Why Obama's peace process is still going nowhere

[subsuelo]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10686.shtml">by Ali Abunimah

The constant focus on process and gimmicks -- like trying to get Arab states to normalize ties with Israel -- has obscured the reality that Obama's stated goal -- a workable two-state solution -- is almost certainly unachievable. The idea of separating Palestinians and Israelis into distinct ethno-national entities has become an article of faith within peace process circles, but rarely are its supporters asked to justify why a "solution" that has eluded them for decades has any merit.

Today, as a result of natural growth, Palestinians form half of the population living in historic Palestine despite decades of expulsion and exile. Within a few years they will once again be the majority. A two-state solution as currently envisaged would leave Palestinians with a state on no more than a fifth of the land, with less of the water and no real sovereignty. Even if Palestinian refugees agreed to return to such a state, there would be no room for them.

Nor would repartition actually separate the populations: no one involved in the "peace process" is talking about removing all, or even most of the half million Israeli settlers implanted illegally in the West Bank -- especially around Jerusalem -- since 1967. There is talk of compensating Palestinians for the land taken by settlers with "equivalent" land elsewhere. But whoever can find land that can "compensate" Palestinians for Jerusalem, would be just as likely to find land that could "compensate" the British for London or the French for Paris.

As for the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a two-state solution would only make their situation worse. Already treated as second-class citizens, they face escalating racist campaigns and a raft of legislation proposing to ban them from commemorating Israel's near-destruction of Palestine in 1948, forcing them to take loyalty oaths, or even to sing the explicitly Jewish Israeli national anthem. If Israel remains an unreformed ultra-nationalist "Jewish state," its Palestinian citizens are more likely to face apartheid conditions at best or ethnic cleansing at worst, than be allowed to live as equal citizens in the land of their birth. Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman represents the growing number of Israeli Jews who think a Jewish state should be cleansed of non-Jews.

This is why an increasing number of Palestinians, conflict resolution experts, and a small but growing number of Israelis are giving serious attention to the idea of a one-state, or bi-national solution for Palestine/Israel. This would dismantle the current system of Israeli ethno-religious domination and institute a democratic system guaranteeing the civic, political, religious and cultural rights of all citizens and communities.

Although peace process insiders constantly dismiss these ideas as far-fetched, utopian or naive, they continue to gain adherents. After all, similar, but even deeper-rooted conflicts between settler-colonial and indigenous communities were resolved peacefully along such democratic principles in Northern Ireland and South Africa.

As George Mitchell surely knows from his experience in Northern Ireland, when two national communities lay claim to the same land and one dominates the other by force, partition only changes the contours of the conflict. It was by dismantling the "Protestant state for a Protestant people" in the north of Ireland and replacing it with a bi-national democracy, increasingly integrated with the rest of the island, that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended a conflict long thought to be insoluble.

Neither South Africa nor Northern Ireland offer exact analogies or ready-made blueprints for Palestine/Israel. But to continue to pretend that these working bi-national and one-state models have nothing to teach is to condemn Palestinians and Israelis to decades more of conflict, as diplomats chase mirages and Israel pursues its colonial policies unchecked.

[Sezu]

1. Gimmicks? This guy's a bit off centre. And he seems to

purposely ignore the "ethno-religious domination," of Hamas et al. Why do ya suppose THAT is? Oh, maybe because dissing Islam in that neighborhood might get him killed. What a hypocrite.

[azurnoir]

4. The author of the article is American

Ali Hasan Abunimah (Arabic: علي حسن ابو نعمه‎) (born December 29, 1971) is a Palestinian American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a not-for-profit, independent online publication about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Born in Washington D.C., he spent his early years in the United Kingdom and Belgium before returning to the United States to attend college. His mother is originally from the village of Lifta, now controlled by Israel, but became a refugee in the 1948 Palestinian exodus. His father is from the village of Battir, now in the West Bank, and is a former Jordanian diplomat who served as ambassador to the United Nations.

Abunimah is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago and is a frequent speaker and commentator on the Middle East, contributing regularly to the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times among other publications. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He has also served as the Vice-President on the Board of Directors of the Arab American Action Network.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Abunimah

[subsuelo]

5. "dissing Islam in that neighborhood might get him killed"

ok, *that* sure isn't a derogatory slur

:sarcasm:

why don't you tell us how you really feel

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[aranthus]

2. Has nothing changed in sixty years?

Although Abunimah tries to pretend that the proposal for a single state is something new, it clearly is just the same cant that the Arabs have taken since before there was an Israel, warmed over and presented with new and improved advertising. There is no room for a Jewish state in the Middle East. There must be a single state (which would inevitably be an Arab state with a Jewish minority). Just how long would it remain secular and protective of Jewish rights?

