Could There Be a One-State Solution?

[Karmadillo]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/could-there-be-a-one-state-solution/

January 12, 2009, 1:35 pm
Could There Be a One-State Solution?
By Robert Mackey
Updated | 5:14 p.m.

In a news analysis article in today’s New York Times, “Crisis Imperils 2-State Plan,” Michael Slackman writes that one casualty of the current fighting in Gaza may be the fundamental shape of a post-conflict Middle East agreed upon by Israelis and Palestinians at Oslo in 1993:

With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel.

Peace negotiators have spent decades looking at the map of the Middle East as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, pondering how to arrange three pieces — Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — into two nation states, but the lack of progress towards peace in the 15 years since Oslo has led to calls over the years from a small group of thinkers to abandon the effort and work towards they call “the one-state solution.”

Edward Said, the late Palestinian professor, made the case for abandoning the two-state solution as early as January 1999, when he wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine, which began with a suggestion for a radically different sort of state:

Given the collapse of the Netanyahu Government over the Wye peace agreement, it is time to question whether the entire process begun in Oslo in 1993 is the right instrument for bringing peace between Palestinians and Israelis. It is my view that the peace process has in fact put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the hundred-year war between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end. Oslo set the stage for separation, but real peace can come only with a binational Israeli-Palestinian state.

While Said acknowledged bluntly “This is not easy to imagine,” he argued that:

the problem is that Palestinian self-determination in a separate state is unworkable, just as unworkable as the principle of separation between a demographically mixed, irreversibly connected Arab population without sovereignty and a Jewish population with it. The question, I believe, is not how to devise means for persisting in trying to separate them but to see whether it is possible for them to live together as fairly and peacefully as possible.

more...

[bstender]

1. one state

seems the proper solution, one that has the best chance for peace and productivity. but as a democratic state and eventually a predominantly Muslim state, such a state is the nightmare of the extreme Zionists so it has about zero chance of happening.

[cali]

4. It has even a lesser chance for peace and prosperity

at this time than the two state solution. And it's not acceptable to either Israelis or Palestinians. Forming one state out of two people with a history of violence and hate is just not feasible at this time. And if you think it's only "extreme Zionists" who are against it, you're deluded.

In the best of all possible worlds, a secular one state, would be the best solution.

This is not the best of all possible worlds.

[Vegasaurus]

6. It is not the nightmare of the "extreme Zionists"

it is the nightmare (and will never be the reality) of ALL Zionists.

You show total lack of understanding on the topic.

[bstender]

9. just trying to be fair-minded

t is the nightmare (and will never be the reality) of ALL Zionists.

i didn't want to accuse ALL Zionists of such a racist program and i still think it is unfair to paint all Zionists with such a hateful brush. but i could be wrong, you are correct about that, but they are all nevertheless human beings and so do tend to have shades of gray, nay, (colors!) in their hearts, if not their minds, so i will stick with my original statement for now.

[Vegasaurus]

10. You don't know Israelis then

because whether they are left, right or center, dovish or hawkish, on this particular subject there is close to 100% agreement.

A single state is suicide.

There is NO political or even emotional support for this among Zionists (and these include Israelis and other Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists, those who believe in a national homeland for Jews).

It isn't racist, particularly since there are 22 MUSLIM ONLY states bordering Israel.

Are you calling those states racist?

I didn't think so.

[bstender]

17. patently racist

It isn't racist, particularly since there are 22 MUSLIM ONLY states bordering Israel.

_illogical_. even if true, it wouldnt change the racism of your statement.

[Vegasaurus]

18. So, there is only racism when it is Jews who want a state

(with 1.5 million Arabs living there too).

No jews allowed in Arab states.

[bstender]

33. no, it would be _also_ racist

and of course your statement that 22 neighboring countries ban Jews is false on its face. though there has been serious oppression and exodus of Jews from most Arab countries especially around 1948, racism by others is no excuse for racism. Your rebuttals rely upon ignoring of context and history, disingenuous i suspect.

[Vegasaurus]

40. Why don't you share which Arab countries welcome Jews living there?

(remember, you can't even visit, much less live there if you are Israeli or Jew, in some of these countries).

Zionism is a crime in most of these countries.

Jewish property and land was stolen when JEws were forced to leave.

There were thriving Jewish communities in Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya etc.

I think there are fewer than 100 Jews left in Iraq, and even fewer in most of the other Arab countries, if there are any at all.

Ignoring of context?

