, or over control of Jerusalem, and it would not even be necessary to remove settlements.

This is not Ali Jerbawi's preferred route to statehood and to solving the conflict. Since Israelis would not agree to a single state, he says. It would mean an "apartheid-like struggle" in which Palestinians substitute their demand for national self-determination with a demand for one-person-one-vote in a single state. "This type of struggle will take many years," he says. "We want to end Palestinian suffering."

But in the absence of Israeli agreement to the creation of a viable Palestinian state – in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank – he is prepared to go the one-state route. "If that happens, then we will say to the Israelis, 'We will meet you in 10 to 15 years time with the demand for one-person-one vote in a single state'."

By Peter Hirschberg

Will the One-State Solution become the Only Solution?

2011-07-24T20:13:00.004-03:00

Tony Judt’s deliberately provocative 2003 New York Review of Books essay, “Israel: the Alternative,” is a lesson in the limits of American Jewry’s allowable discourse when it comes to Israel. Writing explicitly in the tradition of thought experiment, rather than policy proposal, about what he called an “alternative future,” Judt suggests that Jews and Arabs alike might be better off as citizens of a secular democratic state that encompassed both Israel and Palestine, in which all citizens had equal rights regardless of religion or national origin. For this, as his editor, Robert Silvers, recalled at a Paris conference in June, dedicated to Judt’s memory, Judt “was denounced as a traitor by the powers of the American Jewish establishment” and barred from publication by places like The New Republic.

The great and terrible irony of Judt’s suggestion is that while it was, in many respects, utopian — bi-nationalism does not work well in promising situations, much less between warring tribes with unequal power — the only alternative to it that can save the State of Israel from devolving into a form of apartheid is being purposely closed off by Israel’s current leadership.

While it is true that history offered no alternative to statehood in 1948 — there was no Arab equivalent to the brave and brilliant (albeit naive) “Ihud Group,” of the likes of Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt, willing to embrace bi-nationalism — neither side ever really adapted well to the new situation resulting from the creation of the State of Israel. For Palestinians who were forced from their homes by Israeli soldiers, or instructed to leave by their own leaders in anticipation of a quick return, the difficulty of accepting their dispossession from their ancestral homes is certainly understandable. What is required on their part is, simply, recognition of a painful reality. Those olive groves, those villages, those stone huts are gone forever and have been replaced by schools, factories, apartment complexes and concert halls.

Related

For the Jews, however, the situation is more complicated. Until statehood became a reality, Zionism was never required to define its goals. Was it a national liberation movement for the Jewish people, allowing them to create a society where they could be free of persecution and in control of their own destiny in their biblical homeland? Or was it a movement to liberate — or, more accurately, conquer — the land itself, regardless of the cost not only to its previous inhabitants, but also to all the other values that modern Jews hold dear, including, most particularly, democracy and human and civil rights?

The refusal of the Palestinian leadership to get serious about a negotiated end to the conflict allowed these two versions of Zionism to co-exist without that conflict. But those days are over, and the tragedy of recent history is the fact that just as a majority of Palestinians have finally come to recognize that they must accept the inevitable and bargain from their position of relative weakness, the ascendant Zionist right has no interest whatsoever in peace, whatever the costs to Israel or to world Jewry, if it means parting with even an acre of “holy” land.

The Paris panel featured Sari Nusseibeh, the soft-spoken but quietly heroic Palestinian philosopher and president of East Jerusalem’s Al-Quds University. Nusseibeh saw Judt’s article as relevant, if only because it was becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how to implement a two-state solution given the aggressive land grabs by the Israel government in the West Bank, with its 300,000 settlers, and East Jerusalem, with its 200,000 more. The irony, as his fellow panelist, distinguished Israeli historian and peace activist Zeev Sternhell, wryly noted at about 11:45 a.m., was that if all that was necessary were to work out the details of the end of the occupation and the creation of two states based on the finality of the 1947 borders — that is, of the Zionism that liberates people rather than real estate —“Sari and I could conclude a peace agreement before lunch.”

And yes, while the complications arising from the power and influence of Hamas are real and worrisome, the fact is that recent revelations from documents known as the “Palestine Papers” reveal a remarkable willingness of the Palestinian leadership to compromise on fundamental questions once considered unthinkable. Three years ago, former Israeli diplomat and political philosopher Shlomo Avineri told me that one reason he was pessimistic about peace was the fact that for all the secret meetings and contacts between the two sides, “only one Palestinian” he knew had ever been willing to say aloud what everyone knows to be true: that for peace to come about, the Palestinians must accept a “token” right of return rather than the real thing. That one Palestinian was Nusseibeh.

I asked Nusseibeh over dinner how he had managed to stay alive and healthy while saying the unsayable in a society where the frequent penalty is not the petulance of Abraham Foxman and Marty Peretz, but a bullet to the brain. He told me that he had been asked to account for his words inside a refugee camp, where, though he understood that he might be putting his life on the line, he felt he had no choice lest he live a life of fear and shame. At the meeting, the assembled young militants told him that while they were furious for what he said, and while they, personally, did not share his views, they admired his courage “in saying aloud what we know our leaders say every day in private.”

Now that this Palestinian willingness to compromise on so fundamental a goal has been made public — and nobody has been shot — Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and millions of right-wing Zionists are demonstrating that they never really had any interest in compromise in the first place. It’s the land they want, pure and simple, democracy and human rights be dammed. And for that reason, given current trends, Tony Judt’s 2003 article now stands less as a “utopian” alternative future for pro-Zionist Jews worldwide than as the warning of the potentially dystopian one in a not-so-distant horizon.

By Eric Alterman – A distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College and also writes a column for The Nation.

The Case for bi-nationalism

2011-07-24T00:14:00.006-03:00

Why one state — liberal and constitutionalist — may be the key to peace in the Middle East

Gradually, some might say predictably, our attention is being drawn back to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This renewed focus is understandable. In response to the tragic events of September 11, the United States has tried to build and sustain a broad anti-terrorism coalition, and Israel's status is problematic for many of the countries in the coalition. Moreover, the Bush administration has made a series of statements since September 11 indicating a plan in the works for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. While the details of the plan have not been revealed, and Palestinians are skeptical, the idea of an independent Palestinian state—what is commonly referred to as the two-state solution—seems to be back, at least for now.

And yet for many Palestinians, myself included, the two-state solution has already lost a great deal of its historic appeal. The political events and institutions subsequent to the Oslo Accords of 1993—all the painful renegotiation and implementation leading to the second intifada—are to my mind responsible for the shifting enthusiasm. The period since Oslo has revealed the "unrepresentativeness" of the Palestinian Authority; it has not generated meaningful territorial gains; and it has not resulted in any progress on the crucial question of the return of refugees. Moreover, developments since Oslo have raised serious questions about the attractions of a separate state as a vehicle for expressing Palestinian aspirations and advancing Palestinian interests. Thus we have seen the development of social and economic "structural dependency" between Israel and the Palestinian regions; the emergence of "overlapping domains of national consciousness" due to factors such as daily labor movement to and from Israel; and the emergence of a new Palestinian national elite that shares economic interests with the Israeli state apparatus.

All of this—both the political dead-ends of the Oslo process as well as greater economic integration and associated changes in consciousness—makes it worth our while, it seems to me, to reconsider the idea of bi-nationalism in Palestine. Bi-nationalism in this context expresses the idea that the land of Mandate Palestine should be transformed into a secular state—a constitutional-liberal state, with Arabs and Jews as its national citizens. Its famous maxim is "One Land for Two Peoples" and its most famous proponents are the Palestinian American writer Edward Said and Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian-Israeli member of the Israeli Knesset. The advocates of bi-nationalism typically distinguish it from the more familiar two-state solution, according to which two states, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, are imagined to coexist next to each other. It is also, of course, sharply distinguished from the current situation, in which a recognizable Israeli state coexists with disparate, partially autonomous, Palestinian areas within the West Bank and Gaza strip, while the remainder of the latter areas remains under the control of the Israeli army, whether its inhabitants are Palestinians, or Jews living in the largely isolated colonies commonly known as settlements.

With the failure of Oslo, and in the face of the post-September 11 conflict, bi-nationalism has garnered increasing support among Palestinians, but that increase thus far has been marginal. In a recent discussion of bi-nationalism, Salim Tamari argues that bi-nationalism has failed to attract broad Palestinian support because, as a political posture, it does not offer a "programmatic position but [is] simply the expression of a desired outcome": an ideal, not a plan. In addition, he argues that proponents of bi-nationalism do not address the problem of overcoming institutionalized Zionism, nor, on the other side, the difficulty of overcoming the general Palestinian resistance to being incorporated in a Europeanized and industrialized society. Moreover Tamari says, the bi-nationalist alternative involves giving up the struggle for military withdrawal from the occupied territories and the dismantling of colonial settlements. Even an independent Palestinian state of limited scope, Tamari says, has a better chance of launching these struggles through continual efforts to consolidate its territory and future re-negotiations of agreements that had been signed. And lastly, he says, bi-nationalism would weaken the bonds and trappings of Palestinian identity and force Palestinians to reconsider their Arab ties.

These criticisms of bi-nationalism all have some force. But despite the current limits on support for bi-nationalism — not only on the Palestinian side, but even more so on the Israeli side — I propose that we take it up seriously as a political project. While it now has the status of a "utopian" political proposal, talking about bi-nationalism in practical terms may force people to confront more seriously the limits of alternative approaches, and their own denial about those limits. Everyone agrees that circumstances are now disastrous. Moreover, there is considerable pressure to find a solution to the conflict, and much disquiet, not all of it publicly expressed, about the two-state solution. If bi-nationalism is a desirable outcome — as even its critics sometimes acknowledge — then it may have some chance of crystallizing opinion and emerging as a serious alternative.

Colonialism

Objections to bi-nationalism reflect an attachment to a particular understanding of de-colonization and colonial struggle. But this trajectory is neither necessary nor even, in the case of the Palestinians, strategically wise.

The standard model of de-colonization reflects the anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century that culminated in the formal independence of many British and French colonies such as India, Egypt, and Algeria. The nationalist elites of the colony wrest a set of formal, governmental powers from the elites of the colonizer power, and exercise those powers over a formally delineated territory (the ex-colony). This shift in the locus of political authority typically follows a period of mass resistance to colonialism. The new territory then becomes the depository of the national identity of the newly de-colonized people, who are now "subject" to the authority of the new national elites (whose newly acquired formal powers are defined by international law).

On a substantive level, de-colonization is understood as a symbolic and material shift of colonized resources from the colonizers to the colonized. The new national elites of the ex-colony undertake to salvage what the anti-colonial movement had constructed as the "culture" of the colonized from the ravages of the colonizers, and to release the economic wealth of the ex-colony from the colonial grip and transfer it to its true owners, the citizens of the new nation-state. This usually takes place through pursuit of combined strategies of economic growth and redistribution by the new elites, with the post-colonial state playing a large role — as in Egypt and India — in developing and implementing these strategies.

While the transfer of powers to the new nationalist elites has sometimes created a margin of improvement in the lives of the citizens of the new nation-state (in income, health, and education), these improvements have historically proven to be neither lasting nor as substantial as one might have hoped. Some analysts argue that the ability of the new elites to create a more dignified life for their citizens was seriously curtailed by the continuing intervention in these territories by the imperial powers of the day: that de-colonization simply meant a shift from official political subordination to unofficial subordination to an outside power (neo-colonialism). Moreover, nationalist elites often proved to be either unwilling or unable or simply too corrupt to pursue a serious project of development and modernization in these new states. Such projects often required the ability to resist or circumvent the demands and needs of the imperial centers (imposed in the form of international trade treaties, military deployments, oil interests, and so on). But the skill and resolve required for such maneuvering have often been lacking.

These limitations by themselves do not condemn the nationalist project. For Palestinians to have a state — to enjoy the trappings of national independence over a formally delineated territory (that occupied by Israel in 1967) with East Jerusalem as their capital — would undoubtedly be a substantial achievement. They would have the experience of being equal in their national destiny (and consequently humanity) to that of other previously colonized people: no trifling matter. And they would also conceivably see the same margin of improvement in their circumstances—greater income, improved health, better education and housing. Again nothing that should be dismissed too lightly.

But for Palestinians, the national solution now seems to have reached a dead end. Oslo proved the nationalist goal unattainable. The Oslo accords of 1993 were signed by the PLO and Israel, and were designed to be implemented over time. The terms of the accords suggested a progressive liberation of Palestinians from Israeli colonial control through a piecemeal withdrawal of the Israeli army from the areas occupied by Israel in 1967. Negotiation over issues deemed too controversial, such as the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to return home (from exile in Lebanon, for example), were deferred to a future time.

