After years of illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, the only thing left of the “Two State Solution” is as a prop for liberal politicians and liberal Zionists to point at while doing nothing to advance any now clearly impossible partition plan.
The charitable or gullible may view these liberals as idealistic dreamers, but realists will recognize them for what they are — purveyors of an obvious, damnable lie. In truth, Israel and its colonial enablers will permit only an exclusively Jewish state — and this has always meant the inevitable mass-murder or expulsion of a people who will never renounce their claims on their own land.
Even when the opportunity has presented itself to create or move forward the idea of a Palestinian state – even a rump state or a disconnected set of cantons or reservations — the United States has rejected or vetoed the idea, pointing to its other gaslighting prop — the equally dead and pickled Oslo Accords — as the “only game in town,” as George Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell used to call it.
Oslo may be long-dead but it is still the straw man that US presidents and their Western allies recite while demanding that Palestinians negotiate directly with Israel — as if such were negotiations between states on equal footing. But since Israel has physically destroyed literally every Palestinian government (and that includes assassinating its leaders and negotiators), only the toothless, highly unpopular Palestinian Authority remains, and it has absolutely no mandate to negotiate with anyone.
Meanwhile, no American president has ever made any effort to hold Israel to account for its illegal settlements, actively worked for two states, or even presented a vision for one. That’s because for decades it has been impossible (not to mention embarrassing) to look at a map of the West Bank and explain to anyone with a straight face how a Palestinian state could ever be cobbled together from the tiny crumbs still left on the table. So when I hear liberal stalwarts like Elizabeth Warren mumbling “two states” I want to demand that she show me her detailed plan. Or shut the hell up.
As reasonable as a demand that the thief return the property he stole, or the home invader vacate the home he invaded, or that damages (criminal or civil) must be paid to a victim, no Western nation with its own sordid history of slaughter and displacement of indigenous people will will ever impose this sort of justice on a fellow settler-colonial state. When you think about it, this is nothing more than professional courtesy between rogue states.
But now, after 75 years of injustice and now an exceptionally well-documented genocide, the world is screaming for a solution to be found. Israel’s solution is to double down on every technique that created its Apartheid state in the first place — massacres and ethnic cleansing. The Zionist state remains committed to “thinning” the Palestinian population — as if it were a herd of animals, stealing even more land, and devising ever more creative schemes to push Palestinians into the Sinai, Jordan, or Egypt. But a previously inattentive world has been paying attention, and now Israel’s many crimes have justifiably made it a pariah.
AND YET American politicians are still on board with Israel’s slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and continued annexation. Republicans, including Donald Trump, have suggested that Israel “bounce the rubble,” drop atomic bombs, or “finish the job” — echoing genocidal calls openly and increasingly advanced by members of Israel’s Knesset and its public. The Democratic president, a self-described “Zionist,” generously funds the ongoing genocide, has placed boots on the ground and boats in the Gulf. His National Security Advisor and Secretary of State shamelessly lie about the scale and scope of Israel’s war crimes.
Democratic Party politicians avert their eyes from the victims of Israel’s genocide, and couldn’t bring themselves to allow a Muslim congresswoman to address their national convention (while allowing two Israelis the platform). They vote with Republicans to criminalize protests, vote for new laws to muzzle speech critical of Zionism or opposition to Israeli policies — all while continuing to hide behind Oslo and the fictive Two State Solution. And while the Democratic majority is too well bred to openly cheer for genocide like their Republican brethren, they still do everything they can to sustain the “lethal” slaughter.
Zionists interpret the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a call to exterminate all the Jews. I doubt they actually believe this propagandistic “interpretation” any more than I do because Israel’s ruling party actually uses a similar formulation in its own platform. What is true, however, is that throughout all the territory it controls Israel — and no other people — maintains an actual One State ethnocracy by extreme violence. Again, literally from the river to the sea. This single state includes 5.5 million Palestinian subjects in areas occupied by Israel and Israel’s 9.1 million citizens, totaling 14.6 million souls.
Of this total population 7.2 million – a slight minority – are Jewish. But Israel’s One State Jewish minority is even smaller because up to a million Israelis don’t actually live in Israel and many of the Russian olim were admitted under an amended 1970 Law of Return which permitted non-Jews to immigrate (specifically to offset Arab demographics). So when you also factor in the Palestinian diaspora — between 6 million and 7 million people displaced by the 1948 Nakba — Jews represent only a third of the total number of people who have claims to Palestine.
