Two States, Too Little, Too Late by Haim Bresheeth

[BowlingForPalestine]

Two States, Too Little, Too Late
by Haim Bresheeth

Another lengthy yet exceptional read

---snip---

This is not something I find easy to say, as an Israeli and son of Holocaust survivors. I would like to be able to argue for an Israeli-Hebrew entity -- not a Zionist militarist enterprise, of course, but a democratic, autonomous political and cultural entity twinned with a similar Palestinian entity. But after four decades of military rule and all the desecration of political, human, civil, property and other forms of rights by the occupation regime, most reasonable people will agree that no support can be given to this outdated, violent, immoral and inefficient mode of domination of one people over another. If it at least worked for the oppressors some people may well have justified the means vis-a-vis the end.

Alas, it does not, cannot and will not work for the benefit of either side. The West was quick to see this in the case of South Africa, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Kuwait and a number of other zones of conflict. Military occupation cannot be condoned. Domination through power and might will never get the vanquished to accept the occupiers. Political solutions enforced by the powerful on the powerless are wrong -- not just morally but because they undermine the rule of law elsewhere.

This reality, simple enough in itself, was not just avoided by Israel but the powerful forces in the new world order. This denial has finally come home to roost. The removal of hope for a solution by reason and negotiation leaves the ground open for extremists and those who feel, having lost all other avenues and not being in control of any real power to change reality, that suicide is the only means of affecting history. This in itself is a most serious indictment of the international political order. To drive a nation into this corner could be described as nothing short of criminal shortsightedness. That is exactly what has happened as the Palestinian claim for natural justice has been totally ignored for over half a century.

So, after all that has taken place since October 2000 when Mr Sharon, architect and author of the most hideous examples of Israeli aggression -- from the Kibya massacre, through Sabra and Shatila to the horror of the Al-Aqsa Intifada -- has made it impossible, by careful and detailed work over many decades, to affect the two-state solution. The wall, a structure that will create 16 ghettoes of a kind the world has never seen, even during the atrocities of WWII, making life for Palestinians just about impossible, is the last straw. It will achieve exactly what it was designed to do: no possibility of going back to the 1967 borders.

So, what should Palestinians do? What should the international community do? Are we to suffer the menace, illegality and atrocities of the Sharon regime as if they were natural disasters? Should the international community, the UN, the EU (even the US) just accept whatever Sharon does when they would never have done so if those atrocities were to be committed by Milosevic, Saddam or Idi Amin? If it was possible, and necessary, for international society to intervene in Cyprus, why not in Palestine?

The mistake Chomsky makes is to assume that there is still a two-state solution. There is none possible. Sharon has made sure that cannot happen. Many Palestinians are now returning to an earlier, more principled stage of their political development and argument -- the PLO solution of a secular, democratic single state in the whole of Palestine; one state that allows equal rights to Jews and Arabs alike. It is ironic that through failing to grasp the nettle which would have enabled them to keep a separate Israeli state in the pre- 1967 borders, Israeli leaders have forced a change in Palestinian thinking: "if we are not allowed to live as a free people in 22 per cent of our country, or come to that, even 10 per cent of it, maybe we should go back to fighting to liberate the whole country, for both people to live in peace, as equals."

What Chomsky is suggesting is too little, too late. Not because Palestine rejected this solution, but because Israel did. The Palestinians are not turkeys, and will not vote for Christmas, and the idea that they can be forced into the 16 ghettoes is ludicrous. But so also is the idea that Israel will go back to the 1967 borders willingly. The international community bears full responsibility for failing to act when it could.

While it is not clear when such an advanced solution of Jews and Arabs living together may materialise, it seems that it is the only one left, as Israel has made damned sure no other solution is allowed even half a chance. The question seems to be: Must we have a bloody showdown, massacres and ethnic cleansing before it emerges?

That is a question international society can ill-afford to ignore.

The writer is an Israeli academic working at the University of East London. He is the co-editor of The Gulf War and the New World Order and co-author of Introduction to the Holocaust .

[_Jumper_]

1. This was the PLO solution??????

"the PLO solution of a secular, democratic single state in the whole of Palestine; one state that allows equal rights to Jews and Arabs alike."

I thought that the PLO's official policy was that it wanted to drive all the Jews into the sea?

[Lithos]

2. Locking

Copyright violation - In the future please in the future limit citations to NO MORE than 3-4 paragraphs.

Lithos
FA/NS Moderator
Democratic Underground