The period since Oslo has repeatedly revealed that the Israeli political and military class has no serious intention of conceding to their Palestinian counterparts any set of powers, nor any stretch of a decently contiguous territory that would allow that nationalist project to succeed, even on a modest scale. The eruption of the second intifada has simply, to my mind, called the bluff of the Israelis. It has both revealed and put an end to the Israeli elites' strategy in Oslo of what I would call neo-dominance — from direct military occupation and economic hegemony before Oslo, to partial withdrawal from population centers and economic siege after Oslo. The withdrawal would never be more than partial. What distinguishes the Israeli response to the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle at this particular historical juncture from its French or British historic colonial equivalent is its unwillingness to permit a historic shift to neo-colonialism to occur, via the route of Palestinian formal national independence. Similarities in the way Likud and Labor conducted themselves in the Oslo negotiations and subsequent discussions about implementation show that it would be a mistake to attribute this policy to one party (Likud) rather the other (Labor). Indeed, the political migration to the right of many members of the Israeli peace movement as the second intifada broke out, and the election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister, indicate the breadth of opposition to Palestinian independence outside the political class. Israel has yet to create its post-colonizer liberal elite.

So even if the two-state strategy succeeded, its payoff would be limited. Moreover, that strategy no longer shows much promise. But is bi-nationalism a more promising alternative given the contemporary structure of the Israeli military and political class?

Why a bi-national state?

Endorsing bi-nationalism would mean a fundamental shift in the Palestinian political agenda. Rather than basing their claims on a right to national self-determination and appealing to international law to arbitrate their relationship with the Israelis, Palestinians would appeal to constitutional liberalism with its conception of individuals — whatever their race, religion, or ethnicity — as equal, rights-bearing members of a single political society. Rather than attaching their claims to a contiguous territory — as national subjects, over which their own elites could exercise authority as national elites — Palestinians would attach their claims to Israeli resources as national citizens of the state of Israel (as a historically persecuted minority).

Several considerations suggest that the shift to bi-nationalism holds greater promise for Palestinians than an independent state:

Generals or Judges?

A change in Palestinian political discourse would carry with it a fundamental shift in the institutional focus of Palestinian politics. When Palestinians try to establish their existence as independent national subjects of an independent state, Israeli military generals emerge as the primary players in the negotiations. If they set out to negotiate their lives within the state of Israel as national citizens, Israeli judges would play the primary role. Palestinians would present their legal claims (constitutional rights) before a judicial forum. Judges are better than generals for Palestinians, for several reasons.

The Israeli military establishment is very effective in mobilizing Israelis around exaggerated concerns about state security. The appetite of Israel's security interests has proven to be insatiable. Israeli demands for crippling security arrangements and land (and water) concessions would likely render a so-called independent Palestinian state neither independent nor truly Palestinian.

Moreover, in the two-state world, Israeli generals would be governed in their bargaining with the Palestinians by "the rules of war" (informed by the background fact of Israel's military superiority). Such rules would allow Israel to utilize its superior power to extract concessions from the Palestinians in a way that the international community would find acceptable and typical of the relationship between two states at war, as distinct from two communities in conflict within a single state.

In contrast, Israeli judges — while historically preoccupied with balancing liberalism (committed to equality) with Zionism (a nationalist movement the historic expression of which has often been racist/anti-Arab²) — are constrained by Israel's international reputation as the only "democracy" in the Middle East. Israeli elite judges tend to look to their Western, primarily American, counterparts as models, and have become concerned with the latter's judgment of their performance. For example, in the Qa'dan case, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that regulations and laws that allowed only Jews to live in land administered by the Jewish National Fund were discriminatory. Qa'dan himself was a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was prohibited from leasing a house in such an area; the bi-nationalist Palestinian legal posture would be modeled on the position of Palestinian Israeli citizens, who insist that liberalism trump Zionism. Indeed, Palestinian Israelis have made some headway in overturning the Israeli judicial rationalization that allowed them to be treated as extra-state citizens—an argument based, as ever, on state security.

In a nutshell, bi-nationalism would be better for Palestinians, because dealing with Barak the judge (head of the Israeli Supreme Court) is better than dealing with Barak the Army General/Prime Minister. A diffuse liberalism exercises some constraint on the former and none on the latter. And while some constraint is not enough, it is better than no constraint at all.

Material Gains

Palestinians would be far better off economically, in my view, if they attached their legal claims directly to the resources of the state of Israel as national budget (to be distributed, after a struggle, equally and justly among its national subjects, Jews and non-Jews alike) — rather than hoping to benefit from the pursuit of national economic development within the boundaries of a nominally independent Palestinian state.

Israel is, after all, a very wealthy country with a gross national product close to a post-industrial European state. For Palestinians to be partial beneficiaries of these resources — even with the disadvantage of being historically disenfranchised and territorially dispossessed within Israel —would likely be materially better than to be citizens of a poor and thirsty state, bound in economically dependent and hostile relations with a very powerful neighbor. The pursuit by many Palestinian Jerusalemites of an Israeli identity that would allow them access to the resources of a rich welfare state is a case in point. In other words, in the new dispensation, Palestinians would be like immigrants to a wealthy metropolis rather than nationals of a poor third-world country. Not that I idealize the status of immigrants. I am perfectly aware that "racism" is the organizing principle of the life of the dark immigrant to the metropolitan center (as is the case now with Palestinian Israelis). Still, life for the average Palestinian stands to improve.

Matters look similar when we shift attention from distribution to growth. The pursuit of economic growth by a newly independent Palestinian state would be seriously curtailed by the neoliberal development projects of the World Bank and the IMF, not to mention the International trade treaties, all of which would eventually be imposed on the new state. Economic growth in the post-colonial context often, though not always, involves a significant role for the state. But the professional representatives of neo-liberalism and international trade are usually antagonistic to substantial state involvement in regulating and protecting the economy. In contrast, Israel already has in place a developed and sufficiently regulated economy (admittedly in the process of being deregulated) that would prove to be of great benefit to the national newcomers, the Palestinians.

An independent state would also be less advantageous when it comes to labor market regulation. A Palestinian state would most likely promote employment for Palestinian citizens by continuing to export a mass of cheap and unprotected labor for the Israeli economy; as citizens of an independent Palestinian state, Palestinian workers would continue to earn their income by crossing the border. Indeed, at the moment, the interests of Israeli military generals in setting up checkpoints and sieges converge with the interests of Israeli employers who benefit from cheap and unprotected Palestinian labor. The military blockades create borders, and borders make labor cheap. This labor pool is now — and under a two-state solution would remain — outside the scope of Israeli labor regulation because of its foreign status. It seems unlikely that the Palestinian elite of a new state would be able to extract a protective regulatory regime for these workers in Israel: they would be too afraid of losing the "leverage" that comes from supplying cheap labor.

Bi-nationalism, in contrast, would offer the possibility of labor alliances inside of Israel with other groups of unprotected workers and would allow Palestinians to acquire in time the same benefits and protections as Israel's current domestic labor force. Instead of having Palestinian ministers negotiate trade deals and protective arrangements (from a position of weakness) across national borders, Palestinian political representatives, in shifting political alliances, would press for labor market regulations, and for new programs of education and training to upgrade the skills of Palestinian workers.

Finally, a bi-national state would foster alliances between Palestinians currently under occupation and Palestinian Israelis to combat discriminatory Israeli land and housing policies. The Israeli state's policies of land expropriation, control of water resources, and distribution of land and housing benefits within its boundaries (undefined as they are) strikingly correspond to those pursued in its capacity as an occupying force in the West Bank and Gaza. The latter is a simple continuation of the former, though in Israel proper there are greater efforts to rationalize land, water, and housing polices through legislation. Such policies have consistently favored Ashkenazi Jews at the primary expense of Palestinians (who have historically owned much of the land and the water) and Mizrahi Jews (who have historically received a smaller share of the Jewish Israeli pie). A civil rights agenda within a bi-national state would condemn Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as forms of discrimination in the distribution of land and water resources, rather than as invasions of national territory. Reconfiguring the complex schemes of benefit distribution that these settlements are based on (in terms of the ethnicity of the users, the nature of land and water use, transportation benefits, access to benefits of Israeli welfare state, etc.) to remedy Palestinian historic dispossession is conceivable through a discourse of civil rights. Obvious allies in this movement would be Mizrahi Jews.

American Appeal

Bi-nationalism is more promising for Palestinians because the mobilizing agenda for political activism would appeal to "civil rights" rather than the current "anti-colonial struggle to achieve national independence." And that appeal would, I expect, be met with greater sympathy and support in the United States.

The United States greatly matters in this Israel-Palestine context not only because it is the world's only superpower, but also because it has been so receptive to Zionist mobilization in support of Israel at all societal levels: the elite (political and economic class), the intelligentsia and mass culture. (The official two billion dollars of annual aid is only part of a larger package — financial, military and otherwise — that Israel receives from the U.S. on a regular basis). Indeed, Israel-identified American Jews are established members of the American elite and intelligentsia.

The mobilizing agenda of "civil rights" for Palestinians as nationals of Israel would have greater resonance in the United States than an agenda of "national independence," in part because Americans in general lack a firm grip on such concepts as "colonialism" and "anti-colonial struggle." Not possessing a national consciousness as a colonial power (in contrast to the contemporary British and French), while at the same time thinking of their nation as an ex-colony (of Britain) that has done very well despite having been a colony, most Americans don't quite grasp the racialized and dehumanizing bond between colonizer and colonized. In particular, they find it hard to understand the bloodiness of anti-colonial resistance. I spend a lot of classroom time explaining to my American students that colonialism is bad, and that colonial powers fight to keep their colonies.

But most Americans do understand well the idea of a civil rights struggle. One of the more important ways in which Americans acquire a national (and nationalist) self-consciousness is by learning about the history of the American civil rights movement. Martin Luther King is a staple of contemporary American political pedagogy, and the distinction between the civilly disobedient King and the nationalist freedom fighter Malcolm X is fundamental. A Palestinian civil rights movement based on a King-like strategy of long-term civil disobedience would have the potential to change the political balance in the United States in several ways: (1) within the community of liberals committed to civil rights, it may create a division between groups more and less strongly identified with Israel; (2) it may force a crisis within the consciousness of many progressive Zionist Jews by bringing to the surface the suppressed tensions between liberalism and Zionism; (3) it could create the possibility of identification with the Palestinians by the American black intelligentsia and middle class; and (4) it could make it more difficult to sustain the current demonization of Palestinians and idealization of Israelis in American mass culture.

To be sure, the circumstances of American blacks at the time of the civil rights movement were different in important ways from the current conditions of Palestinians. Some 10 percent of the soldiers in the Union Army were black, and black soldiers played a similarly large role in World War II. Moreover, despite segregation and the black belt in the South, black Americans were geographically very dispersed. Furthermore, black and white Americans spoke the same language and had broadly similar religious affiliations. And the civil rights movement—as King's "I Have A Dream" speech powerfully underscored—expressed the longstanding identification of blacks as Americans. The differences from the condition of Palestinians are clear. Still, it remains true that a demand to be treated with respect as equal citizens, pursued through civil disobedience, is more likely to resonate in the United States than the forcible insistence on having a separate state.

National Imagination

A bi-national state would allow Palestinians to identify with all of Palestine, whereas an independent state would force a contraction of Palestinian national imagination. While some Israelis have colonially extended their imagined nation to include the West Bank (Judea and Samaria in their discourse) as part of the "rightful" land of Israel, bi-nationalism would allow the Palestinian national imaginary to make a similar but reverse move by reclaiming land they were brutally called upon to dis-identify with after the creation of Israel. Jaffa (in Israel) becomes the fantasized extension of Ramallah (in the West Bank), Haifa (in Israel) the extension of Hebron (in the West Bank) and Galilee the extension of Nablus.

How to make the shift

How can Palestinians make the transition from a political agenda based on national independence to one based on civil rights? The most crucial point in this context is to learn from the language and political strategies of Palestinian Israelis in their movement of protest against the discrimination of the Israeli state. Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel lived under emergency rule from 1948, when Israel was created, until 1964. They suffered all forms of blatant discrimination often rationalized and justified by the Israeli political class and judiciary as required by "national security" considerations. An elaborate alliance with Palestinian Israelis and the advocates for their rights (such as Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) is of paramount importance. All of the following activist strategies would be conducted in collaboration with Palestinian Israelis. Palestinians would:

1. Delete "Right to self-determination" and "Independent State" from the placards and replace them with "Equal Rights for Palestinians and Israelis," "One Land for Two Peoples," "Human Rights Means Equal Rights," and "Occupation = Apartheid = Discrimination."

2. Stop using stones, bullets, and explosives, and instead use their bodies, sitting or standing, as a peaceful mass, unarmed (except for placards), occupying a space in protest, a space they are not supposed to occupy. Example: check points, Jewish settlements, land in the process of confiscation, house in the process of demolition, lines of closure, encircled religious sites, etc.

3. Use their bodies in manual labor to reverse the effects of siege and closure. Walk en masse to the next village where they're not supposed to go, fill en masse the trenches that isolate a village, break down en masse army earth barriers that besiege a Palestinian population, replant en masse olive trees that have been uprooted, etc.

