Exclusive: For years, proposals for a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – granting equal rights to all inhabitants – were called anti-Semitic. But Israel’s settlement building has now left no other rational choice, notes Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
Donald Trump’s election victory raises many unanswered questions, but it also settles a few, starting with the fate of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” In the words of Israeli Education Minister and Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett, “The era of a Palestinian state is over.”
Lest anyone accuse the Israeli hardliner of wishful thinking, one need only recall candidate Trump’s insistence last spring that Israelis “really have to keep going” with settling the territories that they have occupied since 1967. Two months later, the Republican Party changed its 2012 platform to omit support for a Palestinian state and to condemn the “false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
President Barack Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they walk across the tarmac at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 20, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Last week, a co-chair of the Trump campaign’s Israel Advisory Committee reaffirmed that the President-elect rejects Washington’s traditional view that Israel’s settlements are obstacles to peace and illegal under international law.
The so-called “two-state solution” — creation of a Palestinian national homeland comprising the West Bank and Gaza, and coexisting with Israel — has been a longstanding axiom of official U.S. policy, accepted as well by Israel and its unofficial lobbying arm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Of late, however, the rise of extreme Jewish nationalists to power in Israel, the relentless expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and Israel’s evident disinterest in peace negotiations have all but killed hopes for such a solution. In 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “There will be no withdrawals” from the occupied West Bank and “no concessions” to the Palestinians.
As Americans for Peace Now points out, “more than 40% of the West Bank is under the direct control of settlers or settlements and off-limits to Palestinians . . . Israel has taken hundreds of kilometers of the West Bank to build roads that serve the settlements, . . . dividing Palestinian cities and towns from each other, and imposing various barriers to Palestinian movement and access. . . Such settlements, and new settlement construction going on today, have the explicit goal of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem – which, in effect, means preventing the two-state solution.”
Many of Israel’s staunchest allies in the United States now concede this reality. Hillary Clinton, in a private email to one of her advisers, acknowledged in 2015 that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had become a phony “Potemkin” spectacle. Secretary of State John Kerry warned publicly that Israeli settlement-building was “imperiling the viability of a two-state solution.”
Roger Cohen, the New York Times columnist and an ardent liberal Zionist, reported last month following a trip to Israel that the two-state idea is all but “clinically dead.” He explained: “The incorporation of all the biblical Land of Israel has advanced too far, for too long, to be reversed now.”
Many Israeli supporters of a two-state solution now publicly admit that bitter truth. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak accuses Netanyahu of engaging in a “messianic drive” toward “a single Jewish state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” For the current crop of right-wing leaders in Israel, the main question is whether to offer Palestinians citizenship within an expanded Israel or to remove them.
Palestinians also concede privately that their dream of a state is dead. Said noted Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, “We, Israelis and Palestinians, live in a one-state reality.” Former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, declared bluntly, “there will be no alternative but one state. No alternative.”
What Path Forward?
If a Palestinian state is truly dead, Palestinians will need to give up their decades-old nationalist aspirations, a wrenching blow that many will find hard to accept. Israelis, in turn, will need to find room in a bi-national democratic state for millions of Palestinians — roughly equal in number to Jews — an even more wrenching adjustment that many will fight to the bitter end. Liberal Zionists have warned for years that refusal to accept a Palestinian state would force Israel to choose between remaining a democratic state or a Jewish state.
A map showing Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Territories.
As former Prime Minister Barak put it, the “overarching ambition” of absorbing the occupied territories “is bound to culminate in either a single, binational state, which, within a generation, may have a Jewish minority and likely a Bosnia-like civil war, or else an apartheid reality if Palestinian residents are deprived of the right to vote. Both spell doom for the Zionist dream.”
An apartheid-like reality already exists for Palestinians, but many Israelis and their supporters publicly rationalize it as an unfortunate but temporary necessity during a transitional period that will end with a peace settlement. By putting off determination of the final status of the occupied territories, Israel can justify subjecting Palestinians to harsh military law, seizing their land, demolishing their homes, controlling their movements, and jailing them at will rather than granting them the rights afforded to Israeli citizens.
Israeli political scientist and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti has been saying for years that “the whole notion of a Palestinian state . . . is a sham.” Israel has maintained the pretense of peace talks only “because it is self-serving,” he said. While talking about two states as a goal, Israeli governments continue funding the expansion of settlements. Palestinian officials, meanwhile, help enforce order in return for millions of dollars in international aid.
