Israel, the Palestinians, and the one-state illusion. By Jeremy Ben-Ami. Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2013.
Rethinking the Two-State Solution. By Neve Gordon. NJBR, October 1, 2013.
Bibi in 1989 Supported Palestinian Mass Expulsions. By Richard Silverstein. Tikun Olam, January 13, 2011.
Ben-Ami:
The
world is far too familiar with the seemingly intractable problem: Jews and
Palestinians who live in the same small stretch of land between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean Sea and, despite decades of trying to divide the
land into two independent states, seem incapable of agreeing on how to do it.
Some progressive activists, pundits and political scientists are so frustrated
by that failure that they now offer an alternative: Stop trying to divide what
can’t be divided and start figuring out how to live together as one big, happy
family in one binational state.
It’s
easy to see why this idea has some superficial attraction, especially for
American liberals who have become used to lauding the development in our own
nation of an increasingly multiethnic, multicultural society. If we all manage
to get along here in the United States, surely Israelis and Palestinians could
get along just fine in some imaginary singular state — call it “Israelistine.”
Political
scientists even have their own word for such an arrangement — “consociationalism.”
It borrows heavily from the positive experience of solving the conflict in
Northern Ireland. They imagine Israelis and Palestinians abandoning their
deep-rooted yearning to control their own destinies in favor of an arrangement
in which each would respect the other side's identity and ethos, including
linguistic diversity, culture and religion.
Unfortunately,
this concept has no connection to reality in today’s Middle East.
The
idealistic roots of this longing for coexistence run deep in Western history
and find expression, for instance, in Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” and its
ringing call for all men to become brothers. Of course, Schiller’s poem was
penned just before the French Revolution, the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars.
But a
quick review of political trends around the world shows that we’re living a
very different reality. The former Yugoslavia split into seven nations amid a
frenzy of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing; French- and Flemish-speaking Belgians
are barely on speaking terms; Catalans are joining hands in a human chain 250
miles long to demand a split from Spain; Czechs and Slovaks agreed to go their
separate ways. Even the Scots will get to vote soon on whether to leave the
United Kingdom.
And
then there is the Middle East, where the fabric of multinational coexistence,
enforced for centuries by the Ottomans and more recently by military strongmen,
is violently unraveling before our eyes.
Lebanon
is divided among Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze and barely hanging
together. Iraq remains tormented by bloody terrorist attacks. Egypt’s Coptic
minority is a frequent target of attacks, and Syria has disintegrated into
all-out civil war.
A
two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians offers the two sides a way to
avoid such a fate. It’s the only way to give them both what they want: national
self-determination. That is why both sides keep returning to the negotiating
table.
Seeking
a two-state solution is not idealism — it’s intensely practical. It simply
recognizes that these peoples both crave independent states in which they can
find full expression of their national identities.
For
Jews, it’s a matter of having one place in the world where they are not the
minority. It’s a haven, yes, but more than that, it’s a place where the
national language is Hebrew, where Jewish festivals are celebrated as state
holidays, where the Jewish Sabbath is observed and where a national identity
for the Jewish people can be forged.
For
Palestinians, it’s a matter of moving beyond decades of exile, of being
strangers and often refugees in other people's lands, of taking control of a
territory of their own and forging their own future free of interference from
others.
We
ought to be intensely thankful that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians
agree on the solution to the problem and have vowed to bring it about
peacefully. When all around them they see chaos and inhumanity, when an entire
region has fallen into an abyss of barbarism, their negotiations, rebooted in
the last few months, offer a different paradigm much closer to the example of
the Czechs and Slovaks than to the Serbs and Bosnians.
Make no
mistake: Getting there is going to be tough. The parties need all the help and
support they can get from the United States and the rest of the international
community. They need imaginative mediation and patient diplomacy backed by firm
U.S. leadership. They may well require the resolve of an American president
willing to step in at the right moment with a plan that both sides can accept.
What
nobody needs are delusional visions of one-state fantasists whose remedies have
no connection with the real world. We live in an era of nation states and,
unfortunately, also in an era of ethnic wars. We seem to be becoming more
tribal and more sectarian, not less. We may feel that this is not a good thing,
but it is reality.
The
two-state solution offers a way to avoid more war and more conflict between
Israelis and Palestinians. As long as it remains viable, we should all be
working as hard as we can to make it a reality.
What Obama Doesn’t Get About U.S. Power. By Bruce Thornton. Real Clear World, October 5, 2013. Also at Defining Ideas.