4. Create a new flag modeled along the lines of a pastiche of the current Israeli flag and the Palestinian one to be used by the movement and pitched as the flag of the new democratic state.

5. Organize en masse to fill out fake application forms requesting Israeli citizenship to be mailed to the offices of the Israeli Military Governor in the West Bank and Gaza, and to the Ministry of Interior in Israel. Thousands, tens of thousands, a million!

6. Organize en masse to fill out application forms to be reunited (through the return of the refugees) with family members living in exile, external or internal. A Palestinian shift from an independent state to a bi-national state agenda would self-consciously incorporate Palestinian refugees living in refugee camps outside of the territories of mandatory Palestine as equally entitled to citizenship in the new state. Refugees are in effect severed members of Palestinian families who have been prohibited from reunion with their families through a set of arbitrary and coercive policies pursued by the state of Israel. They are also entitled claimants in what would be a political movement demanding redistribution of land and housing benefits as a remedy for their historic dispossession. Obvious activist strategies for these refugees to pursue from their own exilic sites would be 1,4, and 5 above.

7. Create an organization focused on Palestinians that mimics the work of the Anti-Defamation League. This organization would take on the discourse of the Israeli media, political and military class, intelligentsia, and school curricula in Israel and argue that their representation of the Palestinians and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict amounts to racism.

8. Create forums that would engage and attempt to forge alliances with the Israeli left. One of the enabling aspects of a struggle pitched as "civil rights" (as opposed to "nationalism") is that it raises several possibilities for cross-national alliances. Obvious groups to target would be Israeli human rights advocates who currently demand equal rights for Palestinian Israelis. Others would be activists who advocate human rights for Palestinians under occupation and call for the right of Palestinians to have their own state. Such groups have gone a long way in overcoming the military-induced fear for the "security" of the state by showing willingness to incorporate some Palestinians in their state and to allow the rest to have their own state adjacent to Israel. An attempt should be made to push them to adopt a position that advocates incorporation of all Palestinians within the Israeli state. The ethno-phobia that underlies exaggerated fears about state security must be taken on bluntly and directly.

A brief outline of the new state

What would this new state, this new Israel, look like? I have proposed that constitutional liberalism would provide the political philosophy for a state that includes all Palestinians as equal members. But this philosophy—as we know from comparing constitutional liberal states—can be translated into a relatively wide range of institutional arrangements. Here, I present only one of them, taking the United States as a useful comparative model.

First, concerns over the fate of the cultural identity of the Palestinian community (its Arabness), if its members were incorporated as citizens within the state of Israel, could be accommodated through the conception of the new state as federal in its constitutional structure. The United States would be a conceivable model to emulate.

Today in the area historically know as Mandatory Palestine, regions of Jewish settlement are for the most part distinct and separated from the regions of Palestinian settlement. Each region could be delineated as a separate administrative unit (like the states in the United States). Such Jewish and Palestinian units would enter into a "deal" with the central government according to which they acquire a set of jurisdictional powers allowing them to administer their units relatively independently. For example, they would administer their educational and cultural institutions, allowing Palestinian units to reconstruct their contemporary cultural "identity" in a manner that self-consciously incorporates its unique Arabness, Islamicity, and Christendom. (But also Eastern Jewishness, opening the possibility that some Mizrahi Jews would choose to live in these administrative units rather than in the European Jewish dominated ones). A fundamental right that citizens of the new federal state would acquire is the freedom of movement and the right to reside in the unit of their own choice.

Federalism would not simply provide a venue for expressing cultural differences. In addition, administrative units would be given, through the federal constitutional arrangement, relatively autonomous powers to develop their own economic strategies with aid from the federal government.

Finally, in order for Israel to transform itself into a federal state that treats its citizens equally, some transfer of resources would have to take place from the rich Jewish "units" to the poor (and thirsty) Palestinian ones. This transfer would help to stabilize the future state and prevent it from disintegrating into conflict (as is the case today). But it is also morally required to do so, to accommodate the claims of the Palestinians who have been unjustly dispossessed and exiled.

The transfer could take place in two stages. At the moment of the founding of the federal state, Palestinian refugees would be given the option of return to "Palestine," now become the federal state of Israel. For those who wish not to do so, a fund would be established to compensate them for properties lost and injuries suffered as a result of decades of dispossession. The Holocaust claims campaign could provide a model. Those who wish to return would live in the unit of their own choosing and enjoy the benefits of Israeli citizenship within the new federal structure. Needless to say, the number of those choosing to return would largely depend on the amount of compensation offered.

Second, a tax system would be worked out within the federal state that would ensure the transfer of resources over time from the rich (Jewish) units to the poor (Palestinian) ones. Again the U.S. state and federal tax structure could provide the model. The federal government would use the taxes it collects, disproportionately paid by the richer units, to assist the poorer units through federal programs. Such money would help the poorer units to overcome their historic disadvantages in areas ranging from infrastructure to educational institutions. Through such a system, a gradual "reimbursement" process would begin to compensate for the historic injuries Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians.

Warrior and citizen

Many readers, especially the Palestinian ones, are likely to find a paradox implicit in my position. On the one hand, I am proposing an almost unforgivably self-indulgent exercise in fantasy. "It would never happen, the Israelis would never accept this," many will say. On the other hand, I am proposing a risky shift in Palestinian political strategy. In essence, I am proposing that the Palestinians give up the "warrior ethic" demanded by the political strategy of national independence: courage that involves staring death in the eye. What the Palestinian kids call martyrdom for Palestine. In its place, I am proposing that Palestinians adopt the ethic of the legal claimant: rights-obsessed, constitution-fixated, friend of the lawyer, unwelcome but tireless visitor to the courtroom.

The shift is profound and the risk is big, it could go wrong in a million ways. But it is a risk worth taking. After all, what do they — we — have now?

I dedicate this piece (peace) to all those kids who died for Palestine. They will forever be my heroes.

By Lama Abu-Odeh - Professor of law at Georgetown University.

Which kind of bi-national State?

2011-07-22T22:49:00.005-03:00

In the rush of refreshing statements heard lately, the warnings have come from the length of the political spectrum - from Ami Ayalon to Ehud Olmert and the Geneva accord initiators and Jewish intellectuals in America - Israel faces "a threat that could spell the end of the Jewish state," meaning the danger of the binational state. Within a few years, there will be a Palestinian majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and according to Olmert "more and more Palestinians are no longer interested in a solution of two states for two peoples." The result is "a disaster - one state for two people.

"The vast majority of public opinion rejects that option and the academic sector is revolted by the binational concept, "which hasn't solved any conflict in the world and does not work anywhere except in Switzerland." The opposition is so strong and emotional that seemingly there's no need to even define what kind of regime it would be and what the term "one state for two peoples" might mean. Examining various regimes included in the binational model might show perhaps that one or more of the options could actually please some of those who meanwhile so vehemently denounce the binational approach as a disaster.

The connection between losing the Jewish demographic majority and the fear of the demand for equal voting rights for everyone - one man, one vote - that would bring an end to the Jewish state shows that the type of regime identified with binationalism is a classic liberal regime of individual rights in a unitary, centralized state, without any regard for ethnic-collective rights.

That's the kind of regime that replaced the apartheid government in South Africa and it works with relative success. If the Palestinians do indeed force the Israelis to impose such a model, as the blacks did in South Africa, it would indeed spell the end of the Jewish state in the sense of its ethnic dominance and other national privileges.

However, it is difficult to assume that such a situation would evolve in reality because the State of Israel today without the territories seemingly has a liberal democracy, but the Jewish community in it made sure to impose an "ethnic democracy" that gave the Arabs second class citizenship.

The fear of the loss of the majority has already yielded plans for campaigns against the danger, such as the projects for increasing the Jewish birth rate, granting voting rights to expatriates or even to Jews wherever they may be. The chance of fulfilling the unitary model is nil. But the effort to identify binationalism only with that model is deliberate, meant to prevent any debate about other, more attractive alternatives.

One such alternative is a system that recognizes collective ethnic-national rights and maintains power sharing on the national-central level, with defined political rights for the minority and sometimes territorial-cantonal divisions. That model, called "consociational democracy" has not succeeded in many places, but lately has been applied successfully to reach agreements in ancient ethnic-national conflicts such as Bosnia, through the Dayton agreement, and Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday agreement. That should be food for thought for the experts who contemptuously wave off the bi-national option.

Why did arrangements based on one state for two peoples work in various methods and places - South Africa, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland - while the Oslo accords, based on territorial division, achieved at the same time, collapsed?

The option of power sharing and division into federated cantons is closer to the model of the territorial division of two states but it avoids the surgery, so it allows the existence of soft borders, and creates a deliberate blurring that eases dealing with symbolic issues, the status of Jerusalem or the questions of refugees and the settlers. The mutual recognition allows preservation of the national-cultural character on the national level and preservation of the ethnically homogenous regions. Everything depends, of course, on recognition being mutual and symmetric.

Those who don't recognize and accept intercommunal equality propose a third model of binationalism - even though they rise up against the very idea. They suggest cultural and civic local autonomy, but without voting in the Knesset, or alternatively, voting in Jordan, the "real Palestinian state." That is Menachem Begin's original autonomy plan, or the "functional partition" proposed by Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, a plan being implemented nowadays through the Palestinian Authority. That model has another version in the form of the "Palestinian state" defined by the separation fence: four cantons under Israel's indirect control. That's also a model for binationalism camouflaged by the division into "two states."

And there's a fourth model, which can be called "undeclared binationalism." It's a unitary state controlled by one dominant national group, which leaves the other national group disenfranchised and subject to laws "for natives only," which for the purposes of respectability and international law are known as laws of "belligerent occupation." The convenience of this model of binationalism is that it can be applied over a long period of time, meanwhile debating the threat of the "one state" and the advantages of the "two states," without doing a thing. That's the situation nowadays. But the process is apparently inevitable. Israel and the Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of the "one state." The question is no longer whether it will be binational, but which model to choose.

By Meron Benvenisti

Caminho para a Paz

2011-07-22T22:28:00.005-03:00

Apesar de não ser nova, a idéia de um Estado bi-nacional volta a ser discutida, mas a região avança mesmo é para um novo apartheid entre judeus e palestinos

Há três anos um ex-prefeito de Jerusalém escreveu que o importante não era saber se um dia haveria um Estado binacional Israel-Palestina, mas que tipo de bi-nacionalismo seria colocado em prática. Diversas obras defendem a proposta. Todas elas partem da mesma constatação: os fracassos de acordos como o de Oslo e o fatiamento dos territórios palestinos ocupados. A idéia de um Estado binacional não é nova. Ela nasceu nos anos 1920, entre um grupo de intelectuais sionistas de esquerda. Eles concebiam o sionismo como a busca de uma redenção judaica espiritual e cultural, sob a mão ferrenha da justiça. Apesar de os defensores da opção binacional terem sido minoritários na política sionista durante o mandato britânico, conseguiram fazer-se ouvir no campo internacional, e em 1947 compareceram diante do comitê especial das Nações Unidas sobre a Palestina, que recomendou a divisão das terras.

Pronunciaram-se enfaticamente contra a divisão e defenderam um Estado binacional na região. Defendiam, como fez a Grã-Bretanha em 1922, a criação de um conselho legislativo baseado na representação proporcional. Pleiteavam especificamente direitos políticos iguais, em oposição aos direitos nacionais, que se recusavam em conceituar em termos territoriais. A idéia de um Estado binacional não saiu do papel.

O plano de divisões das Nações Unidas falou mais alto e só foi ressuscitado em nova forma em 1968, com o apelo da Organização pela Libertação da Palestina (OLP) em favor de um Estado secular democrático para os palestinos. Mas a idéia que trazia a noção de um Estado para todos os seus cidadãos (judeus, cristãos e mulçumanos) foi abandonada por falta de vigor político.

O fracasso da opção do Estado Único foi muitas vezes atribuído ao seu idealismo e à sua inabilidade para lidar com a vida real.

A longa marcha dos palestinos para o reconhecimento e estabelecimento de um Estado culminou com o processo de Paz de 1993, conhecido com o Acordo de Oslo. Talvez a maior e única conquista, como expressou o primeiro-ministro Ytzhak Rabin, que israelenses e palestinos “estão predestinados a viver juntos sobre o mesmo solo, na mesma terra”. Mas não deu certo, e o acordo acabou transformando o sonho da solução de dois Estados no pesadelo de um novo Apartheid.

O que torna o Estado bi-nacional atraente e talvez inevitável, ao contrário do que ocorreu em 1920, quando a proposta foi feita pela primeira vez, é a própria idéia de que a divisão não conseguiu oferecer ao sionismo e ao nacionalismo palestino o que procuravam. Apesar do compromisso histórico de 1993, os palestinos não conseguiram obter um Estado independente viável.