This, together with the racist, repressive, even neofascist, nature of the Israeli state, perfectly justifies classifying Israel as an Apartheid state. As a state for only a fraction of its “subjects,” Israel maintains the status quo only through violence and terror, and it can’t even do this on its own.
As its colonial era Mandate expired, Britain turned over its military and colonial infrastructure to the Jewish Company, not the majority Palestinian population it had occupied. Since its founding, Israel has depended on hundreds of billions of dollars of American subsidies to its military, defense, tech, and energy programs. Billions of dollars in funding came from North American Zionist organizations, notably the private Jewish Federations and large donors. Like a failing tech startup, the Zionist state only exists by pumping more and more money into it. In the long run it is unsustainable.
France made Israel the nuclear power it is today. Russia armed it in its early years. Americans can’t have national healthcare, but between 15-20% of Israel’s defense budget is paid for by American taxpayers. In any other financial arena where expenses are properly scrutinized, from business to government to non-profits, throwing wads of cash at a recurring disaster is the very definition of insanity.
By at least 1990, with hope for a Palestinian state all but dead, it was obvious that a different version of the One State solution — not exclusively Jewish — would be necessary to end the madness of Zionism’s ruthless control over all of Palestine. Though different, several of these plans end exclusive Zionist control over Palestine by giving Palestinians a long-denied voice and exactly the same rights as Jews — security, respect for personal property, freedom of movement, a political voice, and the right of refugees to return to their communities.
Taxonomy of One State solutions
In 2005 Tamar Hermann, a liberal Zionist Israeli political scientist who now works at the Israel Democracy Institute, looked at the structure of four different One State solutions:
- a “unitary state” that denies the non-dominant nationality any rights, redress, or power
- a system that grants the non-dominant group [some] individual rights but no collective political rights or power
- a classical liberal democracy in which no nationality has special or collective political rights and where the relationship of citizen to state is not mediated by ethnic or religious membership
- a “parity-based” bi-national framework in which each nationality becomes a collective political unit and is accorded equal status and power regardless of size
- a “consociational” bi-national arrangement which recognizes ethno-national rights within “cantons” (preserving one aspect of the “two state” solution) while permitting freedom of movement and property ownership for both nationalities within all of Palestine
Although it’s a bit dated, Hermann’s taxonomy provided both a useful outline and an analysis of how Israel has systematically opposed both one- and two-state solutions. Note that Option #1 is the current reality, and the only reality acceptable to Israel and its Western enablers. Note also that various options that would address injustices toward Palestinians have been systematically rejected by elements of the Israeli Left, Right, and Center.
Early Jewish Bi-nationalism
As Hermann writes, Zionism ignored and discounted both Arab existence and resistance to displacement:
“For many devoted Zionists, it came as a severe blow to realise that implementing the dream of the Zionist movement – the ingathering of the Jews in the land of their forefathers and the building of a national home for the Jewish people – bluntly interfered with the life of the Arab community in the same land. Although warnings in this regard were expressed as early as 1907–08 (Epstein 1907/1908), awareness of the hostility that massive Jewish immigration created among the Arabs was minimal.”
But there were plenty of Jews who recognized the flaw in Zionism:
A small minority, however, rejected these strategies as early as the 1920s, denouncing them as immoral for disrespecting the national rights of the Palestinians and for putting the Jews and Arabs on a collision course. Instead, this minority position advocated a bi-national arrangement. Thus, in 1925 the Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace) group was formed with the aim of promoting Jewish–Arab understanding and co-operation.
The members of Brit Shalom, some of them prominent figures in the political or academic establishment, believed that the domination of one people by another would lead to severe friction and, eventually, war. At least in its early days, Brit Shalom’s bi-nationalism could be described as optimistic: it was meant to forestall the conflict before it ripened. Switzerland and Finland were the examples of successful bi-nationalism that encouraged Brit Shalom. In practical terms, the group advocated creating a legislative council based on Jewish–Arab parity, which would run the affairs of a bi-national state in which the two peoples would enjoy equal rights irrespective of their relative size at any given time.
