All right, so is this something the Palestinians you met said to you, or is it your interpretation and analysis? Your statement that “it makes no difference what sweeteners one might propose” rings false to me. Of course it’s all about the sweeteners. Your vision of hopeless unrealistic Palestinians wishing Israel to disappear into the ether doesn’t ring true to me either. What does a “heck of a lot” mean in this context? 90%?
Actually, if we’re going to talk about wishful thinking, the Zionist hope alluded to by DSeid that current birthrates and immigration/emigration patterns will not “continue unchanged” strikes me as a truer example. As I mentioned earlier, the Arabs don’t even have to hit 50% before they start putting major stress on the Israeli political system.
There are other demographic trends as well that are not particularly favorable to the current conception of Israel. Even in the Jewish population, much of their increase is among the haredim, who tend to depend on government subsidies. Jewish immigration has slowed dramatically, and has been offset, if not actually canceled out, by Jewish outmigration. The non-Jewish, non-Arab population in Israel is also growing. Also, the United States, Israel’s main backer, has seen no increase in its Jewish population, but a substantial increase in its Muslim population.
But leaving aside the demographic issue, Israel can’t even decide what to do about the West Bank, which I would argue is a much smaller problem. Their paralysis does not bode well for them.
Look, if you have any evidence at all that a one state solution is preferred by either Israelis or Palestinians, just show it.
I, on the other hand, will point to the fact that no contending party in the upcoming Palestinian or Israeli elections proposes your idea; the Oslo Accords and all succeeding agreements and negotiations have focused on a two state solution; the US has continually rejected a one state solution in favor of proposals like the Roadmap for Peace; and the UN has steadfastly maintained that Resolution 242 is the way forward.
If you have any evidence at all that a one state solution is taken seriously by anyone with any influence, now’s your time to show it. There’s not much point in a debate that is devoid of facts.
So, the general consensus is that aside from the fact that a majority of Israelis would be violently (literally violently) opposed to a one state solution, and a majority of Palestinians would be violently (literally violently) opposed to a one state solution, we can all agree that a one state solution makes the most sense.
We need to hear from some Israelis in this thread! Where’s Noone Special?
(I would say, “We need to hear from some Palestinians in this thread,” but, AFAIK, we have no Palestinian Dopers at all. We do have some Muslims . . . Where’s Tamerlane?)
Most of the time Tamerlane steers clear of expressing political opinions and sticks to being the visibly neutral extremely knowledgable source of facts, especially historical facts regarding the ME. Few historical facts are in question here.
I too would be interested in hearing from our Israeli membership.
I have no evidence either way. Nor do you, if it comes to that. It’s not like anyone has ever bothered to ask the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories what they think. I think there’s no question that the Israelis are currently opposed to the one-state solution. After all, if they were in favor, it would have happened by now.
If this discussion is illustrative of anything, it’s how stagnant the Israeli-Palestinian discussion has become. In the absence of grand ideas for a solution, we’re left with petty quibbling over what we believe other people believe, or what we think they should believe. The one-state solution, on the other hand, is a grand idea – grand because it’s quixotic, grand because it would solve the problem at a stroke. All grand ideas seem equally implausible before they’re put into effect. Did anyone think ahead of time, for example, that Gorbachev would almost singlehandedly put the Soviet Union out of business?
That there’s no political currency for the one-state idea I take as a given. But if you look at the landscape dispassionately, without prejudice for one side or the other, what do you see as a plausible outcome – given the demographic trends, given the behavior of the one side or the other? To me, the current situation, projected forward a couple of decades, looks pretty bleak. Why not try to solve the problem now, before it comes to an epic bloodbath? A solution to the problem is what the one-state approach offers. If you don’t like it, fine. But if that’s the case, you’d better be happy with your alternative.
No cite, but from discussions I’ve heard on “All Things Considered,” from the beginning there has been a substantial minority among Palestinian intellectuals/politicos who have wanted just that – a “secular democratic state” encompassing Jews and Arabs of the whole of Palestine. They have little influence with the PLO, and the Israelis just don’t wanna hear it.
Yes, but the black leaders of South Africa had not insinuated for several years that state-sponsored massacres of Afrikaaners were their first priority after taking full control.
There are Palestinian organizations that revere the Holocaust, and hope to bring about its fruition. And not fringe organizations that no one really pays attention to- major organizations that currently have major power in the PA.
If I’ve said for forty years that my major goal was to rape you and murder your family, don’t you think you have a right to balk at living in the same house as me, even if I’ve tempered my views to state that I only may wish to rape you and kill your family?
This attitude drives me crazy. It’s all accusation, with no quantification. How many Palestinians are we talking about here? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? And don’t pretend like the black resistance to apartheid was entirely nonviolent. Remember Umkhonto wa Sizwe? And what on earth does this accusation have to do with any solution? Are you trying to suggest we shouldn’t even try for one?
I talked about my evidence. No major parties in either the Israeli or the Palestinian elections that are upcoming are campaigning on the idea. No US president has supported the idea. The agreements that Israelis and Palestinians have made so far – and the ones narrowly missed – rejected your suggestion for a two state approach. What’s more, Hamas seems to be gaining in popularity in PA areas, and if you think supporters of Hamas will support being annexed by Israel, well… maybe we have to explain to you what Hamas stands for.
I say again: do you have any factual evidence whatsoever to support your claim that a binational state is in any way a realistic proposal?
