The mirage of the two-state solution
40th Anniversary of the Six-Day War. Solution on which all agree
impossible to achieve
By George Bisharat
San Francisco Chronicle
06/04/07 "SFC" --- -- Forty years ago this week, Israel
conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip, re-establishing a
political system in which one sovereign ruled over all of former
Palestine. Unnoticed by the world, this brought about a version
of a "single state solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
-- albeit one in which Palestinians and Jews do not have equal
rights.
Instead, Israel has ruled the West Bank and Gaza Strip through
military governments that control the daily lives of millions of
Palestinians in every aspect, yet in which they have no say.
Although Palestinians now elect representatives to a Palestinian
Authority, these officials administer the tiny Gaza Strip, and
less than 20 percent of the West Bank. Their powers scarcely
exceed those of county supervisors.
Meanwhile, international opinion has steadily solidified behind
a "two state solution." In this scenario, independent Jewish and
Palestinian states would divide the land between the
Mediterranean coast and the River Jordan. By the mid-1970s, most
states in the U.N. General Assembly supported Palestinian
nationhood. In 1988, the PLO explicitly recognized Israel within
its pre-1967 borders, agreeing to sovereignty over the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, together comprising just 22 percent of former
Palestine.
The United States finally joined the bandwagon in 2002, when
President Bush called for two democratic states living side by
side in his "Roadmap to Peace." Even Israel has signed on,
although its conception of what territory and powers a
Palestinian state should possess is more constrictive than
anyone else's.
Ironically, this unanimity, so laboriously assembled over
decades, upholds a solution that is now impossible to achieve.
Israel's program of colonizing the West Bank has become
irreversible, and the land base for a viable Palestinian state
has disappeared. Some 450,000 Israeli settlers now occupy more
than 140 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. These
Jewish settlements, the security swaths around them, the roads
linking them to each other and to Israel, and the "separation
wall" that pens Palestinians into discontiguous islands of land,
cover more than 40 percent of the West Bank. Much of this is
either private Palestinian property, seized without
compensation, or state lands in which Palestinians hold
traditional use rights that Israel refuses to respect.
Meanwhile, Israel's colonizing juggernaut rolls ahead. Recently,
plans to build 2,500 new homes for Israeli settlers east of
Jerusalem were announced, and orders were given to continue
construction of the "separation wall" in the Jordan Valley.
There appears to be no political force capable of slowing, let
alone halting, this movement.
A comforting illusion has been fostered that if Palestinians and
Israelis could only be coaxed back into negotiations, the
elusive two-state solution would somehow materialize. The
interests of leaders on all sides are served by this fiction,
although for different reasons. For President Bush, an
appearance of progress toward Palestinian-Israeli peace quells
hostility toward the United States in the Middle East, and eases
policy options elsewhere in the region, including Iraq. The PLO
leadership, personified in the hapless Mahmoud Abbas, staked its
entire political legitimacy in the Oslo accords and the endless
"peace process" it inaugurated. Abandoning negotiations toward a
two-state solution would constitute an admission that it had led
the Palestinians into a terrible dead-end. Israel mollifies the
United States by engaging in the negotiation charade, exploits
the continuing indeterminacy to continue colonizing the West
Bank, and advances its strategic objective of permanent control
over most or all of former Palestine. Like the shimmering waters
of a desert mirage, the two-state solution moves just out of
reach with every apparent advancing step.
The tragedy is that temporizing in the face of this inevitable
truth ultimately serves neither Israeli Jews, nor Palestinian
Arabs, nor Americans. Continued conflict in the region hurts the
direct parties in obvious ways, and also deeply undermines the
status of the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Our
reflexive support of Israel, even in its self-destructive
policies, is a prime cause of hostility against us.
The number of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs living within
the borders of former Palestine are now roughly equivalent, at
just more than 5 million each. The question is: Will political
power within this single political system continue to be
exercised in what former ANC member and current South African
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils and others have described
as an acute form of apartheid? Or will Palestinian Arabs and
Israeli Jews enjoy equal rights and share power fairly in what
is already a joint polity? For those who support peace, justice
and respect for international law, the choice should be obvious.
George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of
the Law, and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle
East.
This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco
Chronicle
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc
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