The “Disturbances”
The wave of violent Arab riots against the Jews in 1929, known as the ‘disturbances’, were a severe blow to the group [my note: and should have been to the Zionists as well] since they suggested that time was running out faster than they expected. Brit Shalom warned that these ‘occurrences’ were not a sporadic, transitory phenomenon but the beginning of a national liberation struggle that would only get fiercer if not properly handled. Nevertheless, as noted, the chances for bi-nationalism to be adopted when other, more ‘natural’ options have not yet been tried, and failed, are slim.
Indeed, Brit Shalom was harshly attacked by the mainstream and accused of defeatism. The fact that they spoke their minds while the murdered Jews were not yet buried infuriated their rivals even further, and the Zionist establishment denounced them as either pathologically naive or traitors. It is important to note that the bi-national advocacy of Brit Shalom and its successors in the pre-state days was not echoed on the Arab side. Given their numerical superiority, the Palestinians rejected a parity-based regime.
The “Ihud” (Union)
Apart from Brit Shalom, however, the group most identified with it is Ihud (Union), which was led by Martin Buber and Judah Magnes and was active from the early 1940s till the establishment of the state, though it continued its activities until the mid-1960s. Ihud was established in 1942, almost a decade after Brit Shalom had expired.
By that time the conflict was already an undeniable and very violent reality. Moreover, Ihud operated against the background of World War II and the catastrophe of European Jewry. Its members believed that bi-nationalism offered the only way of saving both the Jewish community in Palestine and the survivors of the Holocaust. They did not deny the Jewish people’s special attachment to the Land of Israel but maintained that together with the Arabs living in Palestine they must develop the country without one side imposing its will on the other.
In their submission to the Anglo-American Commission (1946), Magnes and Buber, who represented Ihud, argued, in stark contrast to the position presented by the Zionist establishment, that since both Jews and Arabs had a national claim to Palestine, it could neither be an Arab state nor a Jewish one. They also rejected the partition option, saying it was impractical and a ‘moral defeat for everyone concerned’. Instead, they recommended that a bi-national state be formed in which Jews and Arabs would share power. According to this parity-based model, Jews and Arabs would have equal representation in a democratically elected legislative council, and the head of state would be appointed by the United Nations Organisation, with each community exercising autonomy in cultural matters.
Zionism’s conflict with Jewish values apparent
Indeed, the bi-nationalism of Brit Shalom and Ihud had a strongly moralistic aspect. They saw it as a natural derivation of the Jewish tradition of antimilitarism – the victory of the spirit over the flesh. At the same time, they promoted bi-nationalism as the only practical solution that might be acceptable to both sides.
A brief appearance by Israeli Bi-nationalists
The tiny camp of today’s (2005) Israeli bi-nationalists can be divided into two subgroups. First there are those, mostly belonging to the radical, non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist Left, who favor this model per se. Second are those who would prefer a different scenario but have concluded that the existing geopolitical and demographic realities dictate bi-nationalism.
The bi-national idea was already raised by a few Israelis in the 1970s, and again, strongly but by very few, soon after the launching of the Oslo process. Political activists of the radical Left, such as Michael Warschawski of the Alternative Information Centre and others, warned against the pitfalls of the Oslo paradigm, claiming that the Palestinian state to be established in this framework could not be viable but would only be a Bantustan-type entity.
For this they mainly blamed the expansionist Zionist ideology and the Israeli government, while also criticising the Palestinian Authority’s impotence and inability to defend its people’s interests: ‘If Arafat had not accepted the conditions laid out at Oslo, this miserable agreement might have remained a mere position paper (Ben Efrat 1997; see also Pape 1999, Warschawski 2001). These activists called for the adoption of the PLO’s ‘secular-democratic state’ model, which they referred to as bi-national in essence. However, theirs was a cry in the wilderness; it was heard, if at all, only within small circles of the Left and was mainly understood in the context of the internal rivalries between the Zionist and non-Zionist components of the peace camp.
Until very recently, however, bi-nationalism was not a significant (albeit highly contested) option in the Israeli repertoire of possible solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian strife. Thus, when in the summer of 2003 the weekly supplement of the Haaretz daily published a lengthy interview with two public figures, Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi, in which both expressed their support for a bi-national, Israeli–Palestinian state, many within and outside Israel were taken by surprise. In this pathbreaking interview Hanegbi, a well- known figure of the radical Left, admitted to his initial support for the Oslo process (Shavit 2003).
