60 years and going nowhere — Palestinians must embrace reality: The One-State Solution is the No-State Solution
May 13th, 2008I’ve only been involved in the Palestinian conflict for 32 years, at least consciously. So many other Palestinians have been involved since the inception, more than 60 years. And here we are. Where we were yesterday and 10 years ago. Nothing new. Same old stalemate. What’s the problem?
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that Palestinians continue to grip the long lost dream. They look back and what could have been but they didn’t have the leaders to make it so back in the 1940s. We wanted One-State but could not make it happen. We rejected compromise and then suffered as a result.
It’s not about what is right any more. It is about the reality of our suffering. Many Palestinians, especially those who live in comfort in the West and especially in the United States want to fight until death. Not their death but the death of the Palestinians. They continue to die in the Gaza Strip where the failed Palestinian leadership there, the Hamas terrorists, continue to exploit the suffering to pursue their fanaticism, and Israeli’s brutal occupation (and they don’t have to be in Gaza to occupy it) is immoral and wrong and continues to exploit the failed Palestinian leadership to achieve their goals.
My argument is that Palestinians can’t afford to keep embracing an unachievable dream. The people who advocate the dream of One-State where “Jews, Christians and Muslims” can live together in peace is not a dream at all. It is a nightmare that is real that most Palestinians experience in suffering. I know what my relatives go through not only in the Occupation but also as so-called Israeli citizens. They are sufffering. Christians, Muslims and Jews HAVE NEVER lived together in harmony in Palestine. Never. Before the British Mandate, the Christians and Jews lived as oppressed, subjugated people until the corrupt Ottoman Empire. And when the British came to power, all of us lived in conflict. e love to say how much we get along, but we don’t. But Jews can’t keep blaming the Muslims or Christians all the time. And Muslims can’t keep terrorizing Christians like me who challenge their religious ideological supremacy which is not logical at all but a formula for continued disaster.
This week marks the 60th Anniversary of that suffering. There are many Op_Eds being published, most selected by a biased Western Media like the Los Angeles Times and the Tribune Company (which has been very anti-Arab from day one) prefer to publish the Op-Eds of individuals who say the dream of One-State is the future because it makes for a good argument in defense of Israel’s continued occupation. An Op-Ed by a very good writer Saree Makdisi is very good at stating the Dream of One-State. (Here’s the link to the Op-Ed). But the one paragprah that bothers me tremendously as a Palestinian is this one that she writes as she concludes a very compelling case for justice that is unrealistic in a world of injustice and especially because it is a fact that the Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims cannot achieve the justice they continually cry for.
“To resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli Jews will have to relinquish their exclusive privileges and acknowledge the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes. What they would get in return is the ability to live securely and to prosper with — rather than continuing to battle against — the Palestinians.”
Her argument is the argument of those who genuinely believe in justice but have no sense of reality. It is not going to happen. Jews and Israelis would rather prefer the continued conflict because they know that the Palestinians are incapable of doing anything except be an annoyance. Embedded in the thought above is the subtle threat of continued violence by the Palestinians, a threat I think is wrong to even imply.
Violence is not the answer and has never been the answer. And neither is the dream of justice without the ability to achieve justice. Justice doesn’t come through a compromise. It comes through years of trust and mutual embrace. And Palestinians and Israelis are a long way from that.
The One-State Solution is the No-State Solution. It is a fact. Those Palestinians whoa dvocate it are really arguing that we must continue the fight at all costs. And at “all cost” has been most costly to the Palestinians. I have watched just in the past 20 years how Palestine continues to change to our disadvantage. The Israelis are slowly and steadily erasing the Palestinian existence and the Palestinian identity in Palestine, in Israel and in the Occupied territories. Every year that I go back to Jerusalem, where my family originates, I see how things continue to change and disappear. And I have to shake my head as Palestinians are pushed to embrace their emotions rather than their common sense.
The activists who advocate for One-State and who insist that every Palestinian be given the right to return to their homelands are doing a great injustice to their own people. The Palestinian refugees have a right of return, rock solid in legal foundation. It is absolute. But, it is not realistic. The realistic option is to compromise and have the refugees accept compensation, resettlement in a Palestinian State that we should be fighting for, one in which we can achieve today not in our dreams of tomorrow or the nightmares of our past.