But if Israeli hardliners succeed in ending the fiction of a peace process and annex the territories, “then the Palestinian struggle will inevitably be transformed from one demanding independence into a movement demanding equal rights,” says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. “If this is to be the case, we may well see the day when the Palestinian citizens of Israel will emerge . . . as the new leadership of a unified Palestinian community fighting for justice and equality.”
Such a fight will face tremendous opposition. In recent years, polls of Israeli adults show that nearly half believe Arabs should be expelled from Israel. Nearly eight in 10 believe Jews should receive preferential treatment compared to non-Jews. The Netanyahu government and Knesset are filled with overt racists. Last year, Netanyahu appointed as deputy defense minister a rabbi who asserted, “[Palestinians] are like animals, they aren’t human.”
The Israeli peace activist and public opinion analyst Dahlia Scheindlin doesn’t minimize the hurdles, but said Palestinians may be ready to fight for their rights within Israel. “Israeli racism [is] better than Israeli occupation,” she wrote, “and they probably feel [they] can live with it as long as there are democratic foundations to demand better. Maybe for them, Israeli rule cannot possibly make their status quo worse, but at least it offers the possibility of something many of them simply lack: citizenship.”
Democratic Rights
Some hope is offered by the fact that several notable right-leaning Israeli politicians favor granting Palestinians full democratic rights within a greater Israel, rather than subordinating them forever under the thumb of military occupation or Jim Crow-type segregation.
A section of the barrier — erected by Israeli officials to prevent the passage of Palestinians — with graffiti using President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote when facing the Berlin Wall, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” (Photo credit: Marc Venezia)
As New Yorker editor David Remnick observed a couple of years ago, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin — a member of the rightist Likud party — has “emerged as the most prominent critic of racist rhetoric, jingoism, fundamentalism, and sectarian violence, the highest-ranking advocate among Jewish Israelis for the civil rights of the Palestinians both in Israel and in the occupied territories.”
Rivlin visited an Arab town that had been the scene of an Israeli massacre in 1956 to apologize and “swear, in my name and that of all our descendants, that we will never act against the principle of equal rights, and we will never try and force someone from our land.” He also condemned racist fans of a Jerusalem soccer team who protested its signing of two Muslim players.
For such sentiments, not surprisingly, Rivlin has been called a “traitor,” “rotten filth,” and even “lying little Jew” by his Israeli haters.
But Rivlin is not alone. Moshe Arens, a former Likud leader, minister of defense and foreign affairs, and ambassador to the United States, supports giving Palestinians in the West Bank the right to vote in Israeli elections. The key to preserving Israeli democracy, he wrote in 2010, will be making them feel at home in the state of Israel, “enjoying not only equality of rights but also equality of opportunities.”
It will take a minor miracle to persuade the Israeli public to risk broadening their democracy to incorporate millions of Palestinians, but the longer the unsupportable status quo prevails, the less likely it becomes that any Israelis will enjoy the democratic and civil rights they have long known. Israel’s media is under assault from the government, leading Freedom House to downgrade its assessment of the country’s press from “free” to “partly free.” Israeli peace activists and NGOs face constant harassment and persecution. Rightist demonstrators routinely chant “Death to Arabs.”
Former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, a member of the Likud Party, recently declared, “The leadership of Israel in 2016 is busy with inflaming passions and causing fear between Jews and Arabs, between right and left and between different ethnic groups in order to survive in power.”
And Ilan Baruch, Israel’s former ambassador to South Africa, said, “Netanyahu is pushing Israeli democracy to the brink. . . This is the most right-wing government in the country’s history, which has no qualms about taking tactical and strategic steps in the media, education, and culture in order to ensure Netanyahu’s permanent rule. To do that, the government sows racist divisions . . . slanders and preaches hatred for the Other — be they Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinians, African refugees, or human rights activists.”
Still, with the pretense of a two-state solution shattered by Trump’s victory and Netanyahu’s open intransigence, supporters of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights can finally begin an unblinkered discussion of how to achieve a genuine accommodation between those two peoples in a common land.
In the words of Sandy Tolan, author of the international bestseller The Lemon Tree, “Now, at least, there is an opportunity to lay the foundations for some newer kind of solution grounded in human rights, freedom of movement, complete cessation of settlement building, and equal access to land, water, and places of worship. It will have to be based on a new reality, which Israel and the United States have had such a hand in creating. Think of it as the one-state solution.”