Diferentemente da situação de antes de 1947, quando a divisão ainda não tinha sido tentada, em 2006 a solução dos dois Estados materializou-se na dominação israelense. O nacionalismo palestino também demonstrou a incapacidade de sua liderança — atingida por incompetência e corrupção —, o que fez com que as lutas internas predominassem nos territórios. No que diz respeito ao sionismo, a divisão parece não ter dado aos judeus a segurança que Israel lhes prometeu. Desde o começo da segunda intifada, em 2000, mais de mil civis israelenses e 4 mil palestinos foram mortos em atentados suicidas e ações do exército de Israel. O principal interesse da proposta binacional é a sua capacidade de redefinir o conceito de Estado e priorizar a democracia em relação ao nacionalismo. Mas é esse justamente o problema. Um grande desafio. Uma vez que esse conflito, como tantos outros, continua a ser territorial. O fator étnico, e mais ainda o religioso, se sobrepõe ainda mais.

O problema, entretanto, está em três atores políticos-chaves que estão longe de se converterem à idéia de Estado Único. Os israelenses, que não vão abrir mão do que já foi conquistado, deixam escancarado que querem a separação.

Prova disso é o muro que separa Israel dos territórios palestinos, e que ao final da construção terá mais de 700 quilômetros de extensão. A comunidade internacional reitera seus planos para uma solução de dois Estados justos. Mas não expressa vontade real de implementá-la ou monitorá-la.

Enquanto isso, as lideranças palestinas lutam internamente para se redefinirem, enquanto Hammas e Fatah continuam se engalfinhando.

Nas condições atuais, a região avança mesmo é para o abismo de um novo apartheid. Entretanto, nada melhor que o tempo para mostrar que o Estado bi-nacional é e sempre será, sob todos os aspectos, a solução ideal para os dois povos.

Por: Herbert Moraes – Correspondente da TV Record em Israel

Can Jews and Arabs Live Together?

2011-07-22T22:17:00.003-03:00

The title-question seems to be the greatest doubt formulated against the idea of the bi-national state. The question, then, is raised as a rhetorical one, and implies: “no, they cannot live together. Therefore it is best for them to separate.”

I happen to think this is the wrong question. The real question is “can Jews and Arabs NOT live together?” Can they – not whether they wish it, or what they would prefer, if they could choose anything in the world, but quite simply and directly: is there any possibility for a complete separation of Jews and Arabs?
The answer implied in my own formulated rhetorical question is, of course: no, there is no such possibility whatsoever. Therefore, they are simply going to have to make the best of it.
The riots in Acre (Akko) on Yom Kippur are yet another proof of this. The opponents of the bi-national state argue that separation is the only way. That any attempt of co-existence will only lead to further violence and further bloodshed. Yet no separation plan offers separation between Jews and Palestinians in Acre. Or in Haifa for that matter, or in Jaffa.
If the two-state solution will ever be reached and implemented, a mass of Israelis will be appalled to realize the following day that despite the separation, there is still a considerable minority (approximately 20%) of Palestinians that are full citizens of the Jewish State.
How does one explain that Jews and Arabs must learn to live together in Acre, in the Galilee, in the ill-named municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and are unable to do so in the West Bank? What are the unique traits of the Gaza strip, that Jews had to be evacuated from it for the sake of peace, when 10 or 20 miles away from it Jews and Arabs are compelled to live together as equal citizens, at least by declaration?
The conclusion is inescapable: the separationists and the proponents of the two-state model are not interested in whether or not Jews and Arabs can live together. Their concern is maintaining a Jewish majority, in order to justify Jewish supremacy, which is no longer tenable under current circumstances. For this purpose, they deny that Jews and Arabs can live together, and must live together, and will live together – like it or not – even after a foundation of a Jewish State. For this purpose they deny the self-proclaimed Palestinian identity of Israeli Palestinians, deluding themselves that a blue ID has the power to engender a new identity, a new ethnicity, a source of identification stemming from nowhere, stripped of roots, and going nowhere. For this purpose, they also support a Palestinian state that will not be sustainable financially, militarily, and that will have the strangest borders a country ever has seen.
Indeed, even after this state is formed, it would be wrong to expect Jews and Arabs not to live together. Not only because of the Palestinians who hold an Israeli citizenship, but because these two small countries will need to cooperate in order to prosper. Does it make sense for a Palestinian state to import and export by sea only through Gaza, without making use of Israeli ports, some of which are closer to Palestinian towns? Does it make sense for Palestinians not to use the port of the Red Sea, which will be solely under Israeli sovereignty? Does one imagine that these neighboring nations will not have cultural exchange treaties, joint sport matches, or free road travel between them, as is usually the case in neighboring states?
The question, then, is not whether Jews and Arabs can live together. Under circumstances which neither side chose or would have chosen, Palestinians and Israelis share the same land. In fact, a very small piece of land. Each side has to face reality: that the other side is not going anywhere. A Jewish return to Europe, as some Palestinians fantasize, is not going to happen. A mass deportation of Palestinians, as some Israelis fantasize, is not going to happen. Perhaps it would have been better not to live together. Perhaps this happenstance of history has enriched both nations in more ways than they are willing to admit. But in either case, this is the situation. The question on the table should be: how do we manage it? How do we facilitate co-existence? Separation – by peace treaties, by deportation, by genocide or by unilateral measures such as evacuations or wall-constructions – is not an option. Two-State, bi-national state – these are models, and they can be implemented for better or for worse. The important thing is to generate dialogue and facilitate co-existence. Can Jews and Arabs live together? They have no choice. It is high time they admitted it.

By Arieh Amihay

The bi-national state is the only fair solution

2011-07-01T23:38:00.007-03:00

Israeli journalist Amira Hass does not consider herself a rebel. But the fact that she lived in the Gaza Strip for three years, and now lives in Ramallah --both Palestinian areas which most Israelis will never set foot in -- doesn't exactly put her in step with her fellow citizens.

And when she says she moved to Gaza because "I fell in love with the Gazans -- how warm and welcoming they are," when the majority of Israelis are unable to count one Palestinian among their friends, it becomes absolutely clear that she does not espouse the standard Israeli party line.

Hass, who was in town recently to speak in conjunction with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, discussed her work and her views in an interview.

An award-winning correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Hass is the author of "Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege," which was reissued recently in paperback.

Her decision to move to the place so reviled by Israelis that a common way to say "go to hell" in Hebrew is lech l'Aza -- literally, "go to Gaza" -- was a professional one.

Gaza was her reportorial beat in 1992 when Israel deported some Islamic activists and placed the 147-square-mile strip, home to some 1 million inhabitants, under curfew and a closure. No journalists were allowed in to report on life under the closure. But with her contacts, Hass managed to slip across the border.

After the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, Hass began going to Gaza several times a week. Assigned to cover the transition to Palestinian rule, she realized that her stories would lack the immediacy of those written by someone actually living through the changes.

"How could I understand a society and write about it without actually being in the middle of it?" she writes in the introduction of her book.

"I was, it seemed, like any other journalist sent to cover a foreign country. To most Israelis, though, my move seemed outlandish, even crazy, for they believed I was surely putting my life at risk."

The only child of Holocaust survivors who were active in the Communist Party, Hass said the principles of equality were strong in her household, factors that were a "melange" affecting her upbringing. She was raised on her parents' stories as refugees and survivors -- her mother was at Bergen-Belsen and her father was confined in a ghetto. But she also heard about those who took a stand against injustice, and those who were merely bystanders.

"In the end, my desire to live in Gaza stemmed neither from adventurism nor from insanity, but from that dread of being a bystander, from my need to understand, down to the last detail, a world that is, to the best of my political and historical comprehension, a profoundly Israeli creation," she writes. "To me, Gaza embodies the entire saga of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it represents the central contradiction of the State of Israel -- democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve."

If Gaza is Israel's "exposed nerve," as Hass writes, she believes in exposing it further still. Even the peace camp, she charges, chooses not to concern itself with just how bad the living conditions there are, and how such misery and desperation fosters more hatred -- not to mention terrorism. Her willingness to confront this unpleasant aspect of the conflict has made her rather controversial in some Israeli circles.

Hass calls what's been in effect since the Oslo accords a "neo-occupation," since Palestinians, in many cases, have less freedom of movement than they did before.

She repeatedly refers to "the so-called peace process," because she believes that any settlement based on pre-existing conditions is "based on our -- meaning Israel's -- demographic and military superiority."

The only way for a true peace to happen, Hass believes, is for the two parties to return to the terms of the U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, calling for a complete return to the pre-1967 borders. Israel cannot be selective when it decides which U.N. resolutions it accepts and rejects, she said.

That is especially true when talking about the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. "The feelings and welfare of a settler is always worth more than a Palestinian who lives nearby," she said. "If we build a peace based on the superiority of the Jews, it will eventually blow up in our faces."

The Law of Return for Jews is problematic as long as there is no similar principle in effect for Palestinians. "Jews from all over the world are still allowed to come here while people born here more than 53 years ago, who still have keys to their homes, cannot come back to live with their relatives," she said.

Hass also warned of a solution based on religion, which she said was evident in the Camp David discussions on Jerusalem.

Departing from the views of most Israelis, Jews and President Clinton, who took Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to task for not being more willing to compromise at Camp David, Hass said this time it was the Jews who missed the opportunity.

Though Hass tries to refrain from making predictions about the future, she believes the only workable solution to the Mideast conflict is not a two-state solution, but a one-state solution. Whether it takes 50 years or 200, whatever entity that will finally exist in the disputed piece of land can no longer be an exclusively Jewish state.

And the Palestinians in the territories are not the only reason why, Hass maintains. There are 1 million Arabs living in Israel who do not have the same rights as Jews, and are therefore second-class citizens. "Any society that is built upon regressive laws toward another people is not Jewish," she said.

Hass envisions a state in which Jews and Palestinians live side by side, both having equal rights, and both respecting the rights and entitlement of the other.

"The binational state is the peaceful solution," she said. "The Palestinians are fighting for their rights. [The desire for] equality is universal, as basic as eating and sleeping."

General wisdom might dictate that as the child of Holocaust survivors, she would feel the necessity for a Jewish state. But in Hass' case, it's the opposite. She says she can relate more to the Palestinians as people because of her own parents' experiences as refugees.

Having the Holocaust in her family has made Hass an outspoken advocate against injustice. The legacy of the Holocaust, she said, "never really goes away."

By Alexandra J. Wall

One-State, Two-State and the American Task Force on Palestine

2011-06-25T21:45:00.005-03:00

Until recently, we had never heard of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). After some research on the subject of the One-State vs the Two-State solution, we discovered a long Study published by the ATFP in 2009 entitled “What’s Wrong With The One-State Agenda“. It made for interesting reading and shed some light on the people behind the ATFP which claim “to promote an end to the conflict in the Middle East through a negotiated agreement that provides for two states – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security”.

This document (the ATFP calls it a Study) was originally drafted by Dr Hussein Ibish (who is a Senior Fellow at the ATFP) at the time Israel was launching its criminal ‘Operation Cast Lead’ on Gaza in December 2008. That onslaught left 1400 Gazans dead and most of the Gaza Strip in ruins. One would have thought that ‘Operation Cast Lead’ would provide the ATFP with the clearest example yet of Zionism’s consistent policy of using force to attain total colonial stranglehold in all of historic Palestine. Events of the last 62 years would also provide a clear evidence of this policy.

A good reading of ATFP’s Study raised many questions some of which we put in writing to Dr Ibish, the author, via the ATFP website. An automated confirmation was received promising a reply which never came.

Overall, the Study attempts to demolish the whole basis on which the One-State solution is being promoted by its advocates including this writer.

It is surely high time that all politicians, historians, writers and academics who still believe in and support the idea of a Two-State solution to the Israel-Palestine tragedy to come forward and submit, once and for all, a clear and transparent statement outlining exactly what they really mean by the Two-State solution. They have had 62 years to advance this idea and they have failed.

This ATFP Study, whilst calling for an end to the Israeli occupation through negotiations, does not take into account the failed UN Resolutions, the endless summits and the numerous peace conferences which have dotted the Middle East political and diplomatic landscape since 1947. After 62 years, we are no closer to resolving this tragedy than we were when it started in 1948 with the Palestinian Nakba and the creation of the state of Israel. Over the years, Israel, through its huge military machine and the ‘eternal’ support of the United States, has managed to reinforce its illegal occupation of Palestinian land not only since 1967, but since 1947 when an illegal Partition Plan was forced upon the Palestinian people. The occupation continues unchecked, the illegal settlement construction is in full force and moves forward unabated, the destruction of Palestinian homes and farmland has become a daily occurance and the flagrant Israeli defiance of International Law is a routine phenomenon as the international community looks on.

Throughout all of historic Palestine, this picture of unrelenting colonisation by Israel is a very well documented one. It is probably the most documented conflict of modern times. The colonial picture has not changed but the Palestinian landscape has. Israel’s occupation of all Palestine is pretty much complete and in line with the first Zionist declaration in 1897 which called for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine within 50 years. The Zionists finally managed it in 1948 – missing their target date by only 1 year.

