Middle
East Report 231 (Summer 2004)
Two-State
Dis/Solution
Editorial
Israel's bloody military campaign in Rafah in May
was but the latest blow to the infrastructure of Palestinian
society in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since
the fall of 2000. It has been clear for some time
that these assaults, coupled with the contemporaneous
expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands
and construction of the "separation barrier"
in the West Bank, are aimed only secondarily (if at
all) at achieving "security" for Israeli
civilians. Primarily, Israel intends its tank incursions
and aerial assassinations to break Palestinian resistance,
armed and unarmed, to whatever "solution"
to the conflict the Israeli government of the moment
desires to dictate.
If Israel is intransigent and the Palestinians are
outmatched, the Bush administration is the enabler
of both conditions. In June 2002, George W. Bush's
words rang hollow when he delivered the first-ever
explicit US endorsement of a Palestinian state even
as Israeli tanks rolled into Ramallah for yet another
time. In June 2003, Bush officially unfurled his "road
map" to that state even as Israeli bulldozers
plowed up Palestinian farmland to erect a concrete
wall where the state is supposed to be. In April 2004,
Bush told the world it owed a debt of gratitude to
Ariel Sharon for his plan to "disengage"
from Gaza, even as he slid the Israeli premier a promissory
note for large swathes of the West Bank. At this sad,
incendiary historical juncture, it is reasonable to
ask whether a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict remains viable or represents a realistic
extrapolation from the existing balance of regional
and international forces.
When this magazine was founded in 1971, the editors
favored a secular democratic state for Muslims, Christians
and Jews in all of Palestine, from the Jordan River
to the Mediterranean. At the time, Middle East
Report embraced this "one-state" solution
as part of its support for not only the Palestinian
struggle, but also the national liberation struggles
of the "Third World," as harbingers of revolutionary
social change. In the early 1980s, the editors began
to move toward qualified support for a "two-state"
solution, based on the arguments that both Palestinian
Arabs and Israeli Jews deserved the right to national
self-determination and that recognizing the national
rights of both peoples would remove obstacles to the
pursuit of greater social justice in the region.
As a global consensus formed behind the idea of
a two-state solution, this magazine retained a healthy
skepticism. Two-staters seemed more and more willing
to ignore the right of Palestinians made refugees
in 1948 to return to their homes, another right which
Bush promised Sharon Israel need not respect. A self-determined
Zionist state in Israel would, by its nature, be discriminatory
against its non-Jewish citizens. Through the settlement
project, Israel was laying claim to lands outside
its internationally recognized boundaries. Was not
the very framework of the state innately limiting?
In keeping with the zeitgeist of the 1990s, Middle
East Report criticized the two-state solution
implied by the failed Oslo agreements because those
accords circumvented UN resolutions and cast Palestinian
rights -- inalienable human rights -- as matters up
for negotiation.
The US and Israel
were the last holdouts opposing a two-state solution.
The Israeli Labor Party endorsed it only in 1996 -- three
years after the Oslo Declaration of Principles was signed
-- and Sharon, but not the majority of the Likud, did
not break the right-wing taboo on uttering the words "Palestinian
state" until the last two years. Yet the "two-state
solution" to which Bush and Sharon refer is one to
be imposed upon the Palestinians as a defeat. The "state"
Sharon speaks of would be little more than a handful of
cantons with limited sovereignty. Meanwhile, in the discourse
of the Israeli right and left, the two-state idea is marketed
with appeals to racist fears of losing the Jewish majority
between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. This is no basis
for a lasting peace.
No matter how
many states may eventually be established in Israel-Palestine,
the futures of both peoples are inextricably intertwined.
There can be no just solution based on "separation"
or one-sided Israeli military domination of the Palestinians
in the name of a self-defeating concept of security. At
the same time, there can be no security for either people
without justice. The massive Israeli invasion of Gaza,
still underway at press time, underscores the fact that
the primary task of progressives is to expose Israeli
sabotage of the prospects for any kind of peace, as well
as US complicity in the havoc being wrought upon the Palestinians.
Moreover, it is useful to recall that the UN resolutions
calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories
occupied in 1967 have a relevance that transcends their
usual association with a particular kind of two-state
solution. In fact, only after Israel withdraws will it
be possible to reopen seriously -- on something approaching
an equal footing -- the debate over the political future
in Israel-Palestine.
MERIP
OP-EDS
A Country at a Crossroads The Austin-American Statesman (Austin, Texas) November 9, 2007
Kamran Asdar Ali
"A
very frank discussion"— so President Bush described
his Nov. 7 telephone
conversation with Pervez Musharraf, four days after the Pakistani
general
imposed a state of emergency and dissolved the high court expected
to rule
his continued presidency unconstitutional. And frank the discussion
probably
was: In the face of spirited protest in Pakistan, and a querulous
press in
Washington, back-channel pressure succeeded in persuading Musharraf
to
promise parliamentary elections. Yet the generous U.S. aid earmarked
for
Pakistan — on top of nearly $10 billion since 2001 — is
quite evidently not
at risk.
What may be at risk is Musharraf's tenure as head
of the military government. Full
story>>
The
war debate in Washington is bogged down. Partisan rancor is one
reason why, and bipartisan desire for US hegemony in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf is
another. But many Americans are vexed by a nobler concern: that
a
“precipitous” US departure from Iraq would leave intensified
civil war,
ethnic-sectarian cleansing and massive refugee flows in its wake.
This
concern is legitimate. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that Iraq’s
civil war
and humanitarian emergency have grown steadily worse as the US
military
deployment there wears on. Full
Story>>
Should
the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between
security and liberty in the "war on terror," emulate
Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position
that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler
of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated. That people in U.S.
custody could be held incommunicado for years without charges,
and could be prosecuted or indefinitely detained on the basis of
confessions extracted with torture is worse than a national disgrace.
It is an assault on the foundations of the rule of law. Full
Story>>
There
is an oft-told Palestinian allegory about a family who complained
their house was small and cramped. In response, the father brought
the farm
animals inside -- the goat, the sheep and the chickens all crowded
into the
house. Then, one by one, he moved the animals back outside. By
the time the
last chicken left, the family felt such relief they never complained
of the
lack of elbow room again. Full
Story>>
