Update 4/3/2007:
Olmert Calls for Peace Conference, Rejects Right of Return - In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called for a regional peace conference with Arab leaders. The call comes on the heals of last week’s renewed peace offer from the Arab League. The deal would give Israel full recognition in return for the withdrawal from all of the Occupied Territories and a just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees. Olmert’s invitation came days after he said Israel would never accept any responsibility for the refugees nor allow even a single Palestinian to return to their homes inside Israel’s borders. (article)
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Original Post 2/20/2007:
Palestinians become Israelis. Gain the right to vote. Become the majority in no time.
(TIME) There is now a timetable problem: as a top Arab diplomat put it to me recently, if Rice does not pull a rabbit out of her hat, it may be six years before another major diplomatic effort is made to resolve the dispute. That is assuming that American mediation is essential, and that the next U.S. president will take his/her time, as American presidents have usually done, before getting too embroiled in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In six years, Palestinians may have tired of seeking a negotiated solution, even if Fatah is still around to argue for it.
Ehud Olmert had this to say when he was deputy prime minister under Sharon:
"We are approaching the point where more and more Palestinians will say: 'We have been won over. We agree with Liberman. There is no room for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All that we want is the right to vote.' The day they do that, is the day we lose everything. Even when they carry out terror, it is very difficult for us to persuade the world of the justice of our cause. We see this on a daily basis. All the more so when there is only one demand: an equal right to vote. The thought that the struggle against us will be headed by liberal Jewish organizations who shouldered the burden of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa scares me."
The idea of reverting to a one-state solution has been broached inside Fatah circles going back to at least the first Gulf War. I recall sitting in a coffee shop in East Jerusalem with the late Faisal Husseini, whose father Abdul Khader had died leading Palestinians in the 1948 war. He mentioned to me that the PLO may have made a mistake waging an armed struggle for the "liberation" of all of Palestine. He said they may have done much better after Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 by simply agitating for the right to be Israeli citizens and vote in Israel. In time, he explained, Arabs would be in the majority and Israel would cease to exist. Mandela had just been freed in South Africa and I think Mandela's one-state approach was attracting Husseini's attention.
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5 comments:
Realistically speaking, Israel/Palestine has been a de facto "one state" since 1967 - forty years in June - under the complete control of the Israeli Jewish population. There are no viable "two state solutions" on the table at all, just various schemes modelled on either the old Apartheid "Bantustans" or the East European ghettos and neither of these options are sustainable.
Ultimately, the options for a sustainable resolution come down to ethnic cleansing or one democratic secular state for all its people despite religion or ethnicity. While the ethnic cleansing notion has grown in popularity among the Israeli Right, even if ignores the ethical and moral problems, it really isn't a practical possibility for a number of pragmatic reasons. By default, the ultimate resolution will be one state for all its people.
For more reading of diverse views of the matter, see One State Online Bibliography Project @ http://www.onestate.org
How can the displacement of people, the taking of another's land be a good thing to people who know about genocide and persecution? I just don't understand it. Why isn't there empathy for the Palestinian people? They didn't ask for or cause the Holocaust. Yet they have been punished for it.
In acknowledging the pain Palestinians have experience, we don't have to dismiss the horrors the Jewish people faced in the Holocaust. But until Westerners can acknowledge that the Palestinians are victims of this situation too, there can be no real discussion.
This is an interesting link
In my opinion, and also practically speaking, a 'one-state solution' is highly unlikely. The Jewish people, even those on the Left, will not surrender their state to a Palestinian majority, because to do so would mean surrendering the 'Jewishness' of that state.
Ralph Bunche was working on a two-state solution before he brokered the 'peace' accord, but it was sabotaged, mainly by Zionist militants, before it could get off the ground.
Anonymous is right, there are no viable two-state solutions on the table right now, but given the circumstances, a one-state solution is unrealistic. It sounds nice in theory, but I have never heard any proposal regarding one state that both sides could realistically agree too.
In the current climate, probably 'the best we can achieve is a two state solution.
right about now they both seem equally unlikely.
but what about reports like this?
i guess it begs the question: would you be Mandela or Biko?
it's hard to answer when you really put yourself in those shoes.