The force of this near total occupation can only be maintained via a huge military machine and through an outdated Apartheid political system which will surely fail. The network of physical obstructions built throughout the Palestinian landscape offer us a clear system of control unseen since WWII: from exclusive roads for Jews only, to the massive number of illegal settlements, to the prison Wall wrapping around Palestinian villages along and out of the Green Line, to the checkpoints and watch towers reminiscent of a Nazi regime and finally, to a judicial and political racist system which favours the occupier and dehumanises the occupied. This is a picture of a solid iron grip over a whole indigenous people. Not just in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, but also a grip over the 1.5 million Palestinians inside Israel, otherwise called ‘the others’.

It is through this window that a One-State vs a Two-State debate must take place. The writer advocated a One-State solution back in 1968 as the dust settled on the 1967 war between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It was another wake-up call to focus on that Zionist declaration of 1897. Total occupation of historic Palestine was set in motion after the six-day war ended. If that was not enough to convince the world that Israel was determined to continue the course set for it 70 years earlier, then it must take a second look over the last 62 years since the Nakba of 1948. It would be nothing short of ignorance to bury one’s head in the sand and cast a blind eye to all that Israel is doing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. What is happening there is nothing short of total occupation: physically, militarily, ethnically, and politically.

Which brings us to the ATFP Study: ”What’s Wrong With The One-State Agenda“.

It is truly farcical, despite the above facts, that anyone should be calling for a Two-State Solution. It begs the question of what has been learnt by the American Task Force on Palestine (or any other Task Force or Think Tank for that matter), from the last 62 years which have seen millions of Palestinian refugees linger in their miserable camps and millions more suffocate under the longest and most cruel occupation in modern times.

In true fashion, the ATFP Study goes on the attack from the word go, against the authors of such publications as “The One State Solution” by Professor Virginia Tilley, “One Country” by the founder of the Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah, and against the authors of the “One State Declaration” issued in London and Madrid in 2007 on the 60th anniversary of UN Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan).

The ATFP believes that because Israel ‘withdrew‘ from Gaza (my italics) and from some small illegal outposts in the north of the West Bank, the logical conclusion would be that the Zionist leadership would not be adverse to the transfer of “sovereignty over a sufficient number of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements to accommodate a viable and acceptable Palestinian state…”. The key word here is, crucially, ‘accommodate’. Israel accommodates and a Palestinian state becomes magically viable. The ATFP author, Dr Ibish, must be blind to all the facts on the ground and fails to explain Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements about the ‘natural growth’ of his illegal settlements. If anything, ‘natural growth’ is what we call an illegal and one-sided ‘accommodation’.

The Study goes on to tackle the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, which is a main demand by those advocating a One-State solution. The Study submits that “some form of limited ‘return’ to the new Palestinian state would be an integral part of conflict agreement”. Another key statement here is: ‘some form of limited return’. In other words, no one should expect the ‘sovereign state of Israel’, to “open its borders to large numbers of Palestinian refugees to return to live in Israel under any conceivable circumstances”. What are we to understand by ‘limited return’ and from which miserable camp will the refugees be ‘returning’. Does any one of the millions of Palestinian refugees have any say in this? The ATFP does not volunteer an answer.

One of the most sensitive issues this Study tackles is ethnic and national identities of the Palestinians and ‘Israeli Jews’. It states that “one of the greatest strengths of the Two-State solution is that it does not require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile their national [and ethnic] narratives” when each people have a state of their own. But the reality on the ground shows that only one narrative is allowed to develop to the detriment of the other narrative, and that is the Jewish/Zionist narrative. The erasure of memory, the uprooting of the foundations of the Palestinian society, and the ethnic cleansing of a whole nation and its people, are daily occurrences in the OPT today. They remain solid proof of how one narrative claims sole right over the other under occupation. By promoting a Two-State solution (if at all possible now) on the basis that two peoples have had a bitter history of conflict, bloodshed and distrust, Dr Ibish conveniently forgets the lessons history teaches us. The most recent of these are Northern Ireland and South Africa, where truth and reconciliation forged the basis of a miracle of unity. Palestinians, throughout their history had no conflict with the indigenous Jewish and other ethnic groups in Palestine. Various communities, including recent arrivals after WWI, contributed to a colourful array of lifestyles and customs based on a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect. Many examples of that harmony can be heard in oral testimonies of living descendants of villages like, for example, Lifta west of Jerusalem (where Abunima’s family lived). Surely, the aim of a political solution cannot be the segregation of ethnic groups, as suggested by the ATFP Study, simply because they had a history of conflict, but rather to integrate and unite them in a single democratic, multi cultural, free state for all its inhabitants. Israel, as it stands today, cannot claim to hold that honour.

In Part III of the Study, Dr Ibish argues that “the creation of a single Palestinian-Israeli state is not possible given the existing international and regional power equations”. He writes that “Israel is not going to agree to dismantle itself simply because it has lost a moral argument or an academic debate”. That is probably true.

But, an examination of Zionism, shows that it was precisely its power of persuasion and the tireless efforts of its leaders in convincing the powers of the time, albeit backed by a lot of financial clout, that swayed opinions and shifted positions in an alliance which finally bore fruit in the notorious Balfour Declaration. Lobbying and arm-twisting were never far behind in this process to assist Zionism in realising their dream first declared in that onerous year of 1897. The core issue here is that the Palestinian struggle, though helped by academic debates, moral arguments and international boycotts, is fundamentally about self-determination, justice and freedom from occupation. It is not simply about scoring points in academic debates. Dr Ibish continues to argue that advocates of the One-State solution cannot ask an entire people [the Israelis] to simply abandon their national goals and strategies, even though the aim of these national goals and strategies is to ethnically cleanse and colonise an entire people. The call to abandon such goals and strategies must not only come from advocates of the One-State solution, but also from the ATFP and the international community at large.

In a desperate attempt to give credence to its Two-State logic, the author of this ATFP Study tries to have his cake and eat it. He concurs that there is no international support for Israel’s settlement activities or its illegal occupation. Major powers, including the United States, have called on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This has made Israel’s legal position untenable in the eyes of the international community. But the Study uses this fact to forward a naive argument which is that the One-State agenda effectively “lets Israel off the hook” because the settlements, the occupation, the Wall and all resulting injustices become, in the one state, matters to be resolved “through the political and legal processes of that state, rather than [being considered] abuses committed by an occupying power…bound by the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international instruments”. This argument defies logic as it falsely assumes that a crime by a state within its borders is unlikely to be punished under International Law because such a crime would be considered, according to Dr Ibish, “one of civil rights within a given country…[and] the rights and interests of the international community in cases of domestic discrimination are not equivalent to those attached to territories considered by the UN Security Council to be under foreign military occupation”.

So, we are to conclude that the rule of the jungle within a state is to be tolerated because it is inherently a civic matter within that state and not answerable under International Law. Have we forgotten the Nuremberg Trials? Shall we dismantle the International Criminal Court? Have we forgotten Ruwanda? Or better yet: shall we tear up the Fourth Geneva Convention?

It is a fundamental error of judgment for this Study and its author to assume that the state envisaged by advocates of the One-State solution remains the same as the Zionist Apartheid State called Israel.

By Antoine Raffoul

Antoine Raffoul is a Palestinian architect living and practising in London. He was born in Nazareth and was expelled with his family from Haifa in April 1948. He is the Founder and Co-ordinator of 1948: Lest.We.Forget. a campaign group for truth about Palestine. He can be reached at info@1948.org.uk.

Time Running Out for Two-State Solution

2011-06-25T20:55:00.003-03:00

Time is of the essence if the implementation of a two-state solution to end the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to succeed. Changing demographics both within Israeli and Palestinian society could render this impossible, with a one-state solution the only feasible outcome.

An eventual one-state solution, however, would lead to two possible scenarios. Either Israel would extend the franchise to all Palestinians in the occupied territories, which would lead to the end of Israel’s Jewish character, or Palestinians would be denied the vote and Israel would be officially pronounced an apartheid state.

Following recent talks in Washington between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, analysts and political pundits are warning that with the establishment of facts on the ground the two-state solution is under growing threat.

"Israel could be the Titanic heading towards the iceberg," says Gershon Baskin, the Israeli co-CEO of the Israel-Palestine Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI).

"The two-state solution is still possible despite the physical realities on the ground. The settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem can be dismantled or evacuated and handed over to the Palestinians similar to what happened to the settlements in Gaza during Israel’s withdrawal from there in 2005," Baskin told IPS.

"Furthermore, an agreement can still be reached with the current Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. They will continue to cooperate with the international community and with Israel if the latter shows flexibility.

"But if no agreement is reached with the Israeli government then the next generation of Palestinian leaders will give up entirely on the two-state solution and will ask for the vote to be extended to the Palestinian territories. Due to the Palestinians’ higher birth rate this will lead to one-state and the end of Israel’s higher Jewish demography."

Baskin travels regularly to the West Bank and films non-violent protests against the continued expropriation of Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinian civilians from their homes to make way for illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

"The young Palestinians I speak to who have no political affiliation say that the current Palestinian leadership is the most moderate the Israelis will ever have. They argue that they have given Israel the most generous offer ever. The Palestinians are prepared to settle for a homeland on just 22 percent of historical Palestine and will accept the Israelis keeping the remaining 78 percent."

Palestinians were the indigenous majority before hundreds of thousands either fled or were expelled by Israeli forces during the state’s establishment in 1948.

The last chance for the two-state solution may come in September when the PA takes its case for independence to the UN. The General Assembly will recognise the fledgling state and then the Palestinians will have the moral victory of recognition even if the Security Council doesn’t back the establishment.

The matter can then be taken to international bodies such as The International Court of Justice amongst others. This could lead to international sanctions against Israel as an illegal occupier of another country.

Dr Samir Awad from Birzeit University near Ramallah agrees that the time for a two-state solution is running out.

"It is becoming more problematic. The plans presented to the Palestinians by the Israeli leadership are designed for rejection. They want to present a state without East Jerusalem, without the Jordan valley, no right of return for refugees, the continuation of many settlements, and maintaining border and air space control," Awad told IPS.

"The situation could be resolved if the Americans would pressure the Israelis but they won’t. But the realities of history can’t be ignored, and history will ultimately be on the side of the oppressed and those denied historical justice. People should remember this."

In the meantime the demographics of Israel’s population have changed dramatically in the last few decades with Haredi or orthodox Jews heading to become a quarter of Israel’s population in the future, with their high birth rate.

Extremely right-wing Haredi political parties such as Shas are powerful coalition factors in the make-up of Israeli governments, dictating a fair amount of policy. The Haredi population has little education and high rates of unemployment, leading to a drain on Israel’s economy as well as its secular and more politically compromising demographic.

Furthermore, Russian immigrants to Israel now comprise approximately a fifth of the population. Coming from former totalitarian regimes many of them are also little inclined to accept the Palestinians as equals.

And within Israel itself the birth rate of Israel’s Palestinian minority outstrips that of the Jewish majority. Combined with the "demographic threat" in the Palestinian territories, this is another "time bomb" the Israelis fear.

This is the reason that some of Israeli’s Knesset members are arguing that Israel’s survival may well depend on the successful implementation of the two-state solution.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel is finished."

By Mel Frykberg - From IPSNews - June 2, 2011

Steps to create an Israel-Palestine

2011-06-24T23:57:00.006-03:00

For a while, it seemed that a two-state solution might actually be achievable and that a sovereign Palestinian state would be created in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Jews and Palestinians at last to go their separate ways. But these days, that looks less and less likely.

With Israel in total control of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and unwilling to relinquish a significant part of the land, it's time to consider the possibility that the current situation — one state, in effect — will continue. And although Jewish Israelis may control it now, birthrates suggest that, sooner or later, Jews will again be a minority in the territory.

What happens at that point is unclear, but unless continued military occupation and all-out apartheid is the desired path, now may be the time for Israelis to start putting in place the kinds of legal and constitutional safeguards that will protect all minorities, now and in the future, in a single democratic state of Israel-Palestine. This is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.

In recent years the idea of a one-state solution has been anathema to Israelis and their supporters worldwide. This has been fueled by the fear of the "demographic threat" posed by the high Palestinian birthrate. Indeed, many Israeli supporters of a two-state solution came to that position out of fear of this demographic threat rather than sympathy with Palestinian national aspirations.

At the root of their fear was the belief that despite Israel's best efforts to push Palestinians from land and property and to import Jewish settlers in their stead, the Arab population would keep climbing. And that, when the Arabs reached the 51% mark, the state of Israel would collapse, its Jewish character would disappear and its population would dwindle into obscurity.

Yet that scenario is not necessarily the inevitable result of either demography or democracy. Religious and ethnic minorities have successfully thrived in many countries and managed to retain their distinctive culture and identity, and succeeded in being effective and sometimes even dominant influences in those countries. Those who believe in coexistence must begin to seriously think of the legal and constitutional mechanisms needed to safeguard the rights of a Jewish minority in Israel-Palestine.

