Fascinating article in this weekend’s Haaretz magazine by Noam Sheizaf on the Israeli right wing’s flirtation with the one-state solution (or at least their version of it). It’s called “Endgame,” and it’s certainly worth reading the whole thing.
Here’s one extended quote from Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely who has been at the forefront of efforts on the right to find alternatives to the two-state solution. She shares some of where she’s coming from, and also critiques the left Zionist idea of the two-state solution, and points to some of the devastating consequences of where this thinking had led:
Hotovely: “My outlook has two motivations. First, my deep belief in our right to the Land of Israel. Shiloh and Beit El settlements are, for me, the land of our forefathers in the full sense of the term. The second thing is that I do not ignore the fact that there are Palestinians here. Both the left and the right chose to shut their eyes to the fact that there are human beings here. The left chose to do it by building a fence and deciding that they just don’t want to see them, and the right simply said, ‘We will continue and see what happens.’ We have reached a critical point, a situation in which the entire Zionist enterprise is under threat, because the international community now disputes the legitimacy of our defense of Sderot and Ashkelon, not the legitimacy of building a settler outpost.”
The international community takes that stance because we are still occupiers. There will be greater legitimacy when the occupation ends.
“We did not get legitimacy in return for our previous withdrawals. Worse, the harm we are inflicting on the Palestinian population has become far more mortal. Our instruments of defense became tanks and planes, and that is always worse than policing operations that are done when you control the ground.
“The assumption of the left is that once it hides behind the international border, everything will be permitted. But it’s clear already now that not everything is permitted and that the principle of proportionality is shackling Israel in Gaza – so what will happen in Judea and Samaria? In fact, it goes even deeper. There is a moral failure here. After all, the left has long since stopped talking about peace and is resorting to a terminology of separation and segregation. They are also convinced that the confrontation will continue even afterward. The result is a solution that perpetuates the conflict and turns us from occupiers into perpetrators of massacres, to put it bluntly. It’s the left that made us a crueler nation and also put our security at risk.”
