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A political marriage of
necessity: a single state of Palestine-Israel
The case of South Africa shows that a unity government can
succeed.
By Ali Abunimah
05/15/07 "ICH
" -- -- As Israel celebrates 59 years of
independence, Palestinians on May 14 commemorate the Nakba, the
catastrophe of expulsion and decades of exile that continue to
this day.
When my mother was 9 years old, she and her family mounted the
back of a pickup truck and left their village of Lifta, adjacent
to Jerusalem, under threat from Zionist militias. My grandmother
covered the furniture in the family home that my grandfather had
built. Anticipating a short absence until fighting in the area
died down, they took only a few clothes. That was almost six
decades ago. Like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians,
they were never allowed to return, and their property was seized
by Israel.
My mother remembers her early childhood and the Jewish neighbors
who rented the apartment her father owned. She recalls helping
them on the Sabbath and playing with their daughter after
school. A life such as this is no more than a distant memory for
most Palestinian refugees, who, with their descendants, now
number more than 5 million.
But a better life needn't be just a memory. It is feasible for
Palestinians to return to their homeland while peace with
Israelis is built at the same time. Another diplomatic push will
not bring about the fantasy of neat separation of Israelis and
Palestinians into two states. This would only perpetuate
inequality and division. Instead, international pressure should
be put on Israel to drop its insistence on supremacy over
Palestinians. Then both parties can come together to begin
building a single, multiethnic state where Jews and Palestinians
can again live side by side.
One of the hard – but not impossible – tasks will be convincing
many Israelis of the viability of a single-state solution. In
2004, for example, Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has
written several books documenting the forced expulsion of the
Palestinians, said that a "Jewish state would not have come into
existence without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians.
Therefore it was necessary to uproot them." But Mr. Morris is no
bleeding heart. He added, "There are circumstances in history
that justify ethnic cleansing." If Israel's founding prime
minister, David Ben-Gurion, could be faulted, Morris said, it
was because he "did not complete the transfer in 1948."
Millions of Palestinians live in squalid camps under Israeli
military rule and in surrounding countries. Israel has refused
to allow these refugees to return home as required by
international law.
The reason is simple: From its inception, the Zionist movement
set out to turn a country where the vast majority of people were
not Jewish into a country that gives special rights and
privileges to Jews at the expense of non-Jews. If Palestinian
refugees were black Africans, no one would dispute an
"apartheid" label that former US president Jimmy Carter has used
to describe the situation.
But while some see Israel as a miracle, many Israelis themselves
recognize that the Zionist project has been far from a success:
Today the number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians inhabiting the
country is roughly equal at about 5 million each. Just more than
1 million Palestinians live as citizens of Israel, albeit with
inferior rights, while almost 4 million live under occupation in
the West Bank and Gaza. Their high birthrate means that in a few
years, Palestinians will once again become the majority as they
were prior to 1948.
To assert, as Israel does, that it has a right to be a "Jewish
state" means to recognize that it has a right to manipulate
demographics for the purpose of ethnic domination. This outlook
violates fundamental human rights.
Palestinians, many of whom are already being forcibly displaced
by the cruel wall that snakes through the West Bank, fear
another 1948-like expulsion. At the last Israeli election,
parties that explicitly endorse ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
made major gains, including the one led by Deputy Prime Minister
Avigdor Lieberman.
Palestine/Israel is as unpartitionable as was South Africa and
Northern Ireland, where similar ethnic conflicts had also defied
resolution for generations. In both places, it was only when the
dominant group dropped its insistence on supremacy that a
political settlement could be reached. What was once
unimaginable happened: Nelson Mandela's African National
Congress and F.W. de Klerk's National Party joined hands in a
national unity government in 1994. Leaders in Northern Ireland
made similar progress this year.
Neither political marriage came about through love, but through
necessity and with outside pressure. In time, social
reconciliation may come, but it has not been the prerequisite
for political progress in South Africa or Northern Ireland. Such
pressure on Israel as the strongest party is necessary, which is
why I support the growing movement for boycott, divestment, and
sanctions modeled on the antiapartheid campaign. At the same
time, we must begin to construct a vision of a nonracial,
nonsectarian Palestine-Israel, which belongs to all the people
who live in it, Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and all exiles who
want to return and live in peace with their neighbors.
• Ali Abunimah is cofounder of the online publication The
Electronic Intifada and author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal
to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse."
First published in the The Christian Science Monitor
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