It is true that the experience of Israel with its Palestinian minority does not offer a comforting prospect. The behavior of the Jewish majority toward the Palestinian citizens of Israel has not been magnanimous or tolerant. Where ethnic cleansing was insufficient, military rule, land confiscation and systemic discrimination have all been employed. The relationship was not helped by the actions of Palestinians outside Israel who resented losing their homeland or by the behavior of some Arab countries, neither of which accepted the imposed Jewish character of Israel.

Yet it is possible, especially during this period when Jews are still the majority in power in Israel, to begin to envision the type of guarantees they may require in the future. Other countries have wrestled with this problem, and while each situation is different, the problem is by no means unprecedented.

Zionism will ultimately need to redefine its goals and aspirations, this time without ignoring or seeking to dispossess the indigenous Palestinian population. Palestinians will also have to deal with this reality, and accept — even enthusiastically endorse — the elements required to make Jews truly feel at peace in the single new state that will be the home of both people.

Strong, institutionalized mechanisms will be needed to prevent the "tyranny of 51%." A bicameral legislature, for example, should be installed, in which the lower house is elected by proportional representation but the upper house has a composition that safeguards both peoples equally, regardless of their numbers in the population. A rotating presidency may be preferable to designating certain positions for each minority (as in Lebanon). And constitutional provisions that safeguard the rights of minorities should be enshrined in a constitution that can only be amended or altered by both houses of parliament with a large (80%) majority.

Both Hebrew and Arabic will be designated as official languages, and governmental offices will be closed for Jewish, Muslim and Christian holidays. New laws will be enacted that strengthen the secular civil courts in personal status matters, while leaving some leeway for all religious communities to have a say in lawmaking, including Reform and Conservative Jews who currently chafe under the Orthodox monopoly over Jewish personal status matters in Israel. Educational systems that honor and cater to the different communities will give each a measure of control over the education of its children within a national system that maintains professional standards for all publicly-funded schools. Strong constitutional provisions will be enacted to prohibit discrimination in all spheres of life, while independent courts will be enabled to enforce such provisions.

Many on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian, will reject this line of thinking, and in all cases, it is clear that a lot of goodwill and much careful thinking is necessary. But as the options keep narrowing for all participants, we need to start thinking of how we can live together, rather than insist on dying apart.

By Jonathan Kuttab - A Palestinian attorney and human rights activist. Co-founder of Al Haq and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners.

Peres warns: Israel in danger of ceasing to exist as Jewish state

2011-06-24T21:23:00.011-03:00

President says that Israel 'doomed' unless negotiations with the Palestinians leading to a peace agreement begin in the immediate future.

President Shimon Peres is concerned that Israel might become a binational state, in which case, he warned, it would cease to exist as a Jewish state.

"I'm concerned about the continued freeze [in the peace talks]," Peres said to people who visited him this week. "I'm concerned that Israel will become a binational state. What is happening now is total foot-dragging. We're about to crash into the wall. We're galloping at full speed toward a situation where Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state."

Peres celebrated four years as president this week. He has three years to go until he decides on his next career move. But people who met him this week found the president's mood far from festive. He prophesied that Israel would be doomed unless negotiations with the Palestinians leading to a peace agreement began in the immediate future.

"Whoever accepts the basic principle of the 1967 lines will receive international support from the world," Peres said. "Whoever rejects it will lose the world." He was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vehement objection to starting peace talks on the basis of the 1967 lines, which he called "indefensible" in both the Knesset and the U.S. Congress.

But Peres continues to reject the advice of friends and various political figures that he come out openly against Netanyahu's positions. "I'm not the head of the opposition, I'm the state president," he repeatedly tells them.

Peres also voiced fear that Israel might be subjected to economic boycotts and sanctions. There's no need for boycotts," he said. "It would suffice for ports in Europe or Canada to stop unloading Israeli merchandise. It's already beginning.

"September is only a date," he added, referring to Palestinian plans to seek UN recognition as a state then. "The question is what will happen before and after."

By Yossi Verter - From Haaretz.com (06.17.2011)

Still hoping for the best

2011-06-24T20:20:00.023-03:00

Finishing four years in the President's Residence is a reason for Shimon Peres to celebrate. Or not.

This week Shimon Peres is celebrating four years in the President's Residence. He has served as president for 48 months, 26 of them alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has three years to go until he decides what his next career move will be.

People who met Peres this week, when he was celebrating, heard prophecies of doom from him the likes of which have never been uttered before. Here are some of them:

"In the end we'll reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the question is whether we will suffer some sort of blow beforehand, or not. In the end, whoever accepts the basic principle of the 1967 lines will receive international support from the world. Whoever rejects it will lose the world. Economic boycotts against Israel are taking place before our eyes. There's no need for boycotts - suffice it if ports in Europe or Canada stop unloading Israeli merchandise. It's already beginning. September is only a date. The question is what will happen before and after."

"I'm concerned about the continued deadlock. I'm concerned that Israel will become a binational state. What is happening now is sheer foot-dragging. We're about to crash into the wall. We're galloping at full speed toward a situation where we will lose the State of Israel as a Jewish state."

Peres seems to be struggling with himself about whether to go publi and shout these things. He respects the institution that he heads. He is neither leader nor deputy leader of the opposition - although during meetings such as the one he had with Tzipi Livni this week, she urges him to stand by her side. He also understands that he is not the prime minister.
What good would it do Peres to quarrel with Netanyahu? The left would applaud him, but he would once again be considered "subversive" and would lose much of the public's affection in an instant.

About two years ago, shortly after Netanyahu came into office, Peres spoke at the AIPAC conference in Washington and informed the audience that the premier was about to make history. He really believed that. He hoped that Netanyahu would take advantage of his second term to propel Israel toward the end of the conflict, or at least make significant progress in that direction.

Two years later, Peres is no longer saying such things. He still harbors hopes regarding Netanyahu's declarations about a Palestinian state, settlement blocs and a long-term military presence along the Jordan River. He will continue to take advantage of every opportunity to run all over the globe to spread the news about the Israeli economy (and, in secret, to sit through another brainstorming session with one Palestinian leader or another ), and hope that one day it will happen. As he prepares to celebrate his 88th birthday (on August 2 ), what is there left for Peres to do except to hope for the best?

Bonding experience
Netanyahu's coalition has never had a better week. Last weekend, its members shared a "bonding" experience at a Safed hotel. New recruits who are drafted into elite army units also undergo such bonding, usually comprised of an exhausting series of training exercises, in order to examine their suitability and their ability to work together as a team. But there is no coalition team with more solidarity than Netanyahu's.

The ministers had barely unpacked their suitcases with the soaps from the Rimonim Hotel, and nine of them, together with the prime minister and his wife, took off for a day and a half in Rome. Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, who was in both Safed and Rome, said: "The trip to Rome is only a continuation of bonding in another way." On Tuesday morning Netanyahu and his ministers returned from Italy. Soon the prime minister will be flying to Poland.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Livni found time to clash this week in the Knesset plenum, during a special meeting, requested by at least 40 MKs, that requires the prime minister to remain glued to his seat. This ritual repeats itself once a month and receives almost no media coverage: She asks the same questions, he gives the same answers. A few hours after that session, I told Livni that for the past two years she has been giving the same speech. "That's true," she admitted. "This week I recalled the film 'Titanic.' There is a scene there in which Leonardo DiCaprio is standing on the deck, embracing his girlfriend and shouting into the wind, 'I'm king of the world!' while in the dining room and the ballroom the chandeliers on the ceiling begin to shake. That's Netanyahu: Since his return from Washington he's been on a high, celebrating, declaring he's king of the world, his ministers are dancing at a ball - and any minute there's going to be a collision with the iceberg."
And who is he embracing on the deck?

Livni: "Let's say that it's [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak."
You must admit that the five or six principles that he presented in his Knesset speech last month, which he mentioned once again this week, are acceptable to Kadima. And when he asks which of these principles you object to, you have no answer.
"He's got himself a real gimmick, with those principles of his. It's true that he mentioned them in the Knesset, but he didn't submit them for approval to his cabinet or his party. We conducted negotiations over those principles: the refugees, the end of the conflict, Jerusalem, a demilitarized state. I said everything in the negotiating room and I argued about everything and I stuck to those principles, while outside they accused me of selling state assets. And he only gives speeches. He didn't even submit the Bar-Ilan speech to the cabinet for its approval."

Don't you get discouraged sometimes?
"No. As long as I'm around, I'll keep saying things in every possible way, in every possible forum and in front of every possible audience. We're in a very problematic position. He's sending the State of Israel to Masada. And not to see an opera."

Nablus sojourn
On Tuesday, eight MKs from right-wing parties entered Nablus, and under the heavy guard of Palestinian policemen and Israeli soldiers, they arrived at Joseph's Tomb, prayed there, and hastened to issue reports to the press about how moved they were by this historic occasion: It was the first time in 11 years, since the outbreak of the second intifada, that such a visit was made in broad daylight and not under the cover of darkness.

The visit was preceded by a long saga, involving numerous discussions and threats between the office of the Knesset Speaker and the defense establishment. It began after the murder of Bratslav Hasid Ben Yosef Livnat, who together with friends snuck into the tomb in April, in the dead of night, without coordinating with the army, and was shot to death by a Palestinian policeman.

Representatives of the right-wing parties asked Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin to arrange for Knesset sponsorship and approval of the visit. Rivlin approached the Defense Ministry and the Shin Bet security service, who objected, claiming the act was a provocation, and that it would lead to a conflagration.

"You're saying no in order to see how we will react," said Rivlin. "What provocation is there here? After all, the Oslo Accords state that any Israeli is permitted to go to the tomb, providing the visit is coordinated. We're interested in coordinating the visit."

The heads of the defense establishment withdrew their objection, and it was agreed that a few days later the visit would take place, at 10 A.M. The night before, at midnight, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Rivlin. Also on the line were Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen and the regional army commander. Netanyahu was in Washington at the time, between the meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama and the speech in Congress; he knew about the plans but didn't intervene.

Although the security people told Rivlin they could guarantee that the MKs would not suffer a scratch during the visit, they were concerned about any rioting that could ensue as a result. Specifically, there was a fear that a number of Palestinians would be harmed by Israel Defense Forces fire, which would cast a shadow over Netanyahu's visit to the U.S.
At the end of the nighttime talks, Rivlin ordered the Knesset officer to contact the MKs and tell them that the trip had been postponed by a week. He decided with Barak and Cohen that the visit would take place the following week.

When the time came, Rivlin informed the defense established that the visit was about to get under way.
"No," he was told, "this week isn't good. There are problems, issues. Next week will be all right."
"Is that final?" asked Rivlin.
"Of course," they told him.

Once again he informed the MKs that the visit would be postponed by a week - to this past week. At the same time, he asked the defense establishment to send him a letter approving the visit. The following day he received the response, and saw that two words had been added to the word approval: "in principle."

At the beginning of this week Rivlin informed the Defense Ministry and the Shin Bet that the visit was about to take place. Look, they told him, there's a fear there will be riots. Maybe we'll postpone it? "No problem," said Rivlin, "if you don't want the MKs to go, I'll go. I don't need your approval. I'll activate Unit 730 [the Shin Bet force responsible for VIP security] and they'll take care of me. I won't agree to be the tool for deceiving the MKs."

That day Defense Minister Barak was in China, and tried to reach Rivlin several times by phone. Rivlin was busy. Barak got the message and approved the visit from China. The MKs went and came back, on Tuesday, and no riots broke out.
From Nablus the MKs returned to the beginning of the Knesset plenary session, the part devoted to one-minute speeches. One after another they approached the microphones in the corners of the hall and reported on their experiences.
"You see," Rivlin told them, "you're lucky you had a chance to fulfill the Oslo Accords."

'Something unusual'
In the presence of the prime minister, Likud MK Ophir Akunis stood on the Knesset dais on Wednesday afternoon and quarreled with members of the opposition.

"I would like to say something that is unusual in political life in Israel," he said toward the end of his speech. The Knesset fell silent in anticipation.

"I would like to say thank you," said Akunis. "Thank you for helping many Israelis to stand proud. Thank you for refreshing the world's memory that Israel is in Judea and Samaria by right, and not as a favor. Thank you."
Akunis was Netanyahu's spokesman. He is considered the MK closest to Netanyahu. He speaks with him regularly, and spreads his messages in the media.

The MKs in the plenum broke out in loud laughter. Deputy Knesset Speaker Ahmed Tibi, who was moderating the session, called out to them: "Don't interrupt him. He is trying to say something unusual in politics and you're disturbing him."