I’ve just published a new book that advocates all that. The pre-release edition “The Catastrophe: How the fanatic secular Arab left and the extremists religious right have prevented peace and blocked the establishment of a Palestinian State.” It makes the argument, I hope compelling, that Palestinians must stand up to the extremists who insist on extreme solutions to the conflict (extremist is a relative term that applies to the rejection of compromise in the face of no other real option — and One-State is NOT an option), and fight to achieve a Palestine State that will become a model for the vision that Palestinian justice envisions. That dream in a vision articulated from a real Palestine State, one of two-states next to an existing and real Israel, is the dream that is worth advocating. In that dream, maybe one day we can all come together.
Ray Hanania
www.ArabWritersGroup.com
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Ray, I agree with most of what you have to say.
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict, in particular, along with many other conflicts around the world, call for reason and common sense to trump ideology. People believe in a whole lot of things. People’s notions of justice differ widely. Jews can argue their rights, and Arabs can argue theirs. Everyone has excellent arguments, God bless them all.
But the time is quickly appoaching when the best argument will be: What is the best way of sustaining ourselves as a species? In other words: What is likely to work?
The one state solution may sound good on paper, but as you suggest, it will never happen, and if it does, it will never work. Jews will not allow it because Jews have gone through the hellhole of the Holocaust, and they are not about to take an existential risk by losing their state. Whether or not this position is just, is not the point. It is reality.
And Palestinians, who feel disenfranchised by the Jews, are not about to live in harmony with the very same people who they feel cheated them out of their homes and their land. Thinking otherwise is make-believe.
If you want justice, don’t waste your time on senseless blather. Look for what works. What is likely to work would be something along these lines:
A Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capitol.
Palestinian control of Muslim holy sites.
Limited reunification on humanitarians grounds, but compensation for most of the refugees, who would live in Palestine.
Dismantlement of most of the settlments, but land swaps for a few.
Heavy duty investment by Israel and the West in the Palestinian economy, financed in part with Arab money from the Saudis, etc.
Heavy duty public diplomacy to condition people for the possibility of peace: a media campaign, a student exchance, a cultural exchange, an expanded version of the peace corp, international conferences, a program to empower women, etc.
Such an outcome may not constitue a theoretical justice as perceived by the extremists, but it will be a defacto justice if it brings quality of life to the vast majority of Palestinians.
It is time, with regard to this issue, and so many others, to get off our high horse, and to come down to reality. We owe it to ourselves to let go of some of our beliefs in favor of what makes sense. A failure to come to terms with reality is an insult to everything we think we believe in. In the final analysis, this is a real world, as created by our Maker, and He has little patience with people who care not to see things as they are.
Excellent article Ray. Very real, and very sad.
Hi Nissim … we’re on the same page.
Palestinians have to deal with reality and so do the Israelis. Time is running short, though, as the Islamicist extremists are slowing fighting to takeover the Middle East and you won’t have secular Arab countries to deal with. The Islamicists are the real threat. Some Muslims, who sometimes are thin-skinned, don’t tolerate any kind of criticism of those who hijack Islam and bastardize it for their own political agendas, including using it to justify the murder of civilians. They don’t compromise. Secular governments, do. While Secular governments suffer from secular corruption (money, power, clout, etc), the Islamicists have a far worse corruption. Their corruption is moral corruption in which it is okay to brainwash young uneducated or extremely emotional people, usually children, and convince them to blow themselves up for a cause.
On the otherhand, the Israeli extremists are no better. And I don’t hear an effective Israeli voice speaking out against them, except maybe at Haaretz.
Ray Hanania
What would be cool is if the rest of the world can build a huge ass wall around Israel-Palestine and let them duke it out. Last one standing wins or they learn to live in peace with one another. Could work.
Jina, since you’ll already be busy building a wall around Israel-Palestine, you might as well build a wall around the Western world and the Muslim world, becuase the problems are mostly the same.
Hey, here’s a bright idea: Why not build bridges instead of walls? They’re nicer to look at. What do you say?
