A drive east of the Green Line suggests the two-state solution is moot. Jewish-only roads slice through the hills. The separation barrier winds through the West Bank, choking Palestinian villages. Settlements are lodged in the land's throat.
Dr. Neve Gordon, author of the book Israel's Occupation comments, "The one-state solution is already on the ground, in the sense that close to half a million Israeli Jews currently live in the area occupied by the [Israeli] army. They're enmeshed within the Palestinian population."
While the body of one state is here, the spirit isn't. The current system, according to Dr. Gordon, is a democracy for Jews and an apartheid regime for Palestinians -- different from that of South Africa, but functioning in a similar way.
"The question is whether there can be a separation," Dr. Gordon says, pointing to the argument made by former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, who called the West Bank an egg that can't be unscrambled.
And even if Israel could undo some of the mess, the proverbial finger Netanyahu recently gave the Americans suggests that the government has another agenda.
"I think what's clear is that there is no intention on the part of the Israeli government to support a two-state solution," Dr. Gordon says. "The borders, the airspace, all remain under Israeli control. What Netanyahu means when he says two states is not a state -- it's a municipality [for Palestinians] to collect their own garbage... What Netanyahu is supporting is a deepening of [settlements and the occupation] while talking about two states."
To continue to advocate for a two-state solution, Dr. Gordon explains, is to support Netanyahu and his map for an unacknowledged, de facto single state that oppresses Palestinian residents.
Dr. Gordon is a newcomer to the one state camp. In a February interview with Chicago Public Radio, he explained why he changed his position, "I fear the two-state solution is a way of perpetuating the status quo... We might need to resist for strategic reasons at this moment in history..."
Critics of the one-state solution have remarked that it's unrealistic at best, bloody at worst. But the occupation has, itself, been a bloody enterprise for both sides of the conflict. Over 5000 Palestinians died during the Second Intifada. On the Israeli side there were approximately 1000 deaths.
And the violence of the occupation goes on. "The violence is not seen and [it is] normalized. As long as the situation continues and the status quo continues, that continues."
Regarding the possibility of bloodshed in the event that one-state was established, Dr. Gordon remarks, "We don't know what type of model would be adopted, whether it will be Belgium or Lebanon. We don't know what type of model or what type of resistance what come about."
If Israel and Palestine formed a country--spanning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea--Dr. Uriel Abulof, an assistant professor in Tel Aviv University's Department of Political Science, sees two options. "There is the republican model, the American one, which is a state of all its citizens. There is no ethnic or religious undertone to it." In such a state, ideally, "constitutional patriotism" comes first.
The second option would be a bi-national state which, Dr. Abulof says, "fuses the existence of different nationalities within it. It accepts the fact that peoples' prime alliance are with their separate nations--in our case, Jews and Arabs, in the case of Belgium, the Flemish and the Walloons." The two groups retain their own nations but share a state which grants rights and citizenship to all.
"It gives special, equal place for the two nations to thrive," he comments.
"The [latter model] was the one advocated by the very early peace groups that in the 1920s and 1930s were saying we are wrong, we are morally wrong if we would like to impose our notion of Jewish polity on the Arab people," Dr. Abulof says. A tremendous majority of the early Zionists rejected this idea, but Dr. Abulof feels there are more people willing to consider it today.
However scrambled the egg is Dr. Abulof says that the two-state solution is still viable. But the prospects seem to be getting dimmer.
Is one state the only realistic solution?
"Even in a situation in which Israel is being highly sanctioned by the international community, I can't see that it will agree to a one-state solution because of the belief that in a one-state solution there will be no democracy. There will be a two state solution. But there is the question: how much blood will be shed..."
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So the situation is, between the Med Sea and the Jordan river are about 5 million Jews and about 5 million Muslims, with the Jews having all the power and wealth and the Muslims being severely oppressed.
The Muslims are NOT going anywhere, so what comes next?
History clearly shows that the Muslims can not be oppressed forever. History shows that power is constantly shifting, which means that while Jews may have power today, it is ordained that they will not have it some time in the future, then what?
Just as the Jews will lose power some time in the future, the US is rapidly losing power today (Israel is causing a lot of this). Once the US is powerless to protect Israel, then what? Who will provide Israel with the resources to hold of the Muslim armies?
If 5000 years of history are any indication, Israel is not long for this world. It is more a matter of when, not if, Israel will cease to exist.
It is such a waste because if Israel would just give up lots of land, water and cash to the Arabs, it could probably exist for
If Fayyad's plan to declare statehood within 2 years succeeds and it is recognised - and there are indications from certain EU nations it will be - then 500,000 settlers will suddenly find themselves living in the State of Palestine. At that point they would have the choice to return to Israel or become permanent citizens of Palestine. Given that the settlers tend towards extremism I can't see too many sticking around. I think it would be useful if some did - there are Israeli arabs so why shouldn't there be Palestinian jews?
On your last paragraph, you're wrong. Israel doesn't have to give up anything. It needs to conform to Int'l Law, that means withdrawing to June 4 1967 borders. All that land on which the settlements are built, and the water resources that Israel diverts to the settlers - they belong to the Palestinians. You can't give up something that isn't yours in the first place.
Israeli apologists like to bang on about the generous offers made by Israel and rejected by the Palestinians but nothing could be further from the truth. Because Israel has overwhelming military power it hasn't ever made a single concession in negotiations, it is always Israel dictating what it will give back to the Palestinians, though Israel in fact it is entitled to none of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Israel negotiates from the position "what we want", not "what we are entitled to under Int'l Law".
At the end of six months, if the status quo still remains, then we start looking into Article V of the NATO Charter, into RICO, into other appropriate steps to take to effect humane policy.
Result? The Middle East stops being a proto-nuclear tinderbox; al-Quada and the other terrorist orgs lose a life-giving source of propaganda, enlistment and resources; our troops can come home from Afghanistan and Iraq in months or years instead of decades or centuries; and Pakistan — the only indisputably nuclear power in the Islamic world — can get a handle on the existential threats that IT faces, retaining control of said nukes.
A win-win situation for everybody, except those irrevocably welded to hasbara, of course.... and nobody should think of shedding a tear for them. They've already stolen enough water.
Jordan was created on 78% of Palestine as the other 'half' of the two state solution agreed by King Feisal and Weizmann in 1919. The Paris agreement split Palestine in two along the Hejaz railway.
But the incoming Hashemites wanted even more land than agreed. Churchill as British Foreign Minister agreed to this addition even though it contradicted the Mandate whose ink was not yet dry!
Had oil not been found in Arabia the history of the middle east would have been entirely different and almost certainly peaceful.