You are ignorant of FACTS.

BTW, there are 1.5 MILLION Arabs living in Israel.

So, let's be clear about which countries are racist.

[bstender]

49. Yes, let's be clear about which countries are racist...

and what you were responding to!

Your rebuttal suggesting that "ALL Zionists" are not racist is that 1.5M Arabs live in Israel. But yet you insist that "ALL Zionists, and even "all Israelis" would oppose a one-state solution due to the fact that the non-jews population would increase.

and a reminder, how racist _other_people may be is immaterial.

You are defending a racist policy, admit it. is racism only bad when practiced against Jews?

[aranthus]

50. First, let's be clear about what racism is.

One thing that is not racism is the desire of a nation to control its own country. There is nothing racist about the French wanting to keep France French, nor the Japanese wanting to keep Japan Japan. There is likewise nothing racist in the Jews wanting to keep Israel Jewish. Also, Jews are a nation, not a race. So are the Arabs. If you object to nation states, that's your privilege, but at least recognize that your position runs counter to the rest of the world.

[cali]

19. actually, it's no more racist than

any other nation rooted in a cultural identity- and that's most nations. The occupation is the problem, not the existence of Israel as a Jewish state- as long as the minority is protected under the law.

Oh, and it's not a matter of speculation about Muslim states, it's a fact.

[DUlover2909]

51. Just curious here, what are the 22 Muslim states bordering Israel? nt

[oberliner]

52. Probably a reference to The Arab League which has 22 member states

They are listed here:

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

[DUlover2909]

53. Wow, I'd never heard of Comoros. Now I have. thanks.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Recommended. It is the solution that dares not speak its name.

But it's more realistic than any other.

[PDJane]

3. Not with Israel's current leadership, no.

It's not that the thing isn't possible, it's just not possible with the current mindset of Israel. Israel has always intended that they take over all of Palestine, and they have manipulated the message to that end.

[Vegasaurus]

5. You are outrageous

Is not Gaza part of Palestine?

Israel left it in complete control of the Palestinians.

It isn't their fault that the Palestinians destroyed it completely, including all of the greenhouses and goodwill that went with them.

[PDJane]

11. Oh, get a grip.

Israel did not leave it in control of the Palestinians. Israel had controlled the air space, the seas, the borders, the water and resource allocations and has controlled food and medical supplies. Israel didn't leave. The settlers moved to the West Bank, as their government paid them to do. Their soldiers came in, killed, and left. Contrary to American belief, the Israelis have never ceded control to the Palestinians...and now that the Palestinians have elected people that the Israelis and the Americans consider terrorists, they have waltzed in, killed 1200 to 1300, most of them women and children and very few fighters, injured thousands more, and walked out again, now that the world is outraged.

Tzipi Livni is forgetful. Her government won't deal with terrorists, she says.

"Eitan" Livni, her father, was a member of the Irgun...the Jewish terrorist organization, author of the machinations that resulted in the Israeli state. If the world had refused to deal with terrorists, the state of Israel would never have been born.

I realize it's hard for Americans to grasp, but Israel is a terrorist state, remains a terrorist state, and has broken international law too many times to count. For what? A land they stole the first time around, too. A land that has seen more bloodshed thanalmsot any part of the world, and most of that blood shed in the interests of colonization. The bible is not history, and the sooner that becomes apparent to the fanatics of all stripes, the faster we will move to peace.

[LeftishBrit]

13. It is not a 'land that has seen more bloodshed than almost any part of the world'

It has seen bloodshed, yes, but compared with Iraq? Rwanda? Congo? Going back a bit, Vietnam and Cambodia? And most of the countries involved in WW2?

You are right about Livni's father being a member of a terrorist organization; but they weren't the ones that brought independence to Israel. The state of Israel would have been born without them. Probably more easily.

[cali]

16. Don't forget the USSR under Stalin.

So much ignorance and hate displayed here.

[PDJane]

20. That's actually unlikely.

And if the you count the bloodshed from the dawn of history, instead of recent history, you will find that slavery and bondage and wars and all the things that man can do to man, the middle east has had as much as any area of history. In part, that's because they started history quite early; remember that hybrid wheat was found there, in an archaeological dig dating from 8,000 years BCE.

Israel did NOT need to be in Palestine. The truth of the matter is that a colonial power promised a second group land belonging to a third group, and that mostly to free Europe from a troublesome problem. The movement gained momentum from the Holocaust. But the truth of the matter is that you can't make up for the Holocaust by making the Palestinians pay for the European sin.