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic . Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews include “Can Obama Lecture Xi on Human Rights?” “How Arms Sales Distort US Foreign Policy,” “Hiding the Indonesia Massacre Files,” and “Pakistan’s Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb.”
The west which has totally been subverted by Jewish propaganda and a usurious monetary system has been waging perpetual war in the middle east in order for Israel to exist. The Jews are the neighbour from hell. Of course it’s not them, oh no it’s everyone else. Lets face it without constant destabilising war in the middle east the Arabs would have put forth the sword long ago. Ironically the very people jews hate the most have been used as a tool to defend Israel the most, white anglos. The Gentiles must wake up and shake off their naiveté or get annihilated. Try getting Chinese or Indians to go to war for them.
There will be no solution to anything until the US stops giving Israel money and arms, all stolen from American taxpayers.
It will not get any better under a Trump presidency.
Look at who his son-in-law is and the power he has already accumulated – and Trump is not yet even in the White House!
The Palestinians will end up becoming the “Indians” of Israel, living in squalor (as now) in “reservations” (refugee camps).
If the Israelis are smart – and they generally are – they will gradually enfranchise those sections of the Palestinians who are invested in the status quo. Already, Palestinians inside 1948 Israel have the right to vote.
That right could be gradually extended, based – say – on property rights that would exclude many Palestinians from voting.
Promises could be made – and kept – to gradually widen the franchise so as to ensure the zionists retain control over everything.
Hegemonic control over the media would also be a powerful tool of control, just as it is in North America and across Europe.
“If a Palestinian state is truly dead, Palestinians will need to give up their decades-old nationalist aspirations, a wrenching blow that many will find hard to accept. Israelis, in turn, will need to find room in a bi-national democratic state for millions of Palestinians — roughly equal in number to Jews — an even more wrenching adjustment that many will fight to the bitter end. Liberal Zionists have warned for years that refusal to accept a Palestinian state would force Israel to choose between remaining a democratic state or a Jewish state.”
The two state solution was always proposed with a wink. Just and opportunity to continuing to push Palestinians off their land and make their lives so miserable that many left. But the perpetrators of this cute hoax always had their heads in the sand, hoping to lift their heads someday and find all the Palestinians gone.
So how does the United States, its moral authority diminishing day be day, react? Does it stay silent and allow de facto second class citizenship for millions of people, or does put its money where its mouth is and say we stand for equal rights for all people and our policies and actions toward the Palestinians and Israeli will reflect that.
There are reasons to be skeptical and there are reasons to hope. One day we hope a politician will shock his fellow politicians by speaking out for one democratic, equal rights state and one day the media will no longer pretend that elected representative never really said that and defend his or her position. And one day Americans will feel better for themselves for speaking out for all the people living in Israel and Palestine.
Perhaps they could have a federal state.
A federal state among two radically opposed factions could not readily permit a majority to protect minorities, and would need some means to prevent tyranny by the larger faction.
Federal states work best where there are several factions, which have not been violently opposed recent times. Ukraine might have been able to do that, but the US under Hillary’s State dept precipitated civil war to get their way. Iraq had a workable relationship between the Kurds and Shiites but with more US meddling failed to accommodate the Sunnis leading to civil war.
unfortunately. i agree…it has always been a self-serving sham of israel to “talk” while pushing the palestinians out. I am afraid this situation will get completely out of hand, until the rest of the world(china, russia, europe etc.) have had enough and directly confront israel…until then, there will only be a growing number of palestinian casualties…
Excellent article. On the one hand, majority rule must of course prevail in Palestine – sooner or later. My distant Dutch relatives in South Africa have had to adapt to majority rule and seem to have made the transition without harm.
On the other hand, the 1948 NYT letter signed by Einstein and 26 other prominent Jews makes one pessimistic about the Zionists and their willingness to live in a bi-cultural state: “The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide. whatever to its’ actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism. whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.”
When a child misbehaves, sometimes an effective corrective action is to cut off their allowance. When a murderous and thieving nation is doing what it does so well, murdering and stealing, cutting off that nation’s totally undeserved and illegal allowance could be a first step for a US government which gives a solitary damn. Yes, illegal, for it’s against US law to give aid to nuclear states like Israel.
