Saree Makdisi joins the two state post mortem. In tomorrow’s International Herald Tribune, Makdisi says Netanyahu’s decision to build in the E1 area not only kills the two-state solution, but also seals the fate of an exclusively Jewish state:
In moving forward with long-threatened plans to develop E1, Israel will be breaking the back of the West Bank and isolating the capital of the prospective Palestinian state from its hinterland. In so doing, it will be terminating once and for all the very prospect of that state — and with it, by definition, any lingering possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Oddly enough, the Palestine recognized by the United Nation is only an abstraction; the one that Israel is now about to throttle is much more real, at least insofar as the throttling will materially affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a way that mere recognition does not.
However heavy the blow to Palestinian aspirations, an equally heavy political price for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s E1 plan will be paid by Israelis. For by terminating the prospect of a two-state solution, Netanyahu will also be sealing the fate of an exclusively Jewish state.
As cannier Israeli politicians (Ehud Olmert among them) have long warned, maintaining the existence of Israel as a Jewish state fundamentally requires perpetuating at least the idea of a Palestinian state, even if only as a deferred fiction kept alive through endless negotiations.
Once the fiction of a separate Palestinian state is revealed to have no more substance than the Wizard of Oz — which the E1 plan will all but guarantee — those Palestinians who have not already done so will commit themselves to the only viable alternative: a one-state solution, in which the idea of an exclusively Jewish state and an exclusively Palestinian one will yield to what was really all along the preferable alternative, a single democratic and secular state in all of historical Palestine that both peoples will have to share as equal citizens.
A campaign for rights and equality in a single state is a project toward which the Palestinians will now be able to turn with the formidable international support they have already developed at both the diplomatic and the grassroots levels, including a global boycott and sanctions movement whose bite Israel has already felt.
For Palestinians, in any case, one state is infinitely preferable to two, for the simple reason that no version of the two-state solution that has ever been proposed has meaningfully sought to address the rights of more than the minority of Palestinians who actually live in the territory on which that state is supposed to exist . . .
What must be added here is that if a one-state solution offers the last remaining key to a just and lasting peace, Israeli Jews will pay what will turn out to be only a short-term price in exchange for many long-term gains. Like Palestinians, they will lose the dream and the prospect of a state exclusively their own. But — also like Palestinians — what they will gain in turn is the right to live in peace.
Saree is trying to resurrect the two state solution by dangling the threat of a secular one state solution. It won’t work. Israelis are clearly moving for a one state solution as well. One that will involve transfer, voluntary or otherwise, and will further isolate America and Israel. They probably see the financial decline of the West as placing a time pressure on the process. The sooner they get on with it the sooner they get a fait accompli backed up by the still potent but declining American hegemony.
One of the big drivers of Israeli policy is their long term planning when America no longer has the resources or perhaps the will to “have Israel’s back.” Countries know few limits when it comes to national security.
>> … For by terminating the prospect of a two-state solution, Netanyahu will also be sealing the fate of an exclusively Jewish state.
Unless Zio-supremacists conclude that ethnic cleansing – which even “liberal Zionists” cannot condemn as never necessary – becomes necessary once more. To be sure, the weaker ones will have to hold their noses at actions they’re too squeamish to undertake themselves, but once the dirty work is all done, they and their co-collectivists will “primarily celebrate”.
”Saree is trying to resurrect the two state solution by dangling the threat of a secular one state solution. ”
I doubt it. Afaik, Makdisi has always been an advocate of the one-state solution.
Adam/Annie/Phil Dr. Zbig has a great one up over at Foreign Policy “Obama’s Moment” He does not call the I lobby out by name and that in some ways is a shame but we all know who he is talking about.
And he basically x’s out Susan Rice of Secretary of State.
He sure likes President Obama although has constructively criticized the President a fair amount too
annie:
“i don’t think so. Makdisi is speaking common sense and something i have believed for a long long time. it’s an excellent and interesting article and in my mind predicts the inevitable.”
That’s good to know. I hope you guys are right. Now, if that would appear in the NYT as well as the IHT we might have some real progress.