The dropping of the state Israel in most of Palestine was wrong, it continues to be wrong, and the siting of that state was meant to bring religious Jews to Israel for the wars that the Zionists knew would come.

The rebirth of Israel was not inevitable, but now one has the largest religious state ghetto in the world in a place where they have the Palestinians to look down on and steal from.

I am totally fed up with the kind of war crimes that both Israel and the US have committed in the name of freedom. It's utterly inhuman, and it seems to me that Europeans who decide to colonize have never learned. We have wiped out the cultures of the Native Indians on this continent, committed murder for resources all over the world, including VietNam, we are busily using slavery to keep food on our tables and clothes on our backs and furniture in our houses.....and are on the edge of ruining the world for habitation. I would note that, in order to use those slaves and colonize the world, the US military has been a prime mover....and the US military is the largest polluter in the world.

All of which, of course, does not answer the problem of Israel keeping tight control of both the Gaza and the West Bank....with the military, and roadblocks, and Jews only roads, and illegal settlements. That mindset would not allow a single state solution, and if there were a two-state solution, Israel has no intention of going back behind pre-1967 borders. However, killing 4 million Palestinians is going to prove impossible, and it will not be long before the Palestinians simply outnumber the Israelis.

What happens then? It's time to tell them to negotiate before negotiation becomes impossible.

[cali]

25. gad, you really are chock-a-block filled with

misinformation, not to mention hate. Pathetic. And yeah, anyone that makes whacko statements like this:

The dropping of the state Israel in most of Palestine was wrong, it continues to be wrong, and the siting of that state was meant to bring religious Jews to Israel for the wars that the Zionists knew would come.

The rebirth of Israel was not inevitable, but now one has the largest religious state ghetto in the world in a place where they have the Palestinians to look down on and steal from.

is filled with raw, unvarnished hate.

Oh, and there's no such thing as Jews only roads. There are Israeli only roads, and yes they're wrong as is the entire occupatiion, but that doesn't excuse your pushing a lie.

It's a shame isn't it that all those Jews had no where to go after WWII, but they didn't.

[PDJane]

27. Sigh.

Just keep on spewing that stuff. I don't hate Israel; I do hate what they have been doing to the land they occupy. I began, as most did of my generation, a Zionist. I have given much thought to that since. The things that Israel does that bother me?

The untreated sewage running from the illegal settlements onto Palestinian farm land.
The usage of water that is not shared with the original inhabitants, including the security wall that is twice the length of the border, so that it can enclose fertile land and the water table.
The irrigation that "makes the desert bloom"...and which will ruin the land and the water table.
The murder of innocents, and the justification of that murder for security reasons...when security is not and never has been the issue.
The treatment of Arabs and Palestinians, even inside Israel, as second class citizens.
The settlers who constantly harass the Palestinians, including harvesting their crops and physically abusing them.

The Israelis should have studied the farming methods of the Palestinians; they didn't. They imposed European methods on a land ill-equipped for it. Have you seen what colonists did to the water table of Australia?

Wake up. Look at what colonization does, and look clearly.

[cali]

38. sorry, your words give you away completely.

You spew hate and things that are patently false.

[PDJane]

39. Now, see, that hatred bit

is why I try to stay out of these arguments.

Americans in general need to stop swallowing what they see on the teevee about Israel. It's not true and never has been.

[cali]

14. There's something deeply ironic about Americans piously

calling Israel a terrorist state. And no, the Jews didn't steal the land. You only show your own ignorance with that statement. You can disagree with the formation of Israel, but you don't get to make up that shit. Israel was formed largely by the British, the Americans, the U.N., and of course, the exigencies of history.

You're right, the Bible isn't history, but that's hardly the sole claim that Jews had a nation in Palestine. The archeological record backs that up. Still, that's really neither here nor there. The fact is that Israel exists, and it's hardly feasible to dismantle it- not without massive bloodshed that would make what's happened over the past 60 years look tame. And that would be bloodshed of both Palestinians and Israelis.

And face it, the bible and the Q'ran will both be looked to as the literal truth for many people for the forseeable future. That may not be ideal, but it is reality.

[PDJane]

21. And it was under the devoted lobbying

and terrorist activities of the Zionist federations.

Israel was not inevitable. That is a myth promoted by people who are following a religious book....which is, like most religious books a mismash of myth and legend and fiction, with just enough place names thrown in to make it real.