Ray, of course you’re right to suggest that there is extremism on the Israeli side, as well. But I am optimistic, that once some serious negotiations take place, the extremism on the Israeli side could be dealt with more easily than on the Palestinian side. The reason is that for the most part Israel is a relatively free society, in which the will of the majority makes itself known quite forcefully, and in which the leadership has no choice but to take note of that will.
The settlers are a wild bunch, there is no doubt, and extremism runs rampant there. And in the case of Rabin, the religious right did not hesitate to take matters into their own hands, and at the very least gave moral support to the assassin. There is much shame in this. But the vast majority of Israelis rejected this extremism outright, and are in favor of a negotiated and fair settlement of the issues.
With the Palestinians, I have no doubt that the majority want peace, but the extremists have a strong hand on the reigns of power, and the man on the street is naturally intimidated from making his desire known. It is an obstacle to peace.
Therefore, I believe that we should begin by conditioning people for the possibility of peace, with good paying jobs, with meaningful public diplomacy, with education, etc. so that the will of the people is energized to such an extent that even the extremists will not be able to say no.
We want to put the extremists in the uncomfortable and untenable position of holding their people back from a better life. By speaking to one another with common sense and with a sense of personal dignity, and giving people a place at the table, a stake in their future, we will give credibility to the notion that “We stand ready to invest in you, if you are ready to invest in yourselves.” The extremists will not be able to capture the public imagination once people begin to imagine a better life for themselves.
I would very much like to start such a project, which I describe in a video on the home page of my website http://www.sellingavisionofhope.org See what you think.
What, the West kicked out the Muslims and created a nation for themselves in the Middle East?
Some people will never learn till they are at the bring of annihilation. This applies to the Jews of Israel and Palestinians. Live in peace or die.
Jina, you know I love your feisty attitude, but a few comments are in order.
Some people would like to think that the Jews came to Palestine, kicked the Palestinians out, and founded a state. Sounds simple enough, but that’s not the way it went down.
First of all, if the Jews kicked the Arabs out, how do you explain that 20% of Israel is Arab, with full citizenship, with more rights than anywhere else in the Middle East, and with a higher standard of living? Doesn’t add up.
When the Jews started to settle in the land that would become Israel, a great deal of the land was purchased from absentee Arab landlords.
Even though Zionism begin in the late 1800’s, in the wake of the Holocaust, Jews became convinced that they needed a home of their own, if they were to survive as a people. They needed that home to be in the land of Israel, where their roots were 3200 years old, since the time that Moses led them from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.
Before declaring independence, Jews accepted the UN partition plan to divide the land fairly. Arabs refused, and invaded Israel as soon as independence was declared. The Palestinian Arabs who decided to stay in Israel, became full citizens with a full measure of rights and privileges. Of the 700,000 Palestinians who left as refugees, the vast majority left voluntarily, believing that Israel would soon be destroyed by the invading Arab armies. But it is true that some Arab settlements, a small number of them, were uprooted in the name of security.
But actually, there were people who were kicked out of the homes in the Middle East. It so happens that in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel, some 850,000 Jews were kicked out of Arab countries, where they had lived for hundreds of years, including my wife’s family in Egypt.
To the best of my knowledge, that’s how it went down, if we care to be accurate. How will it go in the future? I don’t really know. If we do end up annihilating one another, then we will have failed to realize the potential for peace that lies at our doorstep. It will be a sad day if that happens. I would like to believe that better days lie ahead, and that our potential to be good, by doing good, will assert itself, and will be realized before too long. I prefer to believe in a Vision of Hope, becuase I can’t make any sense of anything else.
Is the book being marketed in Israel? If so, I will go hunt it down.
For what it is worth, there are some Israelis, myself included, who find that our own spectrum of international armchair extremists to be impediments to achieving any sort of solution. On one end, you have the super left-wing, “Hamas just wants to be loved” gang proposing a one-state-solution, leaving Israel, “dialogue” (oh-so-effective in the past), etc. On the other end, you have the super right-wing “Arabs are Evil” gang who propose carpet-bombing Gaza, deporting the Palestinians etc. Neither side seems to grasp that 1) neither option is realistic 2) neither option actually takes into account the reality here 3) neither option is a particularly good idea and 4) there are likely to be very serious repercussions to either route, and that those of us living here are going to be the ones to pay the price. And quite frankly, we would rather not get to that point. At least I would rather not.
