The 'One-state Solution' Only Stokes Palestinians Self-Delusion
In a New York Times op-ed, Robert Malley, who served as President Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israel Affairs and Palestinian Hussein Agha, in his New York Times oped "The Two State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything" suggests that the "two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored." He continues:
"To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948... the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews...As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel".
Withdrawal to pre- 1967 borders won't suffice for the Palestinians, the authors suggest we must revisit the Arab state of mind in 1948, "to bring the conflict back to its historical roots, distill its political essence and touch its raw emotional core."
Here's a snapshot of six decades ago. For the emerging Arab nation states, many themselves constituted by the stroke of a French or British pen, there was dismay and anger that the international community had recognized a Jewish state alongside Trans Jordan; bewilderment over how the Jewish people-in three short years managed to step out of the black hole of Genocide onto the world stage; wholesale denial of the Jews' 3000 year attachment to the promised land; insistence that "Israel" was forced upon the Arab world because of Europe's guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. The Arab Street was whipped into frenzy with calls to finish Hitler's vision by driving Holocaust survivors and the 600,000- strong pre-WWII Jewish population into the sea. Local Arabs were urged to leave 'for a few weeks' as seven Arab armies were dispatched to destroy the fledgling Jewish state.
The other narrative? Despite British White Papers and blockades, Jews--from Yemen and Iraq, to Poland, France and Morocco, would not be deterred from returning to the only land they never really left. For this land-one that Palestinian children are still taught never housed David's Palace or Solomon's Temple, whose walls they are told never echoed the prophetic calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah-was and is the Jewish People's once and future homeland.
Sixty years, five wars, two intifadas, scuds, suicide bombers and 8,000 kassam rockets later, the leader of Israel's Right, Prime Minister Netanyahu, declared his readiness for a two- state solution, with the caveat that Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish State. Not so fast, warn Malley and Agha: In the eyes of the Palestinians, "to accept Israel as a Jewish State would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy."
In fact the "no to side-by-side- Jewish and a Palestinian states" chorus has some powerful voices committed to a solution that would at once solve Palestinian grievances by erasing the historic error of Zionism.
There's Professor Tony Judt's who declares that Israel, is "bad for the Jews," and that ultimately there must be a single Palestinian state, from which Jews either depart or stay as a "protected" minority. The One-State solution was the subject of an academic conference recently in Toronto. First columns in the New York Review of Books and now a New York Times op-ed that does nothing to debunk Palestinian self-delusions.
Why no peace? Apparently, it's not because Fatah's National Assembly and Hamas serially deny the legitimacy of today's Jews and 3,000 years of Jewish continuity in the Holy Land. Why no Palestinian State? It's not because Fatah and Hamas' unending civil war that makes a mockery of the idea of democratic Palestinian self-government. Its not because President Mahmoud Abbas, for the past five years has been unable to even set foot in the largest city in his domain-Gaza- for fear of assassination.
No, the authors suggest, it is Israel's very existence that is the real obstacle. For the Palestinian national movement, they insist remains "above all, a refugee movement"-rooted in the imperative of rectifying the aspirations of Palestinians (or their ancestors) displaced in 1948. " In other words, the Jewish state has to be rolled back beyond the 1967 borders-beyond even the 1948 borders-until it becomes, not even a postage stamp but a historic error buried beneath a new Arab or Muslim state.
This delusionary vision may have received an unintended boost from President Obama's unfortunate omission in his Cairo address of any recognition that Israel has legitimate claims to existence that predate the Holocaust. Who then will finally tell the Palestinians that Israel's kings did not reign in Norway, her prophets did not preach in Pakistan and Jesus of Nazareth did not walk in the shadow of Madrid's Holy Temple.
To advance his Mideast agenda President Obama should go to Israel, and publicly put an end the One-state charade. He should declare America has one more 'change we can believe in'--that "No nation should ever again be stripped of its identity", especially the Jewish people that has suffered and struggled for thousands of years to cling to its national destiny. And Europe, whose societies would be thrown into chaos if the "right of return" for refugees was ever applied to their nations should tell the Palestinians-"Time to put your 'Mediterranean to the Jordan vision on a diet and get on with the business of peaceful nation building."
Israel is not 1938 Czechoslovakia; it can defend itself and has no intention of quietly committing suicide. There will be no Munich II. So until the Palestinians and the elite undertakers eager to bury the Jewish state finally recognize the legitimate national aspirations of 5.7 million Jews, there may not be peace, but there will always be an Israel.