Israel is still working very hard to make life unbearable for the Palestinians. The object of the official thuggery is to spark some event which will give the little shithole of a nation state an excuse to have another Death March – call this one Nakba 2.
When that happens, I expect the Israeli Arabs – officially citizens but totally second class ones – will be pushed out by the bayonets too.
President Hillary would have swooned with delight if this had happened while she was in the White House giving orders. Time will tell how President Trump handles matters. Will he behave like all the other recent US Presidents? As in kissing Benjamin Netanyahu’s ass till it’s red at every opportunity? As I said, time will tell.
I had a suspicion that Palestinian Removal would have been an early concept for the Zionists, and sure enough, it was.
On June 12, 1895 Theodor Herzl wrote the following in his diary:
(that’s page 88 of volume 1 of The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, 1960 set edited by Raphael Patai)
Herzl wasn’t a nice guy at all, but compared with those who followed, he was – relatively speaking – a saint. Concealed mass murder has been the method of choice since 1948 when Poor Little Israel, having seen the effectiveness of Hitler’s techniques, adopted a great many of them itself.
This situation is sad and frightening, but a necessary and fine essay.
Absolute tripe sharonsj. As I’ve said before, in the 80’s Israel supported Hamas, gave it a licence to collect funds to build mosques and schools, privileges denied the PLO. It was all the usual ploy, divide and conquer. And that division continues today as Abbas is seen as an appeaser. Perhaps in his mind he has seen that a two state solution has been erased from the map and it’s time to think of the one state, something that Hamas finds difficult to grasp. They did hold a legitimate election some years ago and Israel and America didn’t like the results and started arming Fatah to kill the Hamas the victors in Gaza. Both the US and Israel still play the divide and conquer game.
As I have said before, Arafat was so happy with his negotiations with Rabin whom he trusted, he called president Carter to tell him we finally have a country. Well the Israeli right put a stop to that with a bullet into Rabin, continued to build Jews only roads across the West Bank and in consequence Palestinians erupted.
The Bible is fable and full of inconsistencies. Egyptian history is well documented, and no exodus of the Biblical type occurred. No Egyptian king was ever called Pharaoh in their historical archives but the head of a small sect in the Arabian province of Asir, between Yemen yes Makkah, called their leader Pharon (Firawn). In the Asir region early biblical names are abundant. Also the original texts mention Misr which in Arabic texts and the Syriac Torah remained Misr, but in later translations of the Torah and Bible things changed. In the Syriac Torah, Mizraim was were Musa (Moses) and Pharaoh abided. Mizraim was mistranslated into Greek to Aegypti which in time became Egypt. Perhaps because of an unwillingness to upset true believers, it has never been corrected. Misr was on a major camel route and when sail boats replaced the camel, times got tough and many inhabitants of Mizraim left, travelling up the Red Sea and the Levant. (synopsis from Dr. Ashraf Ezzat interesting synopsis of history). It is supported by many Egyptian archeologists.
So is Israel truly the promised land. Note, the early inquisitive historian travelled through the Levant in440s BCE and never came across a Judean society. Perhaps that is why the panic to find David’s and Solomon’s princely dwellings have turned up nothing.
Also Jews who families never left Palestinian region are very much related to the Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Try to tell them apart. Many others who immigrated to Palestine of European descent but remote from the Mediterranean shore are more related to a sect of people who ancestors lived between the Caspian and Black Sea and converted to Judaism. They look very different, and have no real ties to Palestine.
As Alan Hart titled his books, ‘Zionism: the real Enemy of the Jew’ (1,2 & 3) suggests, freedom and liberty for all is the answer. Jews lived in peace with the other Arabs before Zionism was invented, they could do it again.
A One state would be an Apartheid state—–the Jews would still rule and enact even more laws to ensure they continued to rule.
Every Arab country, every predominately Muslim country, is an apartheid state. There were Jewish populations in Egypt, Syria,Yemen,Lybia,Tunesia, Iraq, ect, that ere all driven out by force. To an extent, these refugees took the places of the Palestinians that were driven out. Saudi Arabia does not allow Jews to live there. Sometimes the price is survival is compromising ideals
WOUNDED KNEE
The battle of “Wounded Knee” in the State of South Dakota in December,
1890 , represented the painful fact that Native Americans in the
North American continent had lost the battle for their land.
