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CounterPunch
November
4, 2002
Goodbye and
Good Riddance
The End of the Two-State Solution
by WILL YOUMANS
Recent political developments in the Israeli government
point to a larger trend--the demise of two states as a viable
option for peace in Israel-Palestine. This may open up an opportunity
for a movement based on addressing the core issues of the conflict,
and to reaching a truly historic solution in the form of one
democratic, secular state--an old PLO position worth resuscitation.
The "national unity" coalition
that ruled Israel's government since February 2001 collapsed
recently. Ariel Sharon immediately began courting smaller far-right
parties to make up for the withdrawal of the Labor party.
The Labor party ostensibly pulled out
after failing to re-direct the $147 million designated to the
settlements in the Israeli budget. Before anyone thinks that
this might signal a genuine reincarnation of an interest in peace,
they should consider the timing. An insightful editorial by the
Financial Times called this controversy "manufactured"
(10/31/02). Such resignations come like clockwork, one year before
the scheduled Israeli elections.
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor party
leader, defense minister in the coalition, and prime minister
hopeful, is being "transparently opportunist."
"He appears to be opposing Israel's
generous subsidies for the settlementsBut Mr Ben-Eliezer's stand
in no way affects the expansion of the settlements championed
by Mr Sharon."
To keep his government together in this
time of crisis, Sharon is currently in talks with the religious
fundamentalist, National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu bloc. Both of
these parties are avowedly pro-settler, and support the transfer
of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. The new defense
minister will likely be Shaul Mofaz, a nasty military careerist,
whose idea of negotiations begins with expelling Arafat from
the occupied territories. If Sharon can keep the government together
with these new ingredients, their influence is sure to grow,
as will calls to transfer Palestinians.
The hapless "roadmap for peace"
pitched by US envoy William Burns was the first scurry in diplomatic
activity initiated by the US in a while--right as it prepares
for an all-out attack on Iraq. PLO legal advisor, Diana Buttu,
told bitterlemons.org that she heard that Ariel Sharon rejected
the most significant Israeli obligation it stipulated, a "settlement
freeze."
With the interminable growth of the settlements,
and the possibility of the mass transfer of Palestinians, the
prospects for peace look bad and are only getting worse.
There is a serious decline in the possibility
of a viable two-state solution, the widely acknowledged basis
for peace. A 'Christian Science Monitor' piece quoted "one
diplomat" as saying "it's hard to resist the conclusion
that the two-state idea is in deep trouble" (10/23/2002).
He or she went on to add that this leaves "a one-state solution,"
specifically, "one state with two classes of citizens if
that state is to have a Jewish character or a democratic secular
state in Palestine, which means the death of Israel within 10
years."
This "death of Israel" means
that Israel will no longer be able to maintain a structural predisposition
towards people of the Jewish faith, while denying the same rights
to Palestinians, or "non-Jews" in the official lexicon.
What it really means is the end of Israel as the "Jewish
State."
Is that a bad thing?
When the Oslo peace process began, it
was premised on a two-state solution, Israel proper as it is,
and a Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza. The negotiations were
to work out the immediate kinks while kicking the central issues
to the final status talks. During the whole process however,
Israel continued to expand settlements on the same land that
the Palestinian Authority was negotiating for. Thanks to programmatic
deception by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, many believe the breakdown
in the peace process was due to Arafat's obduracy, rather than
any structural flaws. Thus, settlement expansion continues unabated,
even while many of the already built portions remain uninhabited.
Israel's policymakers just cannot be
clear, nor united, on what it is that peace requires. The settlements
continue to chew away at future Palestinian territoriality and
sovereignty, undermining the very basis for a two-state solution.
Israel likely will be unable to evacuate them, especially as
the population of settlers booms. Nor will they resort to living
under a Palestinian government. Ever since a right-wing settler
nut took out Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli politicians have been pretty
wary about appearing to abandon the settlements or cross the
far-right too much. The cost for this hold is a Palestinian state.
With such inner cross-currents, it should
no surprise that Israel's face towards the Palestinians has been
schizophrenic when it comes to peace. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
routinely declares his commitment to peace, yet in May, his party's
Central Committee "adopted a resolution completely rejecting
the creation of a Palestinian state" (Ha'aretz 5/13/02).
It was pushed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the man most likely to be
the next Prime Minister. Sharon just invited Netanyahu to join
the government to replace Shimon Peres as foreign minister, a
further indication of the decline of the two-state option. Similarly,
Israel's construction of a wall complex within Palestinian territory
is appropriating more land and dividing Palestinian estates and
populations.
