The news that the Trump Administration no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “illegal” was not shocking, any more than the feigned outrage expressed by the very nations who continue to empower Israel no matter what it does. This prelude to the Israeli annexation of the West Bank is certain to further Palestinian misery by emboldened settlers and Occupation soldiers.
But that annexation in reality occurred decades ago. There is a reason why Israel has never simply said so.
On November 29 of 1947, the UN voted to recommend the partitioning of Palestine (UNGA Resolution 181), defeating a minority recommendation for a democratic binational state. Negotiators for the Palestinian cause took advantage of a 24-hour reprieve to propose another binational plan, with a constitution similar to that of the United States.[1] The proposal was ignored, but the seventy-two years since have been a bumpy but unstoppable slow-motion return to the essential concept of a single democratic state.
Ironically, the Trump genie that grants Zionism its every wish, brings that liberation — and the end of Zionism — all the closer.
The Palestinian Authority, in other words, can be seen as merely a subcontractor and fig-leaf for Israeli’s ultimate sovereignty over the entire area — irrespective of the Oslo Accords’ theoretical division of the West Bank into areas A (Palestinian), B (Palestinian-Israeli), and C (Israeli). Israel began violating the laws regulating an occupying power immediately upon its 1967 conquest, and has ruled the entire West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem) and Gaza (whether directly or by siege) ever since.[2]
Clearing away the smoke and mirrors, what’s left is this: Israel treats “Judea and Samaria” as its sovereign territory, but only its Jews (i.e., settlers) can vote, while non-Jews, by virtue of ethnicity, are denied even the most rudimentary human rights.
This mirage can not last indefinitely, but Trump’s latest gift can only hasten its day of reckoning. Its implicit invitation to the complete theft of the West Bank and ultimately all Palestine, Zionism’s goal for over a century, now looms tantalizingly close. Netanyahu needs do little more than “make it so” in a way that will assure the “international community” continues to behave as it did upon Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem four decades ago: protest, Resolutions, and total appeasement. Israel’s increased Trump-inspired repression could itself precipitate a new Palestinian backlash that would provide Israel the pretext for annexation.
But this Temptation promises a sobering morning after. Israel will suddenly “own” the West Bank. There will be no PA fig-leaf to cover it up. How will Israel explain that non-Jews cannot vote and remain subjugated in what it claims to be its sovereign land? What had always been the reality will be on full display for the world to see: Israel is an apartheid state.
• One, it could ethnically cleanse a couple of million more Palestinians. But this is not 1948, and it is not 1967. Although Israel continues to enforce the ethnic containment of Palestinians by bantustan within the Palestinian side of the Armistice Line, its ongoing ethnic cleansing out of Palestine needs to remain discreet. In today’s world, not even Israel’s ever-shocking impunity would shield it from loading two or three million people onto trucks and shipping them to new refugee camps in surrounding countries.
• Two, it could allow West Bank non-Jews the same citizenship as non-Jews already “enjoy” in Israel other than East Jerusalem — second-tier citizenship to be sure, but they nonetheless can vote in national elections, and so the system could be passed off as a nominal democracy. It happens that we’ve a test case for such a scenario — East Jerusalem — and it demonstrates that citizenship for non-Jews would not result from annexation. Although Israel considers East Jerusalem to be fully part of Israel, its non-Jews are tenuous “residents”, not citizens, and have no voice in Israel’s national elections. This is all the more remarkable in that the non-Jewish population of East Jerusalem, unlike the West Bank’s, is far too small to threaten Israel’s demographic concerns.[3]
• And so, by default, Israel would be stuck with option three: just continue as before, for as long as it lasts. The West Bank would be like East Jerusalem is now — but too big to fudge. West Bank non-Jews would be foreigners in their own land, “residents” with no voice in national affairs, and subject to ethnic cleansing through opaque laws engineered for the purpose. Inertia might bide some time for the apartheid state, but it would not be sustainable. It might last two years, or perhaps as long as ten, but once a critical mass of the world’s political and economic interests see Israel as a liability, the call for simply equality will be the Zionist state’s ultimate defeat.
The single-state democracy that should have been the obvious answer in 1947, will finally be realized, untold suffering later.
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Notes.
1. Regarding the new proposal following the vote on Res 181, see TNA, WO_261-571, Fortnightly Intelligence Newsletter No. 55, Part II, Partition of Palestine, p9, bottom (illustrated here). It is worth pointing out that, according to British documents, the reason the UN opted for partition over the democratic binational state was that it feared increased Zionist terrorism (see TNA, CAB 129/21, page stamped “52”, illustrated here, or the author’s How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, p236). Jewish anti-racists in the settlements, among them Hebrew University president Judah Magnes, also supported a single state.
2. Israel and US militarily negated the results of Palestine’s 2006 election, so the Palestinians did not actually vote in the present government (Fatah), but this is incidental to the present point. That election’s candidates were already limited by Israel through exclusion, imprisonment, and assassination.
3. Non-Jewish East Jerusalemite “residents” can vote in municipal elections. Non-Jews can apply for citizenship, but by doing so they implicitly forfeit East Jerusalem’s status under international law as Palestinian, and yet their citizenship is not equal to that of the city’s Jewish settlers. Non-Jews actually risk expulsion simply by making any application to the Israeli authorities, who may then demand documented proof of family residency back to the nineteenth century, whereas Jews from abroad need no such precedent — hence, for example, Palestinian reluctance to apply for building permits.