This essay was co-authored with Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Follow Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/simonwiesenthal
Letters to the Editor - The Two-State Solution - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Contributors - The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything ...
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It is Israels delusion to not see the one-state solution is coming. Israel is leaving no other option. The world will side with one-state as it did in South Africa. Image black South Africans still living in apartheid. No you can't.
The Israelis are not acting "badly." They are acting correctly. They are defending their land and their borders. Also, when they fight to defend themselves they generally do it much more humanely and ethically than most other nations at war.
Of course, Moderntimes1, who also answered you, is really correct. All the Middle Eastern nations, in fact all nations, tend to act in their own self interest. But in general I think that Israel was established in an ethical manner and that she has defended herself ethically and fairly, especially in comparison to standards which prevail in that region. If an additional state of Palestine could actually be established successfully I would be all for it even though it would, in my view, be rewarding the Arabs for decades of terrible behavior.
Query:
You seem to have no objections for rewarding Israel for its Zionist terrorism campaigns -- which is why Great Britain and the UN even folded on the issue at all. Why the double standard?
JanetBW posted:"in your own word tell me exactly why the Palestinians should have said yes to the partition.
Talking about a soft pitch as American say.
Explaining:
Because in 2009 Palestinian Arabs can only dream about a deal they could've had in 1947. And save themselves almost a century of dashed hopes. But that deal is gone forever. Don't argue. It is. There will be no Saldin Jr, no victory by mass breeding
"Never missing opportunity to miss an opportunit
"Because in 2009 Palestinian Arabs can only dream about a deal they could've had in 1947. "
Palestinians were all too aware that the ethnic cleansing had begun and was not about to be halted by partition:
"after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of the Palestine" - David Ben Gurion, (The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities by Simha Flapan, p. 22)
"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
-- Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
Palestinian Arabs tried in every conceivable way to defeat the Jews. They supported every dictator and despot from Nasser to Saddam, from Stalin to WW2 Germany to Ayatollah Khomeini.
All in vain.
When that didn't work they tuned to international terror from Munch Olympics to Entebbe etc. All in vain.
Meanwhile Israel was getting stronger and more prosperous.
And after innumerable defeats many still have troulbe absorbing a simple lesson-- you can get more from Israelis by civil behavior then savagery.
Case in point: Despite decades of vicious fighting, the ONLY way Arafat was able to enter Israel and territories is thru' the goodwill of Israeli electorate. He COUlD've done it decades ago, but that's different story.
Now the Palestinains posting here are still screaming revenge. The results will be obvious. See 1947-2009.
Typically empty Zionist bravado.
Facts:
Egypt pushed the israelis back away from the Suez canal by military force, not random acts of "terror."
The intifada seriously shook confidence in Israel as a safe place to live. More Jews are leaving Israel, to this day, than are moving in, despite The Wall -- the world's first ghetto wall built by ghetto inhabitants.
The Palestinians reacted to the corrupt Arafat by electing the much more organized and effective Hamas.
The IDF was badly mauled in the 2006 Lebanese incursion.
The IDF failed to seriously damage Hamas in Gaza.
Israel faces hostile and ever more skilled insurgents on its northern and southern borders, too close to use its nuclear weapons and too deeply entrenched to uproot without incurring unacceptable casualties.
Much of its security rests with a very unpopular government in Egypt.
Jews are starting to fight each other in Israel over religious divisions, crime is rising and its government is riven with scandals.
Palestinians will eventually massively outnumber Jews in the area.
Look up the word "totentanz" -- it's the real Israeli national anthem.
Good summary arvay but you left out the fact that without 12 billion in charity and aid per annum, Israel is an economic basket-case.
Blind and uncritical support for Israel has, imo, been one of the worst chapters in modern American history. It makes us complicit in war crimes, policies of collective punishment, apartheid and -- when you get down to it - the murderous genocide of the Palestinian people.
This is hilarious.
Fist, the leading opponent of the two-state solution is -- the new government of Israel. Netenyahu's mumbled endorsement of a polka-dot, non-viable entity notwithstanding.
But it gets better!