As PA officials cling to the two-state
dream, Israeli officials offer no vision or goal beyond the achievement
of guaranteed security for all Israelis. PA officials have no
choice but to hold on to the two-state solution since it the
basis for their positions. Acknowledgement that it is dying implies
they are irrelevant. They will never admit that, even though
the scope of land they could rule in such a peace agreement is
shrinking and shifting.
As time passes, the land that was to
be a Palestinian state is becoming less and less Palestinian.
Palestinian land is becoming increasingly circumscribed and divided
by settlements and the mechanisms the army arranges to maintain,
protect, and connect them. Israel is changing the "facts
on the ground," which after 55 years of perpetual fact-arranging,
appears to be its 'raison d'etre.'
A PA dossier passed on to the State Department,
argued that Israel's moves will reduce the Palestinians to living
in 'the Middle East equivalent of a native American Indian reservation'"
(Financial Times 10/9/02).
The death of the two-state solution would
require a parallel change in the nature and form of the Palestinian
struggle. The 'Jerusalem Post' reported that "last month,
(Diana) Buttu surprised American and Israeli officials when she
announced in Washington that Israel would eventually have to
consider giving Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip citizenship." Instead of a nationalist struggle for
a disconnected, mutated piecemeal-state, Palestinians would have
to campaign for legal and political equality, assuming Israel
had not transferred them already.
The response from the State Department
to Buttu's comments was telling: an official "dismissed
the idea, saying it threatened Israel's Jewish character."
One problem among many with the State
Department's response is that the government of Israel is purposefully
unclear as to where the border of this "Jewish character"
ends. With roughly 400,000 geographically-dispersed settlers
in the West Bank and Jerusalem alone, no one can exactly delineate
where the Jewish character actually is in relation to the land.
Israel itself has no official borders. Since portions of its
Jewish population are interspersed into the Palestinian territories,
this concept of attributing a religious character to that land
is ridiculous. The 20-30% of Israel that is not Jewish, by this
logic, is existentially undermining the Jewish character -- how
19th-century is this argument?
Another problem is that there is no "Jewish
character" in terms of the population. With nearly half-a-million
Russian Christians and non-Jewish migrant workers, plus Israel's
citizen-Palestinians, it is only about 75 % Jewish in Israel
proper alone (throw in the 3.5 million Palestinians in the territories
living under Israeli rule and there is demographic parity).
This response must actually refer to
the political character of the state--the "Zionist character."
Undeniably, Israel's political and legal structures are predisposed
towards benefiting Jews to the disadvantage of everyone else.
In the State Department's moral universe those in power are always
more important than those who are ruled. Granting voting rights
to the wily natives would upset this precious arrangement. What
about the fact that the tyrannical rule of Israel's military
administration over the Palestinians undermines Israel's democratic
character? From the point-of-view of the Enlightenment and essential
principles of western liberalism, isn't it better to promote
the democratic character of a state than an ethno-religious one?
To digress briefly, this adds another
major hole to that American official love for democracy. First,
they clamor all day and night for democracy, except when "anti-democratic"
(i.e. Anti-American) elements are elected. Now, the new exception
is when it strains the ethno-religious purity of Israel. At what
point does the clich about supporting democracy become utter
bullshit? How many exceptions does it take?
The most spectacular thing about this
Jewish character argument is that it holds Israel to a lower
standard than Americans expect of themselves. The United States
is 75% white according to the last Census. While, there are a
few proponents of preserving America's "white character"
-- David Duke, for example -- there would be widespread and justified
outrage if this was suggested publicly by a mainstream politician.
Yet, its Israeli equivalent is repeated 'ad nauseam' as if it
represented some sweet ideal rather than a noxiously racist and
backwards expression of ultra-nationalism.
To add to the hypocrisy, the Palestinians
whose equality would undermine the "Jewish character"
of Israel are the native inhabitants. Israel made them into minorities
in their own homeland. In other words, Israel's founders were
about transforming Palestine's Palestinian character, as so many
other colonial projects sought to replace one population with
another. No State Department officials decry Israel's settlement
policy as an attack on the Palestinian character of the West
Bank.
It is as if, with a twisted mirror, we
are witnessing a possible, untaken route of American history
unfold in Israel--one where the natives were not erased by genocide
as they were here, but left to fight for self-determination or
rights against a state deemed to have a character excluding them.
In the face of this, our incompetent and/or spineless State Department
can only fumble on immorally about the need for ethno-religious
purity. Holders of this view are on par with the worst chauvinists
in history. They are opponents of integration--they sound like
they missed that whole civil rights movement thing.
At least the end of this funny business
about a kennel-state is over, we can get back to the basics.
The problem lies within the ideology of Zionism, the original
notion that this land must have a "Jewish character."