Yet as time passed and the process seemed to be leading nowhere, he came to view Oslo as a mistake – a diversion of everyone’s attention to Israel’s rhetoric rather than its deeds, namely, the ongoing settlement expansion. Therefore, dwelling on sweet memories of his childhood in Mandatory Jerusalem amid Jewish–Arab harmony and coexistence, Hanegbi asserted that Israel was unable to free itself from its expansionist mentality since ‘it is tied, hands and feet, to its core ideology of dispossession and original mode of action’. His conclusion was that: ‘Only binational cooperation can save us. Only this can transform us from foreigners in our land to locals, to natives’.
More on the debate
Benvenisti, the second interviewee in this scandal-stirring article, is also a nonconformist but comes from the heart of the Israeli establishment. Having warned prophetically for years that the ever-growing settlement project was becoming irreversible, his shift to bi-nationalism reflects much frustration and pain: Israelis, like the Afrikaners in South Africa, should realise that the present discriminatory regime ought to be dismantled, since it has failed to impose its hegemony over the dominated collective, and replaced it with a regime of individual and collective equality. Like Hanegbi, Benvenisti also admits to making a mistake in the past – in his case, defining the Israeli– Palestinian struggle as a national one when the correct definition, he now acknowledges, is that of a struggle between natives and settlers/colonisers, resulting from the atavistic hatred of those who feel dispossessed by foreigners.
Separation, then, is no longer an option, and the entire Land of Israel should be regarded as a single geopolitical entity (Shavit 2003). Although in this interview Benvenisti did not describe the details of the bi-national arrangement he suggested, he mentioned some combination of a horizontal sharing of powers on a parity basis and a vertical (territorial) one, a federalist structure that would include the entire land west of the Jordan River and be divided into several ethnic cantons.
In an article published a few months later, however, Benvenisti advocated the consociational model, ‘which recognizes the collective ethnonational rights and enables cooperation in the government at the national level while guaranteeing well-defined political rights for minorities’ (Benvenisti 2003). He views such an arrangement as based on a cantonal division under a federal umbrella. Such an arrangement, he states, also enables maintaining ‘soft’ borders and constructive ambiguity, which facilitates handling symbolic issues such as Jerusalem and even the refugees and the settlers (ibid.). He also states his pessimistic bottom line: ‘I am not happy with what I have just suggested. . . . We are not going to have peace here. Even if there is some binational arrangement, it can only manage the conflict. At its outskirts, however, violence will always prevail’ (Shavit: 10–14, 2003).
The publication of the interview with Benvenisti and Hanegbi by a major Israeli newspaper brought strong aftershocks, including many letters to the editor and opinion columns in the printed and electronic press. Paradoxically, for reasons to be explained below, the most negative reactions came not from the Right but from the Centre and moderate Left, both supporting one or another version of the two-state solution. For example, Yosef Gorni, a mainstream Zionist historian, fiercely attacked Benvenisti, who is also a historian along with his other professional activities:
As Benvenisti knows very well, this approach [bi-nationalism] is a complete non sequitur. . . . This is essentially because of the national spirit and history of the Jews and the Arabs. Both peoples find it very difficult to have minorities in their midst. . . . Furthermore, this idea also has a deplorable moral aspect, as it is unthinkable to legitimate such collective discrimination, by which all other peoples of the region, besides the Jews, will be entitled to a national state of their own. (Gorni 2003)
Another mainstream critic (Shacham 2003) fiercely attacks Hanegbi: ‘better not to bamboozle us with some bi-national phrasing when what one actually means is a regular state, with a majority and a minority, with the majority defining the rights of the minority’ (ibid.). His criticism of Benvenisti is no gentler: ‘The use of the phrase ”bi-national paradigm”, which sounds so intelligent, cannot compensate for the total lack of thinking on how such a state can be established and function’ (ibid.). Shlomo Avineri, a prominent political scientist and former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, states categorically: ‘A binational state? There is no such thing. Simply put: nowhere in the world has a conflict between two national movements been resolved by squeezing two national movements, holding each other’s throats, into the boiling pot of a binational state’ (Avineri 2003). Clearly alluding to Benve- nisti, he continues:
What happened to them [i.e. the advocates of bi-nationalism who were not part of the radical Left but came from the mainstream] was that they simply collapsed in the face of the Palestinians’ determination and resistance and their readiness to sacrifice themselves, reaching the conclusion that Zionism can never win and hence should be given up altogether.