By Yossi Verter - From Haaretz.com (06.17.2011)

A Shared Homeland

2011-06-24T18:00:00.006-03:00

I know how hard it is for many Jews and Palestinians to let go of the dream of having a state that is exclusively “our own.” For the good of both nations, the Separation Wall must come down, the Israeli control over the lives of Palestinians must be defied so that a secular democracy where all Israelis and Palestinians live as equals be established in our shared homeland.

By Miko Peled - General Matti Peled's son

A binational Israel-Palestine

2011-06-24T17:37:00.005-03:00

We can ask, "Who killed the road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians?" Or we can start thinking through the implications of the fact that it is dead. Either way, the Palestinian bombing Saturday that killed 19 people in Haifa, Israel, followed by the Israeli bombing of a site in Syria, indicates that the road map cannot now be salvaged.

The road map's declared goal was the establishment of a Palestinian state of undefined powers and uncertain borders alongside Israel, in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Israel's ruling Likud Party never liked that idea, and it hedged its very qualified "acceptance" of the road map with a list of 14 formal reservations.

The Palestinian leadership - including Yasser Arafat, who was voted president of Palestine in a US-sponsored election in 1996, and two successive Palestinian prime ministers - expressed unqualified acceptance of the road map.

All that is now history. The road map, which never had much real momentum, is dead.
Its death marks not just the latest in a long series of debacles in Washington's attempts at Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

It could also mark the end of the long-pursued concept of a two-state solution. For if a two-state solution were to provide the stability and security that both peoples so desperately crave, the resulting Palestinian state would have to be just as viable as the Israeli state with whose fate it would always be so closely entwined.
But continued implantation of Israeli settlers and all their supporting infrastructure into the West Bank has brought about a situation in which the establishment of a viable Palestinian state looks impossible.

Over the years, Israel has planted more than 400,000 settlers into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. All that land - like Gaza, like Syria's Golan - has the status in international law of being "occupied territory," and the 4th Geneva Convention expressly states that it is illegal for the occupying power (Israel) to transfer any of its citizens into these occupied lands. (It would be as if the US, now running an occupation in Iraq, should decide to move hundreds of thousands of US citizens into Iraq in an attempt to control the resource base and the government there forever.)

But now, most of the 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank want to stay in the luxurious communities that hefty government subsidies have provided. Politically, it would now be almost impossible for any Israeli government to suggest that they move back to Israel - or to leave them where they are under a Palestinian ruler. But if they stay where they are, and under Israeli sovereignty, then the land left for the Palestinians can never provide the basis for a viable Palestinian state. As with the "Bantustans" created by the old apartheid regime in South Africa, the Palestinian-ruled area would be resource-starved and totally under the control of the stronger power. No recipe there for long-term stability - for white South Africans, or for Israelis.

This lesson in history does, however, suggest an approach to peacemaking that might work if, indeed, there is no hope for a two-state solution.

In South Africa, once supporters of apartheid figured out that no amount of repressing or fencing off blacks and no amount of punishing military raids against the country's neighbors could bring them peace, they finally settled for that good old standby of democracies: a one-person-one-vote system within a unitary state.

That wasn't an easy decision for white - or black - South Africans. On both sides there were centuries of hostility and harm to overcome before they could accept the "other" kind of folk as fellow-citizens. But by 1990, the situation had become intolerable - for white as well as black South Africans. The country's transformation to democracy was difficult for some, and, as in all democracies, problems remain. But in general, it was overwhelmingly successful and deeply inspiring.

So why not in Israel/Palestine? If Israeli settlers want to stay in the West Bank - let them stay! But if they want to stay there and be part of a community built on long-term peace, then they cannot refuse to give equal rights within the whole of an expanded state of Israel/Palestine to all Palestinians who want to be a part of it.

The end of the dream of a monocultural "Jewish state"? Yes. But in the Holy Land, as in South Africa, it could be the start of a hopeful new chapter in human history. For Jewish Israelis, as for Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking South Africans, they could still be living in a multicultural state in which their language, their culture, and their religion would be fully embraced.

The idea of a binational (Arab/Hebrew) state in historic Palestine was first proposed in the 1930s by Jewish thinkers like Martin Buber and Judah Magness. Now, increasing numbers of intellectuals on both sides are discussing it anew.

At a time of so much despair in the Middle East, this idea - based on the deepest concepts of human equality and respect among peoples - might give us all fresh hope.

By Helena Cobban - Author of five books on international issues

Return of the One-State Solution? A Realist's Utopia

2011-06-18T22:41:00.003-03:00

July 17, 2011 "Counterpunch" -- This month marks the 44th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and the bordering states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It was this conflict in June of 1967 which has shaped Arab-Israeli relations ever since, primarily because of Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the whole basis for the perennially stalled peace process between the Palestinian people and the Jewish state centers upon what portion of these occupied territories will become the new, sovereign state of Palestine.

However, a simple return to “1967 borders” has always been something which the Israelis have publically rejected. Ostensibly, this is because these borders are deemed geographically indefensible should another armed conflict arise. So when last month President Obama became the first American commander in chief to publically set the 1967 borders as the starting point for peace negotiations, all hell broke loose. It was not much longer than Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard-line, Likud prime minister of Israel, hopped on a plane to personally tongue-lash the president and then deliver a scheduled speech in front of a joint meeting of congress – to thunderous applause.

So there we had it; this was a Manichean war of words between two irreconcilable worldviews. President Obama was the liberal universalist, naively enthusiastic about emerging democracies promised by the so-called “Arab Spring.” Besides, to the conservative imagination, Barack Hussein Obama did not exude the same intuitive love for the Jewish state which could otherwise be expected of any patriotic American, let alone the president himself. Netanyahu was the experience-hardened, Israeli realist. He knew the proper limits of such idealistic enthusiasm, and he knew the real price for Israeli security. An emerging, sovereign, Palestinian democracy could not be trusted to be friendly toward Israel. The establishment of such as state on the supposedly indefensible borders of 1967 would, therefore, be out of the question. American pundits weighed in on either side of the melee with articles and op-eds. Characteristic of the tone was the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and his oft-quoted piece, “Dear Mr. Netanyahu, Please Don't Speak to My President That Way.”

Not so radical after all

Of course, obscured by the rancor was the plain fact that none of this was at all new. Some variant of the “Two State Solution” has been a part of the mainstream discourse since Israel’s inception in 1948. In fact, the suggested demarcation of the border was much more generous to the Palestinians during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950’s than it is today. The last Bush administration publically affirmed a Two State Solution which, de facto, would have to be drawn largely along the 1967 border; though, crucially, this language was never used in any high profile speeches. (Instead, in a 2005 press conference, President Bush employed the term “1949 armistice lines” which, in fact, amounts to basically the same thing.) Even Netanyahu himself has acknowledged in June 2009 the ultimate goal of a Palestinian state within the territories of the West Bank and Gaza (where else?) with certain land swaps so as to ensure the Israeli retention of the large, Jewish settlement blocks. True, emotionally and politically charged issues remain – first among these is the future of east Jerusalem, a point on which Netanyahu has never shown any flexibility. Nonetheless, at its core, this supposedly polarizing debate is mostly a semantic one after all, at best a protracted political dance where each participant jockeys to win an edge at the bargaining table where the final lines will be drawn. No one, though, really thinks that this table can ultimately be avoided.

Two states - A consensus of dunces

Unfortunately this “hidden consensus” is totally disengaged from reality. Two basic facts preclude the Two State Solution as being a truly viable option. The first can largely be placed under the heading of “geography.” The basic premise behind any Two State Solution is, first, the recognition of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state, and second, the recognition of a sovereign and independent Palestine alongside. Yet within the very heart of the West Bank exists very large Jewish settlement blocks. Even the most dovish Israeli politicians acknowledge that these enclosed settlements, which now truly amount to mid-sized towns and cities, must be retained within Israel proper if and when a Palestinian state is declared. The problem is that these enclaves will have to be connected with one another and to the rest of Israel via secure roads, manned by Israeli police and military officials.

This means that, not only will Palestine continue to be divided geographically between the West Bank and Gaza; The West Bank itself will necessarily be completely fragmented to the point where Palestinians, in order to travel between one West Bank town to another, will have to pass through Israeli checkpoints. How this amounts to a sovereign Palestinian state, I cannot fathom. (All of this is aside from the very real interdependence of Israeli capital and Palestinian labor which, itself, necessitates a porous yet highly militarized border.)

In the words of the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, “The geopolitical condition that’s been created in '67 is irreversible. It cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," (60 Minutes interview, January 25th 2009)

It is also the case that, largely because of these same geographic concerns, any future Palestinian state will be a demilitarized one. This was, incidentally, also a feature of Obama’s high profile speech. Not to valorize militarism for its own sake, but it is far from clear what politicians really mean when they claim to support a Two State Solution. What does it mean to support a “sovereign” Palestine which is totally disarmed and geographically divided by a hostile Jewish state brimming with military might?

The second obstacle for any Two State Solution is far more intractable. This is basic demographics. Leaving aside the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, we can shortly expect a demographic tipping of the scales within Israel itself. As it stands, Arab Israeli passport holders make up about 20% of the total population, and the percentage of Israeli Jews has shrunk, by proportion, by about 1-2% each year since 1949. This means that, within one to two generations, it is possible that Jews will be the minority within the Jewish State.

Between 2020 and 2030, the population of Israeli Jews is expected to increase by less than 15%. This is compared to the Arab and non-Jewish populations which are expected to increase, in this same decade, by just over 26%. (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2010) Again, these figures pertain to “Israel proper” and would not be significantly affected by Israel ceding the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

Counterbalancing the “tipping point” with the Orthodox birthrate

The kicker is that the one plausible way for Israel to avoid this “tipping point” scenario is by relying upon the high birthrates of the ultra-Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities. Secular Zionists are, therefore, between a rock and a hard place. Over the next 20-40 years Israel will become increasingly Arab and, simultaneously, increasingly Orthodox Jewish. Therefore, even if Arabs and non-Jews do not make up 51% of the population within 50 years, it will nonetheless be the case that secular-minded Jews (traditionally the bedrock of Israeli, Jewish democracy) will find themselves to be the absolute minority far sooner than anyone has imagined. The prospects for Israel retaining its fragile “secular,” “Jewish,” and “democratic” identity in the long run are therefore negligible.

What must be understood is that these demographic shifts are not necessarily fatal for any given democracy; they are detrimental specifically to that chimerical creation that is a religio-ethnic democracy. A state which tries to maintain popular sovereignty, secular government, and equal representation under the law alongside a specifically determined ethnic and religious character intrinsically brings upon itself these tensions which, given the right circumstances, will tear it apart from the inside. Truly modern, secular states which disavow any predetermined ethnic identity are able to absorb diverse and even undemocratic populations, and then go on to secularize and democratize these very same groups.

“Progressive assimilation” is the order of the day.

However a country which is always staking its very existence upon certain demographic ratios necessarily cannot employ such a strategy. It will have to cast its lot with the most closed, culturally entrenched sectors of its own ruling, ethnic population. In doing so, it may for a while offset countervailing demographic pressures, but it ultimately cuts itself off from any sustainable model of secularization, growth, internal unity, and progress. In the end, it cannot even remain democratic.

That hard-liners and liberals continue to pitch mock battles with one another over the minutia and semantics of a Two State Solution is therefore the height of irresponsibility. For the very idea of “two states” is predicated, in the first place, upon the unworkable and premodern idea of “identitarian” government. In many ways the “Two State Solution” is, therefore, an oxymoron; for it solves nothing. It only conceals and maintains the basic contradictions a form of government which is, right now, propelling two peoples towards a very real and bloody conflict.

A Realist’s Utopia

What is needed now is a rational assessment of the situation in light of the given facts. When this is carried through, all signs point to a One State Solution. What was once the utopian dream of Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Albert Einstein, has now become the banner of hard-nosed realists.

Just last year, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (a member of the conservative Likud party) came out against any partition of the land of Israel, and instead proposed a bi-national solution to the current crisis. Speaking on the de facto inseparability of the Palestinian people from Israel, Rivlin commented, “It is a group with a highly defined shared national identity, and which will forever be, as a collective, an important and integral part of Israeli society." (Haaretz, “Israel official: Accepting Palestinians into Israel better than two states,” April 29th, 2009)

True, heads of state and diplomats rarely discuss this taboo option, at least in public. However, like all timely ideas, the One State Solution is gaining broad consensus just below the surface. A sure sign of this fact is that Israelis themselves have begun to see the inevitability of one state on both ends of the political spectrum. A recent poll showed a relatively equal level of support for a bi-national state amongst self-described “right-wing” and “left-wing” Israelis, 15% and 18% respectively. (March 2010 poll, The Israel Democracy Institute of the Guttman Center)

For an idea which is constantly derided as being the fantasy of only the most deluded, anarchic radicals, these are truly shocking numbers. They show that one-third of Israelis, broadly distributed across the political landscape, support a single, bi-national state with equal rights for all its citizens.