UN Report Compares Israel's Actions to Apartheid South Africa
A new United Nations report has compared Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza to apartheid South Africa. A South African attorney named john Dugard wrote the report for the UN Human Rights Council. The 24-page report criticizes Israel for demolishing the homes of Palestinians; for restricting the movement of Palestinians; and for giving preferential treatment to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Dugard said "Israel's laws and practices in the Occupied Palestinian territories certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." The Guardian newspaper reports Dugard's comments represents some of the most forceful criticism from the UN of Israel's 40-year occupation.
That U.N. report comparing Israel-Palestine to South Africa is deep!
I mean put yourself in that situation... there are essentially only a few political approaches left it seems. This idea of a one-state goal, where Palestinians might petition the militia elements to stand down so they can petition to have their rights recognized civilly by the dominant force of the land -- the Israeli government/military.
Or there is the idea that a two-state goal might be achieved, in which a Palestine and Israel could exist through an acceptance of boarders respected by both sides. But like that article you linked to suggests the actual willingness of Israel to do this the real way is pretty much none with the more extreme elements in control.
So basically, Israel doesn't seem likely to do either the one-state or the two-state solution right now.
The South Africa comparison is so on point though in that it allows one from the outside to better visualize the situation and place it in a more accurate context.
Anyway, I thought about the differences in approaches that leaders have taken historically. And since the South African comparison was made, what would someone like Nelson Mandela be proposing? And what might someone like Steve Biko be proposing?
In South Africa there were and are similar ideological differences that guide people's views. The multiracial view versus the black consciousness movement that arose.
What's always interesting to me is how people come to their views and beliefs.
Blackness is a reactionary identity. But it is a necessary one as long as Whiteness is on the attack.
The multiracial approach might be the ideal but in South Africa it was not realistic at first (and is still very shady in its implementation despite the celebration of it).
There was no way that the apartheid regime was going to fall unless the people took a polar-opposite militant/nationalist/solidarity stance.
The Negritude Movement of French-speaking colonies was an ideological tool constructed with the purpose of creating solidarity among members of the African diaspora fighting the same or similar political and intellectual domination by Europeans.
The Black Power Movement of the USA had similar reasons for its creation. As did the Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa.
Jean Paul-Sarte thought that negritude was a sort of "anti-racist racism" that was a needed tool to get to the final goal of racial unity, if ever.
In other words, there could not even possibly be an end of racism until "Black", the opposite of "White", was created and strengthened to bring the end to them both.
It's almost a Christ-like story. Something is born in order to eliminate a sickness on earth. But that thing that is to do so much good must also die because it too does not belong on earth except to serve its purpose.
Then there's this idea of Polyculturalism that you mentioned which suggests that one can find multiple identities, and in fact that we all have them anyway.
But even with that, in the face of an immediate threat, I have to say that one is pressed to prioritize identities in order to defend either herself or her family.
So I look at Israel-Palestine and I wonder these same thoughts. If I were Palestinian, who would I be? Would I be for a non-threatening approach that tolerates the apartheid-like conditions for now, by remaining peaceful, in hope that a deal can be worked out somehow?
Or would I be too hurt to wait? And would I take a stance of self-defense by any means necessary?
Having hope in a real negotiation from Israel is much more difficult than in South Africa too. Cause Israel is much stronger than the Apartheid regime in South Africa like that article you linked to suggested.
So what options are left? When backed into that type of corner, where the one-state approach seems impossible and the two-state approach seems impossible, there's not much else to do except sacrifice your families rights or fight with whatever weapons you can find.
Unfortunately non-violence isn't a realistic weapon here.
It was in South Africa and even Steve Biko used it as a tool when it could be effective, because they had a majority of black people in that country and the world couldn't let a tiny minority slaughter the entire country even though the whites had the military advantage there.
But in Israel as that article pointed out, they have both a numerical advantage and the international support behind the idea of anti-antisemitism. A non-violent protest won't get you much under those conditions.
Even in the USA non-violence worked because you had a government and society that at least when pushed into an embarrassing moral dilemma, compiled with white-guilt, would at least stop massacring people long enough for the non-violent protests and boycotts to function.
Man I can only imagine.
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