I’m afraid this is rather a long post – just under 3,000 words –which may tax some readers’ stamina, and indeed patience. Doubtless a bit more incisive editing might have reduced the word count, but the subject I was aiming at – the One State idea as a potentially positive approach to the Palestine/Israel impasse – seemed to me to require, at least in outline, a critique of the optimistically titled Two State ‘solution’. One needs to clear the ground before it can be built on.
Almost without exception my posts on Palestine/Israel have not been sunny fare. They’ve pointed to the multiple sufferings – killings, woundings, home demolitions, internal displacements, child detentions, racist policies and enactments – endured, and resisted, by Palestinians, child, man, woman. All this and more, daily.
But mere describing and reporting – imperatives not to be shirked – of themselves offer no pathway to remediation, nor strategy towards a wished for, just, future. And while the legendary steadfastness – Samud – of Palestinians is and will be a prerequisite underpinning any strategy directed towards creating such a just outcome, it is only a prerequisite, not a strategy in itself.
One State/Two State
Jeff Harper,[1] in his latest book ‘Decolonising Israel, Liberating Palestine’, makes the point there needs to be a wished-for, articulated endgame if progress towards a durable political settlement to the Palestine/Israel impasse is to be achieved. For reasons that will be outlined below, the much-touted two State ‘solution’ is not that endgame.
A wished-for endgame can only come to fruition in the context and pursuit of a political strategy. Samud and resistance are necessary, but of themselves not future-oriented strategies. I want, therefore, in this post to point to a potential ‘endgame’ that historically had, and perhaps now has, greater credibility than commonly supposed. It is the One State idea: a unified, democratic State of equal citizenship and rights for all between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Before proceeding, however, it is necessary to dispose of a different proposed endgame, one that for some time had apparent credence, but that time, almost certainly, has passed. I speak of the now entirely notional ‘Two State Solution’ proposed, indeed promoted, as the way to resolve the Palestine/Israel conundrum.
The ‘solution’ is in fact snake oil, not cure. At first blush it suggests a sense of fairness, the title ‘two states’ implying a symmetry between the gains and losses that would be borne by Israelis and Palestinians alike. All in pursuit of the ‘solution’. But there is no symmetry here, still less fairness. Proposals for the Palestinian State require it to accept but 22% of historic Palestine. Such a State would be almost entirely dependent on a dominant Israel, which has not hitherto displayed any intention of supporting a truly independent Palestinian state.
It’s true that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) did in fact come to accept the two State outcome, this in 1988. Having by that time endured twenty-one years of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, with an International Community, so called, largely in support of the proposal, one can see that weariness, coupled with pressure by international funders, beget a form of pragmaticism so that, in 1988, a two State outcome was formally endorsed by the PLO, though never thus far achieved.
Bernard Spiegal 