Today, the support for a trulysecular, bi-national state is no longer motivated by sheer idealism alone. This “utopian” solution is now the most realistic one as well. Speaking on the abovementioned poll, Dr. Ya’akov Shamir of the Israel Democracy Institute confirmed, “In Israel there is a group that believes that a bi-national state is inevitable because with Jewish and Palestinian communities so entangled in the West Bank, it will be almost impossible to divide them.” (The Jerusalem Post, “Palestinians increasingly back 1-state,” March 22nd, 2010) We may only add that this “indivisibility” is rapidly becoming the new reality on both sides of the 1967 line.

By Landon Frim - An instructor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and the chair of the Faith and Socialism Commission of the Socialist Party, USA

'We are running out of time for a two-state solution

2011-06-18T01:04:00.005-03:00

At the end of my conversation with Sari Nusseibeh at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, the highly respected president of Al-Quds University - and cosignatory of "The People's Choice," a peace plan that he formulated with former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon - told me he wouldn't be surprised if one of the Palestinian residents of the city ran for mayor in the municipal elections in November. The candidate would not run as a representative of Jerusalem per se, Nusseibeh stressed. Rather, he would be running on behalf of all Palestinians in the occupied territories.

"Why don't you do it?" I blurt out. The 59-year-old son of Anwar Nusseibeh, a Jordanian government minister, does not smile. "It's possible," says the professor of Islamic philosophy, who briefly replaced Faisal Husseini a few years ago as the top Palestinian official in East Jerusalem. "Anything is possible," he adds without batting an eyelid.

Nusseibeh's previous contention that the Oslo "house of cards" had begun to collapse was further confirmed by this week's report in Haaretz regarding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's latest peace offering (Israel would annex 7 percent of the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians with territory in the Negev, which would be equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank land; an agreement on the future of Jerusalem would be postponed to a later date; there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel; and the entire plan would be implemented after Hamas is removed from power in the Gaza Strip).

Nusseibeh says he knows full well what happens during negotiations - or, to be more specific, at does not happen. For over 20 years the Palestinian leadership has been trying to persuade their people to agree to a state along the June 4, 1967, lines, while Israel has been destroying that option, Nusseibeh explains, adding: "You cannot negotiate anything about final status if you don't talk about Jerusalem. Final status consists primarily, I believe, of Jerusalem and refugees. If you want to postpone Jerusalem, you postpone refugees. Really, you are not dealing with the problem. You have to discuss these issues, and that is exactly where the trade-off has to be made."

Is Sari Nusseibeh, the secular Palestinian, the symbol of moderation, Ayalon's guy, burying the two-state solution?

"I still favor a two-state solution and will continue to do so, but to the extent that you discover it's not practical anymore or that it's not going to happen, you start to think about what the alternatives are. I think that the feeling is there are two courses taking place that are opposed to one another. On one hand, there is what people are saying and thinking, on both sides. There is the sense that we are running out of time, that if we want a two-state solution, we need to implement it quickly.

"But on the other hand, if we are looking at what is happening on the ground, in Israel and the occupied territories, you see things happening in the opposite direction, as if they are not connected to reality. Thought is running in one direction, reality in the other."

Nusseibeh says the struggle for a one-state solution could take a form similar to some of the nonviolent struggles waged by oppressed ethnic groups in other places.

"We can fight for equal rights, rights of existence, return and equality, and we could take it slowly over the years and there could be a peaceful movement - like in South Africa," he notes. "I think one should maybe begin on the Palestinian side, to begin a debate, to reengage in the idea of one state."

'Jerusalem is out'

"We have failed in the last 15 years," Nusseibeh continues, "to create the world we wanted to create. We were supposed to be very clever; we convinced ourselves that we were going to be very democratic and clean, a model for the rest of the Arab world. And Jerusalem was supposed to be our capital. That's what we believed. But then it turned out that all of this was total rubbish. Jerusalem is out, all we have is Ramallah. And we lost Gaza. There is corruption and inefficiency. This is not what we vouched for when we sat back in the early 1980s and ideologized the two-state solution.

"It so happens that Fatah, in particular, the mainstream party and the only viable alternative to extremes on the left or on the right, now needs a strategy, an ideology. Because the ideology that Fatah has adopted over the last 15 years - a two-state solution - seems to be faltering, and with it, Fatah is faltering. So it is time maybe to rethink, to bring Fatah around to a new idea, the old-new idea, of one state. "

The recent "bulldozer terrorism" in Jerusalem did not highlight the difficulties inherent in a binational state model?

"These are isolated incidents, but they do reflect a major sickness in our Jerusalem Arab society. A sickness that has resulted in pressure, schizophrenia, the fact that these people speak Hebrew, and listen to Hebrew songs, go out with Israeli girlfriends while at the same time they live in Arab neighborhoods and under the influence of Muslim culture. There are contradictory forces pulling at them.

"What is the driving force behind a two-state solution? The fact that it seems more acceptable to a majority of people on both sides and therefore more applicable. The primary motivation is to minimize human suffering. This is what we should all be looking at. If there will be a one-state solution, it will not come today or tomorrow. It's a long, protracted thing, not the ideal solution. Unless, in an ideal world, people really want to be together, then it is the ideal solution. The best solution, the one that causes the least pain and that can actually be instrumental to a one-state solution, is to have peace now, and acceptance of one another on the basis of two states."

Is this an ultimatum?

"That's an ultimatum. Unless a major breakthrough happens by the end of this year, in my opinion we should start trying to strive for equality. Back in the 1980s, before the first intifada, I was saying there was schizophrenia in the body politic of the Palestinian people. It was like the head was going in one direction, which was the direction of seeking independence, national identity - but the body was slowly immersed in the Israeli system, and I said it can't last because it looks like it will snap. Either the body will join the head so that there will be a civil disobedience campaign, or the head will have to join the body, so that there will be a civil rights campaign, to become part of the Israeli system.

"Fifty, 100, 200 years down the road there will be some kind of conclusion. Sometime in the future - however far away this future is - I believe we'll be living at peace with one another, in some way or another. I am not sure how, whether in one state or two states, or in a confederation of states, but people finally will come to live at peace. In the meantime, we will simply cause pain to one another. It's tragic. It is very tragic, because we know we can do it now. That today it is possible with some guts, leadership, vision, we can make it happen today, we can reach a peaceful solution today. [The Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002] is a fantastic chance. The Palestinians have adopted it, they'll go with it all the way. It is a perfect chance. It doesn't even mention right of return. It is even better than the Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan, but I am willing to accept it."

'Dead money'

Asked why he - who realizes so well how complicated it will be to reach a fair and logical solution regarding Jerusalem - is opposed to Olmert's idea of postponing discussion on that issue, Nusseibeh says he hopes that the prime minister is not repeating the same mistake made by Ehud Barak at Camp David, and that the idea of postponement was broached strictly for public relations purposes.

"Because for Israel, however important Jerusalem may be, the primary factor is the Jewish character [of the state]. And however important the refugees might be, what is more important for the Palestinians and Muslims is Jerusalem. It is the issue over which the most extremist of refugees will be willing to make a sacrifice. Let's hope this is not where [Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] are disagreeing. If that is what they're disagreeing about, then there's no hope. We have to do everything now, we have to put everything on the table.

"The facts on the ground are making [the situation] irreversible," Nusseibeh warns. "Take the Clinton parameters - Palestinian neighborhoods are Palestinian sovereignty, Jewish neighborhoods are Jewish sovereignty. They are acceptable in principle, but with realities on the ground, like the expulsion of Arab families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the inhabitation of those areas by Jewish settlers, it's going to be unacceptable on a practical level. That's why we don't have time."

You ruffled some feathers among the Palestinian leadership when you recently asked the Europeans to halt financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Someone even wondered whether you would be willing to give up the aid provided for Al-Quds University.

"Ramallah's reaction was a bit worried. They called me a few times, a bit worried."

Nusseibeh adds that the PA is still dogged by corruption - different from the corruption of which Olmert is accused - whereby donor states subsidize thousands of salaried employees at nonprofit organizations. This creates what he sees as an unhealthy dependency on foreign entities.

"We have a terrible situation. Our political bible, our platform, our moral values - we need to be brought together again. If not for creating a state, then for our own sanity and for own values as a people. Apart from in Ramallah, everybody is living under very bad conditions. The occupation is terrible. The siege is everywhere. Pressure. As it is, the Europeans are financing the occupation. And the Europeans are happy, because they feel they're doing something, it cleans their conscience. And the Israelis are happy because they're not paying for it. And the Palestinians are happy because they are getting their wages paid. It keeps the economy going, and people are getting complacent about it. It's dead money [going] after dead money."

Nusseibeh mentions the recent meeting he had with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the British consulate in Jerusalem, together with four other Palestinians, during which the premier stated he would like to assume a role in the peace process more central than that of a cash register. "I said, I want to tell you what you can do to transform yourself from a payer into a player: Make your money payments conditional on tangible progress in the peace process."

Not long ago, the professor continues, "I was in Brussels. I gave a talk and I said to the Europeans: If you want to pass on money, do it only on the condition we build a state, in which case it makes sense for you to spend money to build us an international airport. But if in the end there isn't going to be an independent Palestinian state, why waste your money? Waste your money, if you need to, on integrating us into Israeli society. Makes more sense. Pay the money for us to become part of Israel, to have equal rights. Raise our level of education, bring our standards of living up. But to have the PA taking all this money, creating all this debt, makes no sense. Maybe the Europeans should link the aid they are giving us to real progress in peace talks, so that both the Israelis and the Palestinians will be shocked out of their complacency, or lack of commitment."

What do you make of the growing support among Palestinians for the dismantlement of the PA?

"The PA has no use. If we fail to reach a peace agreement by the end of this year, I believe it would be best to go back to the period when we were living happily under occupation. We had a small civil administration, they were paying back some $20 million a year to the Israeli treasury, so they were making money off us. Today, we are creating, year after year, bigger deficits. We are spending billions, we have 160,000 employees, half of them are security personnel, who give us no security whatsoever, we are spending masses of money on guns, which we only use against each other and which provide us no security. The whole thing is a mess."

Nusseibeh says that to this day, the Palestinians have opposed taking part in the Jerusalem municipal elections because they feared doing so would sever the link between Jerusalem's Arabs and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, given the diminishing likelihood of a two-state solution, perhaps it is time for the Palestinians to reconsider.

"People in Jerusalem - why should they attach themselves to the Muqata, to Ramallah? There is no reason. There's nothing. The municipal election in Jerusalem [could serve as a launching point for seeking equal rights in a binational state]. We begin with Jerusalem, not as a separate part, but as a spearhead of the entire Palestinian body. Why not? Why not turn the weakness into a strength?

Are you disappointed by the Israeli peace camp? Did your partner, Ami Ayalon, who joined the same government you now accuse of distancing itself from your proposal, betray you?

"I respect Ami Ayalon. He is a very honest person, that is something that has always attracted me to him. It is not a betrayal of me personally. I look upon it as the ultimate submission by the individual to the wheels of history. You reach the point where you feel no longer able to do what you want, to steer the wheels in the direction you want them to go. And you submit, and become a part of the machine. So it's not really a betrayal. It's rather an expression of weakness. I am sad more than surprised. I recognize it as part of human weakness.

"I was still hoping because, before he went to the Labor Party, he came and spoke to me. I like this about him. I knew what he was doing. People were pushing him for a long time, trying to get him into the system, and he resisted. But then at one stage, I think he made up his mind: 'Maybe I can lead the Labor Party, and then this is the best place for me to be.' I said, fine, do it. I was unhappy that ... he became marginalized as minister without portfolio."

Nusseibeh says he lost touch with Ayalon since the latter became a minister.

Asked if Abbas would be able to muster Palestinian support for an agreement like "The People's Choice," Nusseibeh says both the Palestinian president and Olmert need to courageously take on their respective opposition camps. For instance, if Abbas "would come to the Palestinian people and say, 'I initialed such a document. I want to dissolve the legislative council and run for election and this is going to be my political platform. Not only for me as a president, but also as leader of Fatah.' Let us assume that he does this and then he creates a debate in our society. It will be a very far-reaching, democratic debate, in which he will be looked upon as presenting his project. [This would] mark the beginning of a process, of a struggle.

"I believe that on Israeli side, Olmert could do the same. We don't know whether both leaders will be reelected, but it's worth doing, even if they're not, because at least we know we've given this peace agreement a chance."

Ami Ayalon says, in response: "I agree with Sari Nusseibeh that time is running out for the two-state solution. He voices the frustration and desperation of the Palestinians, and we have to consider that. If a man like him, a son of a Palestinian refugee who relinquished his right of return and was bodily attacked because of it, comes to the conclusion that the two-state solution is no longer an option, it means that the whole pragmatic Palestinian approach is crumbling.

"I share his view that Olmert missed a chance to get an agreement due to efforts to insure his own political survival. The Labor Party will not succeed in getting back in power by attacking the other parties, but only by raising the common banner of security and political agreements."

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent - 08.16.2008