[cali]

26. i never said it was inevitable. I said it was created by

the exigencies of history, the british, the U.S. and the U.N. And what the hell are the "Zionist Federations"? The fact is, that both before and after WWII, there were few countries willing to take in the large number of persecuted Jews. Had that not happened, perhaps there would have been no Israel, but it did happen.

And Israel's existence has little to do with religion. You really, really need to educate yourself. Ignorance writ large, such as yours, is not an admirable thing and often leads to hate.

[PDJane]

30. I have.

Israel is a religious state. Period. Endit. The right of return should prove it if nothing else does. If you don't want to admit that, it is your problem.

Yes, the difficulties of settling the "persecuted Jews" was a difficulty; even Canada didn't really want them. That is no reason to foist that population on the Palestinians. And, quite honestly, the fact is that only a small proportion of the European population of Jews went permanently to Israel.

The idea for the renewed Israel actually came from Russian Zionists in the middle of the 1800's, not the British, or the US or the UN.

It was convenient for the US to support such a state, but the truth of the matter is that had Zionists not moved there in some numbers, had they not proven that they were unable or unwilling to live in peace with Palestinians (including long years of terrorism and response from about 1920 onward) and massacres of places like Dier Yassin, there would not have been a reason for the British or the Americans or the United Nations to get involved in making a Jewish state. Nor did Jews own as much of the land as they have claimed; they did not buy their way into a state.

The absolute truth is that Israel is a response to religious hatred and death, but that the Palestinians had little or nothing to do with it then, and they have little or nothing to do with it now.

Yes, Palestinians hate the Israelis often enough and hard enough to use suicide bombs to retaliate, but retaliate is the operative word here. Even in the six day war, "plucky little Israel" outnumbered, outgunned and out trained the Arabic armies; they were never in any danger, and the recollections of a Dutch UN worker on BBC supports that fact.

The state of Israel was one of the largest mistakes of the 20th century. There were others, of course, and some larger...the Washington Concensus comes to mind....but this one may have longer lasting consequences.

[cali]

43. lol. wrong again.

israel is a mixed secular/religious state. So is Great Britain for that matter. It's your problem and your deep ignorance that prevents you from seeing the facts. The right of return is not remotely based on religion, dear. It's based on the Nazi formulation of who was a Jew. By law, under the Nazis, anyone who had a Jewish grandparent was considered a Jew- and that meant whatever religion that person practiced. Same with the right of return laws. Duh.

I'm unclear as to why you put "persecuted Jews" in parentheses. Did the Jews fake being persecuted? Perhaps you believe the Holocaust never happened?

And yes, the idea of a nation was the idea of early Zionists. That hardly negates the fact that Israel was created by the agents I've listed. You claim that Israel was stolen- your words- when it was created by legal means recognized by most in the world community. I may not think it was a wise decision, but that doesn't change the facts.

By the way, do you realize that Jerusalem was a Jewish majority city by the mid 19th century? Like it or not, Jews have a long history in Palestine. And to blame the violence entirely on Jews, shows exactly how ignorant you are. Hebron massacre ring a bell? Oooh, I know, according to your ilk, the Jews actually did that to themselves to make the Palestinians look bad.

Retaliate is hardly the only operative word here. It's merely the operative word for deranged haters. I'm sick of the lot of you, whether you demonize Israelis and Jews or Palestinians and Arabs. It's disgusting, whether it's Israel defenders who refuse to acknowledge the crimes of Israel and it's history, or purportedly pro-Palestinian types who refuse to deal with the fact that Israel is more than an illegitimate state and more than some fount of all evil.


Your posts are shameless hate filled screeds. Pathetic. And disgusting.

[PDJane]

45. Israel is a secular state?

Then why does it have so many laws which follow religious law?

Because the state bows to the religious orthodoxy. Do you know what? I don't hate Israel. I don't hate you. I grew up as a Zionist and a Jew in a family with both Christians and Jews in it.

What I despise is the number of International laws that Israel has broken. I hate its continuation of terror. The Palestinians mean something too, and they have been on the land longer than the Jewish state existed. I have been extremely upset at the rewriting of history I see going on in these forums. I object to the personification of Palestinians as not worth the lives of an Israeli.

And yes, retaliation has a lot to do with it. Israel is breaking international law with the settlements and the separation barrier. It does not treat the Palestinians as real people. They terrorise and abuse Palestinians on a regular basis. If you consider that hatred, what does that make you?

Enough.