If by "realistic "you mean is it on the table politically, then the answer is no, as I have said before. (And incidentally, let’s not pretend we know what the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories want, either. Israelis get to express their views through regular elections; Palestinians in the O.T. don’t.) But “realistic” in the sense that it could work in the real world? Of course I believe that, or I wouldn’t be advocating it, would I?
The situation in Israel is no different from the situation in South Africa before '94. In both countries, you have a large group of people disenfranchised because of their ethnicity and unhappy about it. The most simple and direct solution is to enfranchise the disenfranchised. The privileged party resists – of course – and screams, “They’ll murder us all in our beds!” But you swallow that pill, because swallow you must, and move onward.
Anyway, have you shown me that the two-state solution is realistic? As in, things are actually happening to move it forward?
Well, if your position is that there should not be a Jewish state, then it would be a good thing. If you believe that a Jewish state has a right to exist, then it would be a bad thing. That’s not much of a debate.
Sal’s other point is his prediction that Israel will demographically cease to be a Jewish state eventually anyway, so why not make it happen now, cut to the chase, and empower the Palestinians earlier? From the Zionist’s POV that’s like saying “you know that you are going to die eventually anyway, so you might as well kill yourself now” without the certainty of eventual death.
And Sal, let us imagine some things. First you are able to convince world Jewery that they can safely ignore almost two millenia of historical persecutions and pograms (let alone HaShoah) as the perennial “other” in multiple cultures - it won’t happen again, ever, there is no need for Israel as Jewish home, America will protect you (presumably better than it has has protected Christians in Sudan or … well you get that point). Second that the vast majority of Palestinians want to be united with Jews under a single national flag (knowing of course that it is hard enough to get Shias and Sunnis and Kurds to agree that continuing to unite under a single Iraqi national flag is a good idea and that the flag has a Star of David on it). Third that most Palestinians want to live peacefully with Jews so long as they have a vote. Fourth, that you could just ignore the desire of Jewish Israelis to minimally delay their loss of demographic domination.
What does that fantasy leave us with? A minority of Palestinians who are still committed to having all of the land all to themselves and who are committed to using force to accomplish the goal and who now exist with free access to any potential target they want. And a few militant Israelis who would be just as willing to use indiscriminate force. Ignoring all the rest that makes it an absurd fantasy it still leaves us with a large number of peace-desiring Jews and Arabs getting blown up by having a small number of rabid haters locked up with them inside their house.
DSeid, this has all been endlessly rehashed before, and even if I take it at face value, there’s a big “so what?” attached. Do you imagine that the situation can stay the same as it is now, forever? Do you imagine that the Palestinians of the O.T. can or should be kept in a condition of statelessness forever? The point, endlessly reiterated here, is that the demographics make the situation fluid, dynamic. It’s not an option to say, “Well, we just *have *to have a Jewish state, and that’s that!”
You say: “From the Zionist’s POV that’s like saying ‘you know that you are going to die eventually anyway, so you might as well kill yourself now’ without the certainty of eventual death.” Wrong analogy. The better analogy would be, “Look, if you keep smoking three packs a day and eating cheeseburgers morning, noon and night, you’re going to have a coronary. If you want to last past your 60th birthday, you’ve got to mend your ways.”
Sal, why believe a two-state sloution is realistic? Because Israel is likely to make it so, whether the Palestinians want it or not. The Palestinian choice will be to participate in the process and get the best possible terms, or to let Israel do it unilaterally.
I had fears that centrist Kadima, which exists primarily on the view that other differences aside, most Israelis agree that Israel needs to disengage from the Occupied Territories, would fold without the leadership of Sharon to pull the former Likudniks along. But the strength of that position in Israeli public opinion is much stronger than Sharon’s personality alone. Recent polls show that Kadima is gaining strength under Olmert.
The platform is a simple one. Disengagement. Negotiated disengagement if possible, unilaterally if not. Seperation and after security is assured see if they want to come back to talk about working together more. The Palestinians won’t have a choice about it: they are getting a country whether they want it or not.
Well I am not privvy to specifics, but my sense of it is this:
If it can be negotiated and you get some kind of evidence that the Palestinian side would be both willing and able to deliver on real security in return then all but the largest and closest are forcibly evacuated and you get a package pretty close what Barak had offered. If not then finish the friggin fence, encircle a bit more behind it, as required to create the most defensible border, and to hell with what anyone else says about it. Don’t annex anything but the largest/closest settlements though. The position remains that the rest is still open for negotiation once you have a god faith partner to do it with. The rest is theirs to develop and govern or not. The hope would be that eventually they’d realize that working with Israel makes for a better future than stewing over a few kms here or there; that good fences would indeed make good neighbors.
Pretty much everyone knows what a final negotiated settlement would look like. Jerusalem is out of negotiations for now, there is no way Israel would have the confidence in security with a shared city. But otherwise it looks close to the deal offered by Barak. Public opinion is not too sympathetic to the settlers anymore.
Looking from the Palestinian POV what really matters is not those few kms of land anyway, but deals on shared tax revenues, open travel for jobs within Israel, co-ventures of industrial (maybe a sci-tech corridor?) and tourist development within Palestine, shared control over water resources, money to build an educational infrastructure, etc. They could trade settlements for lots of good chips in a negotiated deal. And it would be in Israel’s best interest for their economy to succeed.