Robert Wright recently joined the one-state debate with a measured and well-intentioned piece in the New York Times. Unfortunately, he mistakes the one-state solution for a tactical cudgel instead of understanding it for what it is – an end unto itself. Wright clings to the atavistic (I don’t mean that pejoratively – just that the idea that people ought to be partitioned in this age is regressive) two-state outcome. He thinks that the one-state can be employed as Palestinian threat against Israeli colonization. The idea is to bludgeon Israeli complacency to death with the threat of Palestinian enfranchisement.
Wright accurately depicts two opposing positions in the post or anti-two-state camp. Some of us believe that with enough determination, goodwill, resilience, and a principled demand for justice we can pull off a one-state solution. Others believe that Jewish Israelis will never withdraw the boot heel from sunburned Palestinian necks. It’s a fair view, but I have faith in our ability to undermine Zionism completely, even in the minds of Jewish Israelis.
There’s a third possibility, apparently. Wright suggests that by threatening the Israelis with the end of Jewish racehood we can wake up the unplugged tech-savvy Tel Aviv bubble to the urgency of our need. That may or may not be true – I don’t think it matters really.
There’s no doubt that Wright’s call for manipulating the Israelis through an equal rights movement is cynical. By evoking principled democracy, we can cow the Israelis – who fear democracy in Palestine/Israel – into submission. That’s fine, but I feel that there are a few errors in Wright’s analysis that undermine his main point.
The first and most obvious one is that a two-state outcome can never materialize in Palestine/Israel. The latest round of elegiac White Housing is a convenient place to mark the death of the two-state outcome. No amount of Israeli quaking is going to cure Zionism of its fixation on Palestinian land or water. The Israeli apartheid regime will also refuse to relinquish territory for ‘security’ reasons.
I also disagree with Wright that a significant portion of Israelis will ever be ready to do what it takes to de-settle the settlements. It’s not enough to engage in land swaps. The settler colonies were created to atomize contiguous Palestinian lands. The master plan was too well executed. So for a genuine two-state outcome to emerge hundreds of thousands of settler-colonists will have to be evacuated. The real question is whether the somnolent bubble is more afraid of civil war or Palestinian enfranchisement. I am convinced that the Israelis will not war with the Judeans and Samarians.
Wright is a very astute observer in several important ways, however. He understands the power inherent in a civil rights struggle, and he knows how to get there. He writes:
If Palestinians want to strike fear into the hearts of Israelis they should (a) give up on violence as a tool of persuasion; (b) give up on the current round of negotiations; and (c) start holding demonstrations in which they ask for only one thing: the right to vote.
The strategy he talks about is the right one. I’d rewrite the first sentence to read “if the Palestinians want their equal rights” in place of “strike fear into the hearts of Israelis” but I’m otherwise completely with him.
Later, Wright identifies one of the surmountable but sticky obstacles to a one-state solution: the Palestinian Authority. He says that “regional experts tell me that in general officials on the Palestinian side don’t welcome a one-state solution because that would deprive them of the power they have now, whereas they would remain prominent during the implementation of a two-state solution.”
We’ve known this for a long time. It’s just nice to see a mainstream source openly recognize that the craven, self-aggrandizing Palestinian officials are ready to sacrifice a people to personal ambition. If the New York Times is saying it, perhaps someone in the administration is thinking it. In the end I don’t know if the PA will be dismantled but Abbas et al are doing a fine job of making it obsolete. Their actions have likely quickened the wholesale adoption of the one-state struggle by Palestinians in Palestine/Israel. Perhaps credible leaders like Azmi Bishara will step in to fill the void.
In all, Wright’s article was a net positive. He is clearly struggling with the idea of a Jewish state, and may want to preserve it for whatever reason. But I think that people like Wright are on the right track and will eventually come to see that there isn’t an alternative to the one-state solution. Not that I’d want one.
Finally, and slightly off-topic, I’d like to respectfully disagree with Jerome Slater’s belief that the one-state solution is a bad idea. I don’t think that the Zionists are necessarily any worse than any other racists in history, and many of them have made (turbulent and ongoing) transitions into humanity’s fold.