Just as we shed the illusions of a peace process gone bad, made
wretched by Israel's insatiable thirst for colonial expansionism,
we are stuck in a Zionist paradox--where secular-humanistic modernity
meets good old fashioned, exclusive ethnic nationalism. How else
can we explain the stasis of those bad-faith, self-depreciating
negotiations known misleadingly as the peace process?
It should not have to be stated that
I am clearly not against the idea of a Jewish state. I understand
as anyone else does the need for a place of shelter and protection
for Jews. The problem is that Israel did not form in isolation.
This Jewish state was born on the dispossession of the Palestinian
people. This is the root of the current problem plain and simple.
It strikes me as absurd that a persecuted people seeking a safe
haven would pick the land of another people to stake a claim.
Israel clearly has not brought the world's Jewry the safety and
security it claimed it would.
It should be clearer now than ever that
peace will not come with the "Zionist character" of
Israel in tact. By this, I do not refer to a Jewish presence,
but rather a Jewish monopoly on power and a fundamental preference
for global Jewry in the distribution of rights. The Israeli government
is so far incapable of seeing the Palestinians as equals. There
can be no peace among unequals. This inequality stems inherently
from the systematic aspiration to establish a homogeneous character
on a heterogeneous land. If an ideology calls for land appropriation
and the dispossession of the natives, it necessarily deems them
inferior.
That is why the basis for Oslo as it
unfolded was a nearly singular emphasis on Israeli security,
as if Palestinians live with perfect security. This transformed
the PA from a self-conceived national government, to a sort of
political-prison complex that was obliged to monitor, discipline,
and suppress its own population to the tasty delight of Israeli
and American peace ceremony planners.
Any breach of Israeli security by any
party, aligned with the PA or not, was treated as a transgression
of the peace process as a whole. Warden Arafat failed to keep
the prisoners in order--and the Palestinian collective paid the
price for it. This set up a nearly impossible security imperative
that came at the cost of the same rights a Palestinian state
was supposed to ensure. Arafat traded in Palestinian rights for
Israeli security. How could we believe that a meaningful polity
could emerge with the basis of its legitimacy being the security
it provided another state? A democracy is supposed to be a government
by the people for the people, not by Israel, and for the comfort
and fuzzy psychological reassurance of the Israelis.
Any "roadmap" offered by the
US or the rhythmless barbershop "quartet" is likely
to be based on the same doomed formula. Yet, PA tongues will
welcome it with tails wagging as if equality can be negotiated
for. The fundamental problem is that a real state requires a
few elements: territoriality, a monopoly on the use of force,
and internal and border control. Israel will never grant a Palestinian
government any of the latter because Israel will reserve for
itself the power and right to intervene in Palestine whenever
it chooses--making Palestine an unprecedented experiment in statehood.
Israelis bear such colonial paranoia that there would be the
same distrust even if they succeeded in Israel's current strategy
of completely pacifying every Palestinian.
Israeli measures are continuing to undermine
Palestinian territoriality. There is no chance of a usefully
independent state on those patches of land. So let's bury the
idea. I may be guilty of overstating the case. The demise of
the two-state is probably not as close to finality as I wished
it was. Can anyone blame me? The two-state solution was a bad
idea from the beginning.
I do not believe that Palestinian nationalism
was ever anything more than an expression of three desires: first,
returning to the land. Second, being left alone by the Israeli,
Jordanian, Lebanese, etc. armies. Third, having a right to a
basic livelihood. All of these can be satisfied by the success
of a new anti-Apartheid movement based on reconstructing Israel-Palestine
as a secular, democratic state. A separate state at best would
only fulfill the last two.
Of course it will not be easy. It will
take a directed struggle, vision, and much sacrifice. There also
will need to be serious transformations in the Jewish Israeli
and Palestinian communities. We must move past archaic nationalism
to think in a rights-based manner, in terms of equality and mutually
beneficial coexistence. This also requires the near-impossible
task of forgiving. Both happened to some extent in South Africa.
It is possible in Israel-Palestine.
Its list of opponents would be magnificent:
Israeli and Palestinian opportunistic and short-sighted politicians
who benefit from the conflict and having two separate states,
extreme racists and religionists, the Arab regimes who need Israel
to justify their repression, and the US government, which expects
some level of instability to keep things in control and arms
sales going.
Still, I find this idea less of a fantasy
than negotiating a state worthy of being called Palestine at
this point. This kind of solution is to the benefit of both peoples,
so it must come from them and it will get the world's support.
Will Youmans
is a law student at UC-Berkeley. You can e-mail him at youmans@boalthall.berkeley.edu
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October 26
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