“It might last two years, or perhaps as long as ten”
Assuming, of course, that Israel can form a government.
Israel’s goal was always to have the whole of Palestine, with as few Palestinians in it. The US support and the EUs silence including my own government, in the Republic of Ireland, is unforgivable.
Thanks to Tom Suarez for a brilliant article and thanks also to all the other writers in Mondoweiss and the many other publications who bravely write about Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinians.
“On November 29 of 1947, the UN voted to recommend the partitioning of Palestine (UNGA Resolution 181), defeating a minority recommendation for a democratic binational state”. Well, to be accurate, there was a vote in the UN regarding the majority recommendation (the Partition Plan); however there was no vote on the minority recommendation. However, it should be noted that the Arab side of the conflict rejected BOTH recommendations of UNSCOP. Tom Suarez believes that the single-state should have been “the obvious answer in 1947”, but he should have been fair to the readers by revealing the sad truth that “the obvious answer in 1947” was absolutely unacceptable from the Palestinian perspective.
I think that it’s reasonable to assume that still today the Palestinians do not accept the idea of a single state as the formula for ending the conflict. This is not a conflict about one-state or two-states. This is a conflict about the legitimacy of the Hebrew-speaking community (the new yishuv) in the country. The one-state minority proposal in 1947 legitimized the yishuv, and that was the reason that it too was a non-starter from the Arab point of view. Had it been accepted, it would be reasonable to assume that there still would have been war.
The idea of a single state is obviously meant to bring about the end of the Jewish state. There’s no reason to imagine that the Jewish side is going to accept the idea. More importantly, the Palestinian side will not accept the one-state concept as an end-of-conflict proposal. The conflict will continue within the framework of the one-state, and it’s obvious. The rise of the Hebrew-speaking community is still the issue at hand.
It really would be a breath of fresh air to read an analysis in Mondoweiss in which the author makes a proposal and then adds the magic formula: “And this would be the end of conflict once and for all”. It would really be a breath of fresh air to see an article that takes into account that the Jewish side will have to agree to whatever is being proposed. I understand that no one at Mondoweiss could possibly accept the idea that the Jewish public has legitimate concerns; however, I believe that intelligent people who have a high school diploma should be able to understand that the Jewish side is not going to be convinced to give up the Jewish state in order to continue being in the very same conflict of the last one hundred years.
” not even Israel’s ever-shocking impunity would shield it from loading two or three million people onto trucks and shipping them to new refugee camps in surrounding countries”
Apart from the reaction of the International community the in house logistics of getting this up and running which would involve presumably the equivalent of the Nazi style Star of David insignia to be compulsorily worn , notices again along Nazi lines of evictions and gathering up of possessions for the journey to the new “work camps” , the actual numbers and types of trucks to be imported stored maintained fueled and driven, the unspoken question is where exactly are the”refugees” to be shipped to even if they willingly and without resistance agreed. The Sinai? The Egyptians of course would never agree and if force was used poof goes the “Peace Treaty” – and Egypt 2020 is not Egypt 1967 – 73 ref qualitative edge and relative army strengths. Jordan ? – the same ref the peace treaty and as for the use of force obviously much much weaker than Egypt but with a lot more sympathy from the West because of historical interactions and of course a huge Palestinian population which would resist. Lebanon ? – whoops Hezbollah and the most moral would be wetting their pants at the thought of actually having to fight with real fighters as opposed to terrorising defenceless old men women and children in the middle of the night.
Syria ? – Assad and the Russians will soon put the dampeners on that option.
No the whole population transfer to another ME country idea is yet another pie in the sky Zionist illusion fostered by arrogance and as Tom has indicated the impunity which Zioland has grown used to over seventy plus years of Ziolobby Benjamin control in the US and European unwillingness to act.
As the whoile grotesque Zionist project crumbles the only possible outcome is a single initially Bantustanised Apartheid State which will dissolve as the International Community has no choice but to apply South African style boycotts.
The only “transfers” on the horizon a will be the voluntary reverse aliyah transfers of Israeli Jews scrambling on to buses and trucks taking them to the boats and planes which will get them out of the hellhole they have created.
Hello Nathan,
You argue that the Palestinians’ negotiators rejected both proposals. Yes, they did. Therefore… what? 1948?
In truth, both the Palestinians and the Zionists turned down both UNSCOP proposals. The Palestinian negotiators told the truth. The Jewish Agency lied. They “accepted” 181 to get its implicit statehood recognition in order to do what they then did (i.e., ignore 181). The Palestinians knew — and were 100% correct — that the Jewish Agency, no matter what was decided, would create a race state and that non-Jews would be expelled or made 4th-class residents of their own land. The only surprise was how quickly it happened.
According to the British, the Palestinians would indeed have accepted a federated state to avoid the calamity of 1948 — and they did propose it immediately after the vote. But the point remains: let’s say they hadn’t … then, what? What would that justify? You invoke Palestinian negotiating failures as though the events of 1948, therefore, are justified.
You argue that in a democratic everyone-equal state, the Palestinians would say “the Jews are foreigners”. Does this not strike you as an odd statement? After seven decades of anti-Palestinian ethnic cleansing, subjugation, and massacres, which Zionism claims to have carried out in the name Jews (that’s antisemitism), you now accuse the Palestinians in advance of being anti-Jewish by virtue of being Palestinian. Does the irony not hit you?