"Despite British White Papers and blockades, Jews--from Yemen and Iraq, to Poland, France and Morocco, would not be deterred from returning to the only land they never really left. "
Leaving aside for the moment the concept of "never really leaving" a place you were not born in, here are some facts:
The Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem) will contain 4.4 million Palestinians in 2010, but 10 million by the centennial of the Jewish state in 2048. Palestinians in the occupied territories alone will equal the population of Israel, and Israel's population of 10 million will itself be about 30 percent Arab. By mid-century, Palestinians west of the Jordan will outnumber Israeli Jews two to one.
Since 2007, more Jews have left Israel than have come in. Some 700,000 to 1 million Israeli Jews live abroad, and a 2007 poll reportedly found that nearly one-half of all young people are considering leaving.
Translation: there are not enough Jews in the world to make Israel a viable, Jewish state. Sixty years of delusion have led to -- nothing, except fifty years from now there may be a few more blondes in the region.
The only alternative, short of catastrophe, is a single democratic state that embraces both Jews and Arabs.
Just out of curiosity, does the "place you were not born in" concept apply to the Palestinians? Several hundred thousand Arabs fled Israel in 1948 to make way for the 5 invading Arab armies. They became the so called Palestinian Refugees. Somehow that number has turned into millions, I guess with so much aid money at stake, no one ever dies in the refugee camps. With your new system, the descendants of those who fled the war are not Palestinians, but Lebanese and Syrians, etc.
This works fine for me, it is the way the rest of the world works; we call the refugees of our failed Indochina wars; US citizens. You may have stumbled upon a way to deal with the refugee problem which the Arabs have been seeking to perpetuate by keeping these poor locked up in refugee camps for 60 years. Nice work.
Nice try, but not an apt comparison.
These Palestinians were recently driven from their lands, no longer than 60 years ago. They are not citizens of Syria and lebanon, they are considered. correctly, as refugees.
The good rabbi is implying that Jews who have been living in other places for nearly two thousand years are somehow "born" in Israel.
I know Zionists think the rest of humanity is mentally inferior, but that's usually the first step to defeat. So keep on keeping on.
Article based on the following Myths.
"wholesale denial of the Jews' 3000 year attachment to the promised land"
Palestinian "attachment" has been continuous since the neolithic era:
"Arab Israelis and Palestinia
http://www
"Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham," - Dr Harry Ostrer."
http://www
"The Arab Street was whipped into frenzy with calls to finish Hitler's vision..."
There is no evidence to support this notion. Far easier to believe that the "Arab street" was inspired by 250,000 Palestinians forced from their homes at gunpoint before 15 May, when the Arab League moved to stabilise the area:
"there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves
http://www
"Local Arabs were urged to leave 'for a few weeks'"
- this myth has been utterly refuted, even by Zionist writers:
http://en.
"wholesale denial of the Jews' 3000 year attachment to the promised land" has been documented in detail -- it really isn't that hard to use wikipedia, I'll assume you're new at it for now.
http://en.
http://www
http://for
http://www
http://www
A quote from the PA's Ministry of Information:
"Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds...Th
I'd quote more but I don't have room, you should read the links above, you might learn something.
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of Canaan was occupied by Canaanites.
“Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel...T
“But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...And that parent tree was Canaanite.
“The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon... endured for only about 73 years...Th
http://www
Excellent piece. My favorite line "Israel is not 1938 Czechoslovakia; it can defend itself and has no intention of quietly committing suicide".
If the 2 state solution doesn't appeal to the Arabs, then perhaps they can embrace the 23 state solution. 22 corrupt, violent, angry Arab dictatorships and 1 vibrant, advanced Jewish democracy. The majority of the west bank can be reattached to Jordan, from where it came and Gaza can be reattached to Egypt. The Palestinians have proven themselves unable to run their own affairs, they can be semi-autonomous provinces of Jordan & Egypt.
Of course we could continue with the current conflict, with Palestinians screaming about 60 year old wrongs which are somehow everyone's fault but their own, and trying to find a formula to assuage the drug that is Arab pride. I think it is time to try something else.
Peace is an important goal but it is not everything. A more basic goal for Israel (and for me) is the maintenance and strength of the Israeli state. Other countries have border disputes with their neighbors. India has disputes with Pakistan over Kashmir. These may eventually be resolved or not. But Pakinstan and India are not going away because of a dispute. Likewise, Israel---as presently constituted--is not going away.
