Nadia Hijab files a report on the One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens? conference in her article "The growing belief in a one-state solution." Hijab was a presenter at the conference and does not consider herself an advocate of one state per se, but she admits the conference has convinced her to reconsider:
The discussion of concrete steps challenged my agnosticism. So did the
passion and creativity of the debate. The best vision of the one-state
solution does make the alternative debates "barren," as Ghada Karmi put it.Think about it. Who's defending the two-state option today? The
Palestinian Authority, its case ever weaker against the decades-long
clanging of Israeli bulldozers as they colonize Palestinian land and
demolish homes.And the realists in the United States, Europe, and Israel, whose core
argument is that a Palestinian state is the only way to save a majority
Jewish state – an argument that does not inspire.Those who support a two-state solution must do better if they want to
hang on to hearts and minds. For, make no mistake, as American
politicians are fond of saying, the adherents of the one-state movement
share a faith. And fear and brute force – whether exercised by Israel,
America, or the Palestinian Authority – are no match for faith.
Why do you think a one-state solution will work in the absence of amity between the peoples, or a common enemy? The Bosnian-Croatian federation in Bosnia only worked because of the unifying threat of Serbia. Isn't what Palestinians want as one-state really an Islamist Palestine, by force of numbers? Why should Israelis consent to that, when they have access to state power through a democratic system?
I think it would be doable if the place had a political culture based around a horrific memory of small supremacist republics or warlike kingdoms replaced by "enlightened British colonialism", like South Africa. South Africa worked because "back to" the Orange Free State and the Zulu Empire was an end-point everyone wanted to avoid. "Back to the Caliphate" is Hamas's GOAL.
The argument for a Jewish state certainly does inspire. It just doesn't inspire you.
It does inspire Jews that experienced the holocaust, or the harrassment and rejection by the Arab community. The need for Jewish self-governance might remain, and stated AS a progressive assertion of consent of the governed.
In many ways the PEP insult made against progressive Zionists, is very insulting, a crude vanity that avoids addressing the real questions in favor of easy and cheap complaint only.
Aside from the recognition that a single state will require Israeli's support, there is still the very relevant question of whether the urging for a single state is not in fact a fraud to establish a dominant Palestinian state. The insistence on the right of return conveys that that may or is the case.
IF, the single state intent is genuinely nearly entirely civil in orientation (an application of Western democracy), then it can be appealing and represent self-governance of the vast majority.
If the single-state intent is nationalist (we live in PALESTINE, not something new), then it is a fraud, should fail, and will.
How many Zionists think of themselves as living in Is-stine? How many in solidarity for Palestinians urge Palestinians to renounce their Palestinian national assertion, in favor of something new?
It is lion with the lamb, but the advocates are still with the lion.
Worse than the lion on one side (fed by Uncle Sam) and the shriveled lamb (fed barely by anybody) on the other? Where is the USA sans faith in real democracy? Judging by the way its handling its
own domestic financial crisis, and its snubbing of elected HAMAS, it's losing its own grip on such faith fast.
South Africa worked because white gentiles made it work, more than any other group, and no matter from which country.
Yes, same as in the USA, and, eventually, Obama.
Citizen:
"South Africa worked because white gentiles made it work, more than any other group, and no matter from which country."
South Africa is a horrible mess. It doesn't work at all.
@Julian:
"South Africa is a horrible mess. It doesn't work at all."
Would you suggest it revert back to Israeli-style Apartheid?
Perhaps this time pushing White South Africans into Townships?
From the Nadia Hijab piece:
"I share the view of policy analyst Phyllis Bennis who warned at the conference that the United States might seek to impose a mini-state with minimal sovereignty and rights."
That's the main and very, very tangible danger of the TSS (especially with Netanyahu/Lieberman-style Israeli governments: that the Palestinians get fobbed off with something wholly unacceptable and wholly unworkable. Writing the failing of the future Palestinian state into its future, as it were…
Julian said: South Africa is a horrible mess. It doesn't work at all.
This is an increasingly common response from zionists to the comparison with South Africa. And a revealing one. The other is denial of the comparison or arguments as to why the situations are different (re Eurosabra above). Are you a South African expat Julian? What exactly are your complaints: high crime in an underpoliced country, the political spoils system for important comrades in the struggle? There are certainly huge challenges facing South Africa and things that are not working perfectly, but I see no ways in which those issues support an argument in favor of continuing Israeli apartheid.
In contrast with Eurosabra, I think that for many reasons, the transition to democracy could be easier for Israel/Palestine than it was for South Africa (Azania? Eurosabra and Witty). For example, I think that the two issues above don't have to be big problems.
I don't agree with Citizen's statement entirely, but the point that a huge amount of opportunity and responsibility lies with the group in power is an important one.
pulaski:
"In contrast with Eurosabra, I think that for many reasons, the transition to democracy could be easier for Israel/Palestine than it was for South Africa (Azania? Eurosabra and Witty). For example, I think that the two issues above don't have to be big problems."
The question is not one or two states. Israel already has a state and their own form of government. It's absurd to think they would ever give it up. The real question is will there be another Arab state?
"South Africa is a horrible mess. It doesn't work at all"
Now I have a chance to agree with Julian. Like everyone I knew (when I was in high school), I considered the fall of apartheid a great victory for justice, etc. Looking at it now, I think it would have been better to arrange a partition leaving a white-majority state. Realism will always trump idealism for me.
I think a two state solution would be the best, but the problem is that Israel's settlement policies, with the full support of diaspora Zionist organizations and de-facto US support, appear to have deliberately poisoned this option. The future seems to be a bantuistan arrangement and perpetual violence. Israel will likely be eventually forced to adopt a South-African unification, and that will be the end of the Jewish state.
Unless Zionists are prepared to discuss the forced clearing of the settlements, their talk of "two states" is simply a distraction.
ZA makes me a bit jealous, because EVERYBODY had some gripe with the apartheid system except a small minority of AWB and Nat. Afrikaners, and everybody had a memory of how horrible the pre-Apartheid systems that were replaced by British colonialism were, the Zulu Empire, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. It created a political culture where people were beholden to move forward to something new because their OWN previous political forms were unmanageable in the modern world. Israeli Jews don't regard their system as a racist holdover, but rather a modern state with certain Jewish characteristics of the type shared by all ethnic-majority-national successor states of the Ottoman Empire, in a region where all states are the same, except for ethnic-minority despotisms like Syria and Jordan. Palestinian Islamists look forward to a system similar to Iran's, which puts them at loggerheads with very many Israeli parties, including Ra'am-Ta'al, itself a front for the Islamic Movement. So ZA had a few advantages in flexibility of political culture that Israel-Palestine doesn't have, and Israeli Jews wonder why they have to risk and give up everything, facing a Charter that promises "obliteration."