Interestingly enough, there is also some opposition to the Hanegbi and Benvenisti-style bi-nationalism on the radical Left, the traditional (albeit tiny) support base in Israel for the PLO-style, secular-democratic bi-national state. These voices maintain that dividing the entire country into cantons a la Benvenisti has a misleading ring of plausibility. Israel boasts a First World economy, while the Palestinian-populated areas belong to the Second or even Third World. In such a situation, where the Jewish cantons are ‘haves’ and the Arab ones ‘have-nots’, the chances of real equality under the new federal or other framework are practically nil. Yet the question is idle, the argument goes, because there is no apparatus for realising this concept anyway; there is nothing to motivate Israel, which has brought Arafat to his knees and divided the Palestinian national movement, to enter into such an adventure (e.g. Ben Efrat 1997).
As noted, the Right’s criticism of the ‘new school’ bi-nationalists was surprisingly mild, apparently because any plan that implies retaining the Land of Israel as a single unit is appealing – with some amendments – to supporters of that principle. Thus, in November 2003 the Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) Council released its own ‘bi-national’ plan as the solution for the conflict. It divides the entire historic Land of Israel into ten cantons, each of which would have cultural autonomy, with their boundaries delineated according to the ethno-national composition of the population in the specific region. These cantons would come under a federal umbrella.
However, according to this plan’s principle of division, only two of the cantons would be Palestinian, thereby guaranteeing a Jewish majority in parliament (Eid 2003). The right-wing activist and journalist Israel Harel proposed another bi- national model: ‘We should take the Arabs on both sides of the Green Line as one body and the Jews on both sides as one body, and give the Arabs Jordanian citizenship and the Jews Israeli citizenship’ (Harel, in Susser 2003). There are, however, moderate right-wingers who fear that if such positions are embraced, the bi-national reality may impose itself on the land and destroy the settler community from within.
Thus Yair Sheleg, a journalist living in a settlement yet writing in Haaretz (which is left-of-center on Israeli–Palestinian relations), urged his fellow settlers to agree to the two-state solution before it was too late. With their powerful opposition to evacuating even the smallest, most isolated outpost, Sheleg argues, the settlers have created a balance of deterrence with the government. Sheleg urges the settlers to stop pressuring the government and concludes: ‘In specific moments of their life, individuals often agree to undergo painful operations, including amputating this or another organ of their body so as to save their life. The same level of responsibility such individuals take regarding their private life could be expected from those who aspire to be in the leadership position regarding the good of the nation.
Glimmers of One State
In 2004, frustrated with an Oslo process that was going nowhere, with Israel still occupying Gaza and beginning to wall off Jerusalem, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alta) – who would shortly be succeeded by Hamas’s Ismail Haniyah – threatened that if there was no real progress in negotiations Palestinians would call for one binational state.
The United States, smack in the middle of a Middle East war of its own making, placed its heavy thumb on the scales, acting as the biased peace broker it has always been. Elliott Abrams, soon to become a convicted felon and an accused war criminal, was part of the American delegation tasked with making sure Israel would prevail. US Secretary Colin Powell “categorically” rejected a one state solution and demanded that Palestinians “wrest authority” from President Yasir Arafat. For its part, Israel rejected any sort of a Palestinian state.
And prevail Israel did. The 2006 elections which swept Fatah from power and ushered in Hamas were a consequence of Israeli intransigence and American connivance. The US and Israel had no idea at the time that anointing (and later funding) Hamas would eventually blow up in their faces so spectacularly.
Thus, rather than “Palestinians never failing to miss an opportunity” for peace, peace in Palestine has been systematically subverted by Israel and the colonial powers (notably the US) that created it. These parties have worked tirelessly, always behind the scenes, to scuttle any sort of just solution or compromise that would allow two peoples to live in peace on the land one party stole.
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