[sabbat hunter]

29. The people who first pushed

a state of israel were highly secular.

[PDJane]

32. this is true.

However, one more time. The reason for siting the state in Palestine, and the reason for appealing to the religious, was to people the land with those who would fight for the state of Israel as an ideal. To be very blunt, and very cold, those people who thought of the state of Israel and pushed hardest needed cannon fodder.

[Vegasaurus]

15. More bloodshed?

Are you deranged?

40,000 Palestinians have been killed in 60 years.

Compare that to 12 million dead Jews and other "undesirables" in WW 2.

Or even the 11 million Muslims that have killed EACH other.

Comments as hyperbolic as yours would be funny, if they weren't so ignorant.

[PDJane]

22. Ah, but the 12,000 dead in WWII

were not the responsibility of the Palestinians. Why should they be made to pay?

[Vegasaurus]

41. You just ignored my point.

There has been ten to ten thousand times the bloodshed that the Palestinians have suffered.

Go cry for the Sudanese, for example, who really are enduring a genocide, which no one cares about.

[PDJane]

46. I do.

Among others.

I would point out that just because they are suffering larger numbers of deaths makes it right and tight that the Palestinians suffer only a few thousand. What the hell kind of argument is that????

[bstender]

12. what is outrageous

now that you mention it, is to say that Gazans have control over anything resembling a state or a viable life. you could almost say that Israel has them under a state of seige, which is an act of war.

[PDJane]

23. Congrats.

That was my point. They have control of nothing; the only thing in Gaza that is free is the air.

[Malikshah]

35. Outrageous? How about the response being preposterously idiotic?

Palestinians in complete control of Gaza?

Get off the pipe and step into reality.

It will help the larger discourse if folks would speak truth first.

[iamjoy]

7. How About A No-State Solution

The Israelis and Palestinians have mucked up things so thoroughly, I have to wonder if peace is ever possible.

Maybe we ought to just give it back to the British. Or maybe it could be kind of like Canada with a separate parliament and the British monarch could be mostly ceremonial. Maybe Britian should have enough influence that anyone who launches rockets across the Gaza/Israeli border is considered to have attacked Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II.

I wonder how "God Save the Queen" would sound in Hebrew and in Arabic.

I'm joking - sort of.

[LeftishBrit]

8. Actually ...

IMO you are not as far out as all that, in your conclusion.

The ONLY way that a peaceful one-state solution could possibly be maintained at this time, *would* be by some form of de facto colonialism. Probably not a return to the British - we would have neither the ability nor credibility at the moment; nor would there be many here who'd want to take that responsibility, even if the international community permitted us to. But it would involve some form of tight control by probably an international body, with peacekeeping forces on the ground. And that is de facto colonialism; let's not deceive ourselves.

If Israel and Palestine are to find their own destinies and do so peacefully, it will have to be a two-state solution, with facilitation but not control from outside. And that will be difficult - but not nearly as impossible as a one-state solution.

Get back to the world on the one-state solution in 30 or 40 years' time. If it were possible right now, there wouldn't even be this problem.

[PDJane]

24. from the wording of the Balfour declaration,

I believe that a one-state solution was what he had in mind. However, that has never been a Zionist aim.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

28. There already is one state.... one state that has 1.5 million in a concentration camp, & 2.5 million

under lock and key in the West Bank... add to that the 1.5 million Arab Israelis who have fewer rights than Jewish Israelis.

What does one call that kind of state?

[sabbat hunter]

31. arab israelis

have full citizenship rights, all the same rights as any other citizen of Israel. Now is there bigotry against them, prejudice? Sure, that unfortunately happens everywhere.

But legally, under the law all citizens of israel are equal. Can the same be said of other religions in any predominately Muslim country?

[PDJane]

34. No, they don't.

For instance, if an Israeli Arab visits family in, say, Gaza or the West Bank, they can be denied the right to return to Israel.

Arab parties have been banned from taking part in the forthcoming elections.

They are not equal. They can protest, of course, but only as long as they don't block traffic.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

36. Try again

Israeli passport holders are not denied re-entry into Israel

Some parties have been banned, its a bad thing, and is being appealed. The last part banned was Jewish, and a nasty one at that.

Everyone protests in Israel. The police ithere have been more equitable than most, much better than Chicago.