And yes, South Africa and Northern Ireland really do have almost nothing to add to solving the Israel/Palestinian conflict. South Africa was a conflict along race lines, and Northern Ireland religious. Neither was a fight for sovereignty between two separate nations, which is the issue between Israelis and Palestinians. South Africa and Northern Ireland were true civil conflicts. Israel/Palestine isn't. that's why there need to be two states, and why the so called "secular state" solution really isn't a solution at all.

[subsuelo]

7. are you saying race and religion is *not* a factor in this issue?

[aranthus]

8. Not exactly.

To break it down, I don't think that race is a factor. Jews and Arabs aren't races. There are different races in Israel, and like all multi-racial societies it has race issues, but that isn't what the conflict is about. It's a conflict between nationalities that are heavily influenced by their religions. Compare that to the conflicts in South Africa and Ireland. In South Africa, the fight was between South African Whites and South African Blacks. Both groups were South Africans, but mainly of different races. In Ireland it was Irish Catholics versus Irish Protestants. Both groups at least considered themselves to be Irish. The fight in Israel/Palestine is between Muslim/Christian Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. There isn't a point of cultural commonality between them. That's why the South African and Irish analogies aren't accurate. The question to be asked is this: If the Czechs and Slovaks had to separate into two states; if the French and the Germans live in two separate states; if the Kuwaitis and the Iraqis live in two separate states, then why should two such disparate peoples as the Palestinians and Israelis be forced to live in the same state, and how can that be expected to work?

[subsuelo]

9. They've already been forced to live in the same state

We're way past the point pretending like this hasn't already happened. Israel has already taken so much from the indigenous population that it's too late to piece together a separate new state for Palestinians (unless you're talking a bi-national solution).

This is just the reality on the ground. Theoretically, I would agree that two states would have worked out best. Most people would. The argument I would put forward (and I think Abunimah as well) is that it is now too late for a second state, as Israel has continued taking more and more land for itself, creating miserable conditions for life in Gaza and the West Bank. If we're being honest about it all, we ought to just admit that we have arrived at a single state whether anybody likes it or not, and start asking, what do we do now that we're here?

[aranthus]

10. You're simply wrong. We must agree to disagree. n/t

[subsuelo]

11. Fine, but I am curious... at what point do you admit it's a single state?

Let's say things continue on the current course. Israel continues to take land from the West Bank, further pushing Palestinians into smaller and smaller reservations (if you don't like the term 'reservations', you get the point right?).

My question: At what point do you admit, ok it's now a single state. Is there a specific size to the land reserved for Palestinians which you then agree, it's not big enough for a new state?

Let's say Israel at some point takes all of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians with only Gaza. Would you then *still* theorize that a two-state solution is workable? Or at that point would you agree, ok it is a single state and Gaza is merely a reservation camp (or something along those lines, call it what you will).

Or is it when and only when Israel pushes all Palestinians out of all of Gaza and the West Bank, claiming all the land solely for itself, that you then say, now it is a single state?

Tough problems to think about.

[aranthus]

14. Not the issue.

I recognize that there is an argument that there is a single state in Western Palestine. The issue is, assuming that there is a single state, can it be split into two states? I think it can. Now if all of Israel's Jews convert to Islam, or all the Palestinians legitimately convert to Judaism, then I would say that splitting into two states would be more difficult than it was worth. But as long as there are two separate separate peoples, then they can be split into two states.

Now if Israel were to formally annex all of the West Bank, it would then be required by its democratic nature to offer Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians living there. Expelling the Palestinians is clearly not a moral option, nor a practical one.

[Kurska]

3. A single state will only come about as the result of a civil war.

That is what these single state idiots seem to ignore, that the only way that the "Entho-religious" domination would end is if the IDF is dismantled which just isn't going to happen.

[subsuelo]

6. It already is a single state

A single Apartheid state, as a result of years of steady land theft backed with violent military force.

[Vegasaurus]

13. Nope and the status quo can continue for quite some time nt