Gila, I agree with you, the solution has to be found somewhere in the middle, and not at either extreme, just like Aristotle taught us.
I believe in a five part solution that includes: a new Ideological framework based on common sense principles, Investment in projects which create jobs and which protect the environment, using Ideology and Investment to sell people on a Vision of Hope, sustaining the hope with Public Diplomacy, and when necessary Fighting, but positioning the fight within a Vision of Hope.
If you like, you can see how it comes together in a new video I made on my home page at http://www.sellingavisionofhope.org You press on the Hamsa and I provide a summary. Let me know what you think. I’m trying to make something happen along these lines as we speak.
There will be a solution, and there will be an end to the conflict and the unrest in the Middle East will be a history, a phase passed. Amen
[...] out his article “60 years and going nowhere — Palestinians must embrace reality: The One-State Solution is t…. I agree with his important overall [...]
while i disagree with some of the downplaying that nissim has done but i won’t digress in that direction, since i disagree a bit more with some of the statements laid down by ray.
The problem lies in that the two state solution politically and economically is unsustainable, since they will push it to be a democratic goverment on one end but on the other hand they will not like or entertain the choices that the people in the Palestinian state will make. they won’t even allow it the time for the peoples mentality to actually mature to the level of the system.
So unless there is some sort of middle ground to actually have legislation in and a blanket goverment so that each part can sort out the conflicts within a structure there is no point to all of this. since you will more likely end up with the same mess that oslo left the region with.
ironically one blueprint for what the solution might look like lies in europe, specifically belguim and luxemburg and the way the belgian goverment is structured.
the main problems with the one state solution lies in the loss of the jewish identity of the state and how people will just be amnesiac about what happened and the problem with the two state solution is that their faith isn’t tied together to help elevate the conflicts that might arise due to sustainability (in the economically sense most importantly) of the palestinian state.
atleast thats the gist of my view point since i find both arguments whether one state or two states to be highly akin to building castles in the sky since the groundwork is in front of us and they both don’t work and probably won’t work in the future
bambam, I think that your comment suggests the need to differentiate between problems that can’t be solved, and those that can.
When you say that a one state solution would result in the loss of jewish identity, I would put a problem of that sort in the category of “no possible solution,” if for nothing else than the fact that most Israelis would fight to the death to avoid that from happening.
But when you say that a two state solution has problems such as: two countries with two faiths, the economic inequality, the fact that Palestinians may elect people whom the Israelis would find offensive, etc., these kind of problems I believe are manageable.
Before declaring a Palestinian state, I think it would behoove both sides to put on the ground new economic realities which speak louder than words. We could both initiate the kind of investments that create good paying jobs, and that offer the promise of eocnomic wellbeing for Palestinians. We should begin speaking to one another with common sense and with a sense of personal dignity. Even if our faiths differ, our ideological perspectives can be brought more in alignment with one another. We should inspire one another with a sense of hope for the future. We should encourage all sorts of student and cultural exchanges. And we should work hard to marginalize the extremists on both sides.
People on both sides have to be conditioned for the possibility of peace, before the mechanics of statehood can be allowed to function properly. If this is done, then I believe the relationship will survive the ups and downs implicit in change. So, for example, if a Palestinian is elected who is not palatable to Israel, hopefully, with enough economic and cultural ties, the understandings which have been reached will survive, until stronger ties can become a reality.
In other words, a lot could be done to move the two sides closer toward the middle, with realities on the ground which create their own ideological imperatives. If the two people are transacting business together, this reality will speak volumes about how they will treat one another, a lot more than a peace treaty ever will.
There will never be peace. Two states, one state, no state – there won’t be peace. Not until the Palestinians realize genocide is not nice; not until they, as a group, will become able to define themselves as anything but a weapon.
Given past history and current trends, it’s unlikely to happen. The other solution – every single Jew in the Jewish national homeland dying – is also improbable.
Ergo, we’ll have endless war. All the empty words about peace and co-existence are just that. The sooner we’ll all accept it and stop mucking about, the better.
Racoon
Never say Never