[PDJane]

37. Uh huh.

Yes, the right of demonstration is respected. Many other rights are not, and the resources are distributed inequitably. It's not as rosy as you would like to have me believe. My source? Family, friends and Jews for Justice.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

42. Stop with the nonsense, will ya?

Equal? Not by a LOOOOOOOOONG shot.

http://adalah.org/eng/backgroundlegalsystem.php

[ProgressiveMuslim]

44. The gov't of Israel shows more of it special love to Arab citizens:

MIDEAST: A 'Police State' Celebrates
By Nora Barrows-Friedman

JERUSALEM, Jan 19 (IPS) - The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets. Police have been videotaping the demonstrations and subsequently arresting protesters in large numbers.

According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in such demonstrations. Most have been held and then released, but at least 30 of those arrested over the past three weeks are still being held in prison.

Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations in Haifa, tells IPS that these demonstrations "are part of the uprising here inside the Green Line, to share responsibility and to share the challenge with the people in the Gaza strip."

As an organiser of many of these solidarity demonstrations inside Israel, Makhoul himself was arrested by the Shin Bet (the Israeli secret service). "They called me, came to my home and held me for four hours," he tells IPS. "They accused me of being a terrorist and supporting terror. They said that they are watching me and monitoring me." Israel, he said, "has become a terror state."

The Shin Bet has accused Makhoul and the hundreds of others arrested of "being a rebel, threatening the security of the State of Israel during war time."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45462

[Recursion]

47. Unless there is a viable and independent Palestinian state very soon...

...there will be a one-state solution in another generation by simple facts of demographics. Whether this goes the way South Africa went or the way Zimbabwe went is basically up to the Israeli government now.

[Douglas Carpenter]

48. well yes - simple math 2-1 = 1

If there is not a two-state solution very soon, massive expansion will create (if it has not already done so) an irreversible on the ground reality that will simply make the two state solution economically, politically and physically implausible.

In the absence of two states, there will in fact only be one state.

Within a generation or less it will be one state with an overwhelming Palestinian-Arab majority.

If there is not a two-state solution soon, the question will not be whether or not their will be a single-state, but what kind of single state.

Which kind of binational state?

By Meron Benvenisti - former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=363062&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

snip: "The fear of the loss of the majority has already yielded plans for campaigns against the danger, such as the projects for increasing the Jewish birth rate, granting voting rights to expatriates or even to Jews wherever they may be. The chance of fulfilling the unitary model is nil. But the effort to identify binationalism only with that model is deliberate, meant to prevent any debate about other, more attractive alternatives.

One such alternative is a system that recognizes collective ethnic-national rights and maintains power sharing on the national-central level, with defined political rights for the minority and sometimes territorial-cantonal divisions. That model, called "consociational democracy" has not succeeded in many places, but lately has been applied successfully to reach agreements in ancient ethnic-national conflicts such as Bosnia, through the Dayton agreement, and Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday agreement. That should be food for thought for the experts who contemptuously wave off the binational option.

Why did arrangements based on one state for two peoples work in various methods and places - South Africa, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland - while the Oslo accords, based on territorial division, achieved at the same time, collapsed?

The option of power sharing and division into federated cantons is closer to the model of the territorial division of two states but it avoids the surgery, so it allows the existence of soft borders, and creates a deliberate blurring that eases dealing with symbolic issues, the status of Jerusalem or the questions of refugees and the settlers. The mutual recognition allows preservation of the national-cultural character on the national level and preservation of the ethnically homogenous regions. Everything depends, of course, on recognition being mutual and symmetric.

Those who don't recognize and accept intercommunal equality propose a third model of binationalism - even though they rise up against the very idea. They suggest cultural and civic local autonomy, but without voting in the Knesset, or alternatively, voting in Jordan, the "real Palestinian state." That is Menachem Begin's original autonomy plan, or the "functional partition" proposed by Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, a plan being implemented nowadays through the Palestinian Authority. That model has another version in the form of the "Palestinian state" defined by the separation fence: four cantons under Israel's indirect control. That's also a model for binationalism camouflaged by the division into "two states."

And there's a fourth model, which can be called "undeclared binationalism." It's a unitary state controlled by one dominant national group, which leaves the other national group disenfranchised and subject to laws "for natives only," which for the purposes of respectability and international law are known as laws of "belligerent occupation." The convenience of this model of binationalism is that it can be applied over a long period of time, meanwhile debating the threat of the "one state" and the advantages of the "two states," without doing a thing. That's the situation nowadays. But the process is apparently inevitable. Israel and the Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of the "one state." The question is no longer whether it will be binational, but which model to choose ".

link to full article:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=363062&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y