What is left out in Jonathan Marshall’s article is the central role of
the US (and other Western Nations) in creating and continuing to
encourage this disaster.
What is known today as “Israel” has known many deportations in
its history …deportations were an essential part of the
Assyrian Empire, the Egyptian Empire and the Persian Empire.
Whatever the incoming administration may believe in
the US, US policy has encouraged this human crime.
The “American Holocaust” exterminated vast numbers
of Native Americans. Other eras have had their holocaust.
The US has participated in these criminal acts in Palestine and
not by accident
The people being murdered, whose homes are turned to rubble,
who are bombed with US weaponry are real people.
Their blood is on our hands.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
PS Happy Thanksgiving!”
Thank you Jonathan Marshall for bringing us up to date on reality in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Sorry to learn that the two state solution is now thought to be impossible by people who sound convincing, including yourself.
It was easy to comprehend the evil of the current situation when I first learned that Israeli soldiers were tasked to uproot olive trees on Palestinian land.
It was poignant to learn that Israeli soldiers at one time were imprisoned by their government for refusing to participate in the violence against Palestinians.
It was heartbreaking to learn of young Palestinian children and young Israeli children becoming friends and not understanding what was keeping them apart.
If the two state solution won’t work then the ideas of those Likud peopleyou mention who recognize that Israel’s current degrading policy towards Palestinians is also debasing the Israeli people because it is inhuman.
Thank you for pointing out that the only realistic hope now is for Palestinians to be accepted with equal rights into Israel.
If that’s the only hope then the world community should build a consensus around Sandy Tolan’s comment:
“Now, at least, there is an opportunity to lay the foundations for some newer kind of solution grounded in human rights, freedom of movement, complete cessation of settlement building, and equal access to land, water, and places of worship. It will have to be based on a new reality, which Israel and the United States have had such a hand in creating. Think of it as the one-state solution.”
But those claiming that Palestinians would really be granted equal rights in a one-state solution are certainly not experts, in fact not even practical thinkers, but seem hopelessly naive. Would one not have to cover one’s eyes and erase history since 1947 to believe that anything like that could ever work? What would be the Israelis is not the oligarchy? Who would be the serfs if not the Palestinians? It could never be fair. I see no practical plan in the article at all, or evidence of a desire for justice. It seems to be a prescription for economic slavery and nothing more. I would have to see a lot more convincing argument from the writer, and I suspect there is none.
Yes, I agree.
Unless there were an international consensus, international oversight, and a whole host of rules to protect the rights of Palestinians. Seats in the Knesset, voting rights and institutions protecting rights in place, it is no sure solution.
You are blaming Trump but Hillary wrote a political love letter to Netanyahu in November 2015
promising to have him to the White House within a month after she was elected. Further
she has already been co-President and Secretary of State.
How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu
Hillary Clinton November 4, 2015
And Trump has not even been inaugurated yet.Prior to this election, he was a private citizen.
The US has vetoed every single UN war crime against Israel. Paid for killing civilians in Gaza, conducted war against Muslims around the globe to please its Zionist Master whilst Americans langor in poverty. Trumpety Trump is evil. Blame Trump
Very true, except that there is no Trump connection there (yet), while the evidence clearly shows that Hillary has promoted every zionist war in exchange for zionist bribes. This it was the “turn” of the several potential female candidates who were not warmongers. Now that the likelihood of foreign policy disasters is down, let’s see the usual domestic policy disasters of the Repubs before blaming their least traditional candidate. Then we may win on both fronts.
Do I recognize your name from Philadelphia 1974?
It would be possible to have one state, with three separate sub-states, one Palestinian, one Israeli, and one mixed. Foreign affairs legislation, as well as all country legislation would have to be jointly agreed to by all 3 sectors,
I invite others who favor the above approach to suggest some further details of such an arrangement, and/or positive modifications.
I also invite serious critics to comment.
The problem with a mixed state at this point is that one cannot prevent the anger of some from being manifested as terror attacks on the innocent of the other side, as in Baghdad etc.. The two sides need to live in peace by themselves long enough that the separation seems strange rather than necessary. That probably would take several generations. Separate states would need a UN buffer zone to prevent potshots or car bombing across the border.
