It’s already one state
Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, and the author of several clear-eyed studies of the Palestinians as well as sober assessments of the Israelis (to say nothing of U.S. foreign policy) is interviewed in Ha’aretz. His long years of thought and study provide this interview with a larger and clearer picture of what could happen in Israel/Palestine than we usually get in the MSM.
Sample: “Q. So you think we’re headed for a one-state solution?
“A. We already have a one-state solution. There is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. There are two or three levels of citizenship or non-citizenship within the borders of that one sovereign state that’s in control, or at least the state that decides everything that is important. When I go in, I don’t go into a Palestinian state, I cross Israeli borders, whether it’s at the river or at Ben Gurion airport. So we have a one state solution, and that’s what we’re going to have for the foreseeable future, unless the Israelis or people who have the ability will persuade the Israelis to reverse the dynamic that has made a two-state solution virtually impossible.”
Advent seems like the time of year to reflect on peace. What is needed to make the area more peaceful?
Khalidi’s assessment of the status quo is correct.
How to make the area “more peaceful”?
For starters, how about justice toward the Palestinians?
How about turning off the money pipeline from DC to Jerusalem?
And the money pipeline from Jerusalem to DC: we should remember that as well.
True.
So it is Israel’s fault, and the United States’ fault, that they cannot find peace in the Middle East?
If I’ve read Khalidi right, he thinks it’s everyone’s fault, including the Palestinians and other Arabs. That’s what I meant by clear-eyed and sober, could have added even-handed.
That it is everyone’s fault makes it even more lamentable that a peace agreement can’t be devised.
Margaret – I agree that there is plenty of fault to be spread around. How to build trust, and how to enable forgiveness of the mountain of grievances that all sides have accumulated?
Jim–How to build trust? Ain’t easy. One step would be for the United States government at the behest of American Jews (and the rest of us following) to tell Netanyahu and Co. to clean up their act and to focus on the real threat to a Jewish homeland (via demographic forces), which is not Iran, but their near neighbors the Palestinians. Recent statements by Secretaries Clinton and Panetta seem to be moving in that direction. We can hope!