Netanyahu has shattered the two-state pipe dream

The “one-state solution” for the Palestine/Israel dispute has come back into fashion because it is at long last admitted that the “two-state solution” has been buried under the millions of tonnes of cement and red roof tiles of illegal Israeli colonies. Israel’s strategic expropriations and constructions and the 640,000 Israelis who dwell in its colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have always been the tools to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state in Palestine. The “two-state solution” was a pipe dream that enabled world leaders to postpone, procrastinate and prevaricate rather than tackle Israel over its systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex large portions of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley has given the coup de grace to the “two-state” pipe dream.

He has postponed annexation, partly due to rampaging Covid-19 infections in Israel and partly due to worldwide opposition to the well publicised land grab.

The time has come to confront the result of this cowardly approach.

There is only one practical and honourable way to deal with it: revert to the “one-state solution.” Last week Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said the kingdom could accept a “one-state solution” if Palestinians were granted equal rights with Jewish Israelis. At present Palestinian citizens of Israel are relegated to second class with fewer rights than Jewish Israelis while Palestinians living under occupation have no rights. Until now Jordan had insisted on the “two-state solution” involving the emergence alongside Israel of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel has repeatedly called for Jordan to become “the Palestinian state” by absorbing Palestinians fleeing Israeli rule and giving citizenship to Palestinians who opt to stay on and endure apartheid under occupation. Jordan has made it absolutely clear that this is not on the cards. Jordan is no longer ready to be the dumping ground for refugees from regional wars and crises. Jordan already has a population of 10 million and not enough water and resources to sustain such a large population.

I speak of reverting to the “one-state solution.” It is nothing new.

As early as 1969, 20 months after Israel’s conquest of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinians’ parliament-in-exile, meeting in Cairo chose Fatah’s Yasser Arafat to head the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and put forward the “one-state” option. Fatah’s Nabil Shaath promoted it. The proposition was, naturally, ignored by Israel which never had any intention of giving equal rights to Palestine’s natives as this would mean the end of the Zionist state and the capitulation of Zionism to a pluralistic bi-national polity.

The threat of Israel’s annexation of up to 30 per cent of the West Bank has prompted influential opinion makers and political leaders to raise the counter-threat of the “one-state solution.”

Peter Beinart, a prominent US Jewish intellectual and commentator, contributed on July 8th a New York Times opinion article calling for the “one-state  solution. Beinart wrote, “If… Netanyahu fulfils his pledge to impose Israeli sovereignty in parts of the West Bank, he will just formalise a decades-old reality: in practice, Israel annexed the West Bank long ago.”

Beinart argued that liberal Zionists like himself must stand up for the equal rights for the Palestinians: “It’s time to imagine a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state.” He said that equality could be realised in a single state that includes Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Another option could be a “confederation that allows free movement between two deeply integrated countries.”

Although he warned that resistance from hardliners on both sides could be expected, he insisted that the “goal of equality is now more realistic than the goal of separation.” He made the point that Israel is “already a bi-national state. Two peoples, roughly equal in number, live under the ultimate control of one government.” Beinart concluded his essay by saying, “Israel-Palestine can be a Jewish home that is also, equally, a Palestinian home. And building that home can bring liberation not just for Palestinians but for us, too.”

His essay has been praised by Israeli’s courageous dissident columnist Gideon Levy and other Jewish opponents of Israeli apartheid and has been widely quoted in Arab publications.

A contributor to the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz and other publications, Levy had previously called for recognising and acting on the “one-state solution.”

He wrote in the Palestine-Israel Journal that the “alternative to the two-state solution is, naturally, a one-state solution.  This state has already existed ...since the 1967 war.” He said, however, that the occupation and separation means this one state has “two regimes, a liberal democratic one in Israel, which includes a discriminatory regime toward the Palestinian citizens of the state and a South African-style apartheid regime in the West Bank. Even the Gaza Strip is part of this one state; it is a gigantic cage in the backyard, the biggest prison in the world...

The fate of all the human beings living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is determined in the (Israeli) government buildings in Jerusalem and the security buildings in Tel Aviv. That’s what one state with one government looks like, period.”

He contended Israelis have three alternatives. Israel can withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 allowing the Palestinian state to emerge in order for Israel to retain both its Jewish identity and democracy. But, he said, this is almost impossible because of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli colonists.  

Israel can remain Jewish but not democratic by continuing the occupation and imposing apartheid on the Palestinians. This goes against the anti-colonial zeitgeist of the 21st century. Or, Israel can opt for a single democratic state where Palestinians have equal rights. He agreed with Breitbart that Israelis have to give up on Zionism, the cherished 19th century colonialist ideology which produced Israel.   

Meanwhile in the West Bank and East Jerusalem the occupation reigns.  

Israeli troops continuously raid Palestinian homes in cities, towns and villages across the West Bank, arresting Palestinian boys and men. The Palestinian governor of East Jerusalem Adnan Geith is set to appear in court on Thursday.

He has been detained 17 times since his appointment by the Palestinian Authority two years ago. Last week the Israeli army smashed two Covid-19 testing centres in the West Bank and raided two Palestinian cultural institutions in East Jerusalem and detained their directors.