A Fairly Detailed Plan
The following plan recognizes a right of the the right of all persons there as of some prior date, or descended from those forced to flee, to remain, despite the historical inequities, based upon the difficulty of tracing right and wrong and the fact that most are innocent of wrongdoing. It also recognizes that resources were wrongfully taken in most cases, and any fair distribution will cause a temporary loss of resources for the Js, but greater security.
The two states must each be viable in having shoreline, port(s), agricultural land, residential and industrial areas, roads, and independent utility infrastructure. Neither state may be allowed to maintain military forces, and police training and defense should be UN supervised to prevent right wing militarism between the factions.
The gross assets should first be cataloged independently and verified at several points, including all offshore and hidden assets, infrastructure, real estate, equipment and personal property, and a census taken as of some prior date, to prevent packing residents or distorting the asset picture. Relocations are subsidized with the understanding that deliberate stripping and wasting of assets reduces the compensation of those responsible by more than the lost assets, with criminal penalties assessed as well.
Distribution of gross assets should recognize that the Ps were deprived of opportunity to accumulate property, while the Js accumulated property based upon resources unfairly taken from the Ps. So each person should have some minimum share of the joint assets, based upon age, while preserving some of the property of those who worked for it. Those who were forced to live in refugee camps, suffered injuries, or are survivors of wrongful deaths, should be granted special compensation.
The compensation of each person may be composed of residential or commercial real estate, personal property, shares in jointly held property (the DMZ etc.), or funds. Those with homes and business property should retain that or something similar in their destination state, but may owe a government mortgage if it exceeds their share. If they must relocate home or business, they are given choices by means of an agency allotment process, with financing for renovation and business equipment. Other practical transitional provisions are necessary.
When the buffer zone is partitioned after several decades of peace between the factions, the land may be sold and those with shares compensated or given mortgages on the land.
So you, in your infinite wisdom, will have the power to “distribute” from one to another, tp adjudicate, to criminalize. and our beloved competent and unbiased United Nations will achieve peace and justice. Sounds like a left wing Trekie fantasy at othe rpeoples expense
For a one-state solution see page 143 in this document, “NUCLEAR WAR:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and A Workable Moral Strategy
for Achieving and Preserving World Peace,” at
http://sun.iwu.edu/~rwilson/nuclearwar-book.pdf
THERE IS A CAUTION ON THE COVER.
Thieves always weed themselves out and this will be one more case………..The Palestinians will get their FULL rights back……………The Universe has a funny way of taking care of business……..
Yes, a one-state solution seems premature unless Israel crumbles, which would solve a few problems. Maybe ISIS would rather have Saudi Arabia if Russia sent them that way. An opportunity for a dealmaker?
Any one-state solution must be preceded by three generations of two-state peace under a plan forced by external powers. Palestinians in a prematurely combined state would never be given equality: otherwise there would never have been an Israel. At best the Ps would be given fake identity-based representatives like Abbas by an oligarchy of Js, just as we were given Obama. Any premature one-state solution must evict the Israelis from Palestine, not the Palestinians.
A Better Plan
To get there via two states, Israel must be surrounded, embargoed, and either forced back to a state consisting of resources proportionate to population, minus the value of the damage they have caused (the humane solution, which may leave them nothing), or militarily defeated. ISIS and Al Qaeda should be brought in by the US for house-to-house fighting as needed. After their defeat, two viable proportionate-value states can be created with a broad UN DMZ of farmland to be distributed after three generations, less damages in the meanwhile. Then pursue a single state.
Fascism is essentially the pursuit of gains for a group at the expense of all others. The bullied often become bullies, as the Jewish victims of fascism empowered the zionist fascists among them. As Barak put it, this means “doom for the Zionist dream.” If ISIS cannot roll them back, their theft of nuclear weapons, designs, and material from the US means that Israel may have to be destroyed. Give what remains to ISIS: no one will weep but fascists.
This commentary will serve no other purpose but to increase Israeli intransigence and the chance of use of nuclear war. Neither arabs nor Jews will ever give up
Although not stated openly, Netanyahu’s policy is clear enough from actions on the ground. The Palestinians should “go away”.
If their lives are made miserable enough, maybe they will immigrate to Brazil.
There is plenty of room in Antartica and the Gobi desert.
There has always been plenty of room elsewhere for zionist fascists. Those who support them are the anti-semites. You would have been happy in the any of the alternative locations that were considered. But having gone over to fascism, you will take what you get.