Antony Loewenstein was involved in a debate at Aussie’s Greens Party over the one-state, two-state business:
During last weekend’s national conference in Melbourne, I was invited to address a forum to advocate a one-state solution (with two speakers pushing for maintenance of the status quo). It is a position backed by senior figures in the NSW Greens and I’m told a growing number of Greens members.
I argued that a one-state solution was the only just solution to the conflict, removing discrimination against Jews and Palestinians and creating a modern state that grants equal rights to all its citizens; one person for one vote.
A Jewish state (or Muslim state, for that matter) is discriminatory by definition. Partition is the cornerstone of a two-state solution, oblivious to facts on the ground that allow 500,000 Jewish settlers to settle illegally on Palestinian land. Such realities cannot be resolved through drawing arbitrary borders.
The two-state solution, I stressed, was a failed dream, easy rhetoric in place of sound and moral policy. Alas, many Jews seem unwilling to give up the concept of a racially exclusionary nation that benefits Jews above Palestinians.
One other speaker, David Rothfield, a Jew who had lived for many years in Israel, argued that there was strong international consensus for the two-state solution and now wasn’t the time to undergo a re-examination of Greens policy. “The role of the Greens in Australia is to prevent the climate emergency”, he said, “and we have to set priorities for the party.”
The other speaker, Sol Salbe, believed that neither the one- nor two-state solutions were likely in the future, but one was even less likely. He argued that the world trend was towards ethnic separation, not united countries. However, he acknowledged the difficulty of separating the two peoples due to the ongoing colonisation project in the West Bank.
The group discussion was highly instructive. It was respectful and thoughtful, two attributes often missing in this debate. Furthermore, many speakers were curious about breaking the deadlock of the Middle East.
One person said that the Greens were supposed to support pluralism and multiculturalism and “Israel is not either” — the US State Department said last week that Israel is a fundamentally intolerant nation — and “we have to support democracy, therefore a one-state solution is the answer”.