The best way to resolve the dispute would be to recognize that the "Palestinians" are Arab refugees who should have long ago been absorbed by the vast surrounding Arab states similar to the manner in which Israel absorbed Jewish refugees who were dispossessed of their property and expelled from Arab lands. The Arabs have never allowed refugee resettlement to occur. They want to use the refugees as human pawns in their struggle against Israel.
A one-state so-called Palestinian country would be extremely hard to achieve. The Palestinians have no national tradition as does Israel. Given enough time, perhaps they could develop a state. If the Jews left, I doubt they would be given that time. The existing Arab powers would simply drop the charade and divide up "Palestine" among themselves. A permanent two-state solution, might work. Ironically, the existence of Israel gives the Arab refugees the opportunity, the time, and the motivation to meld themselves into a separate state. If Israel were to disappear this opportunity (for what it's worth) would also disappear.
So in other word's lets reward the Israelis for acting badly. Tell me do you give your child a chocolate bar when the steal another child's toy.
Those who consider anyone in the Middle East--- Jordanians, Palestinains, Egyptians, Lebanese, Israelis, Syrians, Iraqis or Iranians--- as acting with the best intentions for anyone else, need a basic primer in history of the area. ASAP.
No one cares about your ethnic mythologies but those who participate in them. The rest of us just want you to stop fighting and play nicely with the other children.
There is no holy land any more than there was manifest destiny. There is no destiny at all, national or individual. Stop using fairy tale narratives to justify your political desires.
"No one cares about your ethnic mythologies but those who participate in them. "
But this is precisely the crux iof the matter, the Arabs who believe they're entitled to all of Israel and territories. This is their mythology. Read PLO and Hamas Charter.
Historical Proof--- Arabs were in full possession of W. Bank, Gaza and E. Jerusalem for twenty years! There was no attempt to organize Palestinian state!!!!
Then of course Arab narrative conflicts directly with Jewish narrative which speaks of the return to the land of their ancestors.
To better understand the concept of ethnic mythologies read some Jung.
"here is no holy land any more than there was manifest destiny. "
Manifest density is a concept, a part of nation's mythology. It is illogical to claims that manfest density didn' exist when American people and government brought it to life and nurtured this myth
But negation of manifest destiny is precious. considering that Americans did remarkably well for themselves using this national myth.
In fact you now directly enjoy the fruits of this mythology living in former Mexico.
Feel free to offer San Francisco back to Mexico. Play nice now with other children i your neighborhood. Maybe Native Americans deserve some consideration now too :-)
Native Americans do not live in apartheid camps. They are American citizens. Why do Zionists keep sticking their foot in their mouth with this one?
Thank you.
Neal, Bravo! And to the the so-called "Holy Land" is is the mind. The idea of an earthly Jewish State is the Golden Calf.
here's your first problem, rabbi: "promised land" has no real meaning outside of religion.
here's your second problem: "the only land they never really left" really means they actually *did* leave it.
here's your third problem: when you denigrate an area's inhabitants to make them seem less deserving of the land you want to take away from them, you have already lost the moral argument.
Two States. that's it. Two States.
Rabbi Cooper does not deny two states. Read the title, at least!
He denied the delusional concept of one state, a revanchist dream periodically resurrected by Palestine ultra nationalist furious because all their military attempts to take over Israel came to naught.
Observation:
Because Israel just can't handle /real/ democracy, apparently.
3 states ,there is no way in hell hamass will giving back gaza to Fatah.
Three States: Egypt, Israel and Jordan.
Even a two-state solution leaves many non-jews in Israel.
Continuing reports that they are routinely discriminated against suggests a Jewish state would not be their choice either... though their views never make the corporate media despite citizenship and supposedly guarenteed rights.
Selective interpretation of history notwithstanding, it's hard to trust those who claim to speak for those who never left when they don't fall into that category themselves.
Americans wrapping themselves in that mantle never seem to realize how it comes off.
Not sure if I prefer glory by association to its' counterpart guilt.
Oh, really.
Facts. the Palestinian Arabs in thousands apply for Israeli citizenship. Whereas Israeli Arabs hold on very tight to their citizenship.
Scoreboard!
if you had no rights as a non citizen or could be expelled from the home you've never left if you lost the citizenship you would want/hold on to citizenship too.
ps no more responding to you its illogical cause you're one note and that note is inhuman.
Fact- Your fact doesn't negate my facts.
Responding to the comment is customary, but then etiquette in these modern times is lacking.
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