Lawrence of Cyberia

450 Years

When Ehud Olmert first talked about his "convergence plan", I couldn't help but notice that as far as official Palestinian reaction was concerned, Fatah's response generally seemed much more negative than Hamas'. Not that Hamas actually favoured it - in fact at one point I think that Khalid Mishaal referred to it as "an act of war" - but generally I think that in comparison to Fatah, Hamas' reaction was almost indifferent. And I found that interesting, though at the time I wasn't sure why.

Gershon Baskin had an opinion piece published in yesterday's Jerusalem Post (on the subject of disengagement and convergence) that made me revisit the subject and perhaps gave an explanation for the difference in Palestinian reactions. He writes:

Israel would like to claim that by withdrawing from the territories it is ending its responsibility for the Palestinians by essentially ending the occupation. From the Palestinian perspective, however, the unilateral Israeli withdrawals not only strengthen Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they also create a greater entrenchment of the occupation.

Palestinians believe that if tens of thousands of settlers are removed from settlements east of the separation barriers to settlements that are west of the barrier - but east of the Green Line - nothing will have changed, except for the fact that Israel will be cheating the world in creating an illusion that it is withdrawing from occupied territories.

Most Palestinians, including those closest to Mahmoud Abbas, believe that should Israel actually implement its unilateral plans of convergence, the feasibility of the two-state solution will come to an end and there will be no viability for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

From their perspective, convergence means not only the removal of Jerusalem from the table, but the placing of a noose around the neck of the West Bank. The Jordan Valley will remain under Israel's control, including the crossings into Jordan. The West Bank will be completely sealed off on the west. There will be no territorial link between the two Palestinian territories and no policy of enabling people and goods to move between Gaza and the West Bank through Israel.

Gaza will be strangled except for a tiny air tube in Rafah; and, according to Palestinians, Israel has placed a veto on talks with Egypt to enable Palestinians to develop a cargo transport in Rafah. With this kind of picture in mind, how could any Palestinian support the convergence plan?

The emphasis in that text is mine, and I think it's key. Convergence involves Israel withdrawing settlers (though not the IDF) from the smaller settlements on the eastern side of the wall, into those areas of the Occupied Territories that Israel intends to annex - the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, and the settlement blocs (Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ariel etc). - and then declaring that these are Israel's final borders [Footnote].

The importance of these borders from a Palestinian perspective is that the remnant of land left over after convergence cannot support an independent Palestinian state.

Israel did not choose its major areas of settlement randomly. It did not toss a dart at a map and say, "Yup, let's build one there". The major settlements are where they are because they serve the strategic purpose of controlling those assets and resources that would make a Palestinian state viable. They were put there precisely to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Whoever controls the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, Maale Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion controls the economy, the trade, and the water and arable land resources of the West Bank, which is precisely why the major settlement blocs were put where they are. To tell the Palestinians that they can have an independent state in the Occupied Territories, but deliberately stripped of all the aspects that would allow it to function as an independent state, is effectively to say that there will be not be an independent Palestinian state there.

So what exactly are you left with after this kind of convergence is carried out (which, as I've said in my footnote, I really can't see happening, but I'm just thinking out loud here)? Well, diplomatically you would have an expanded Israel within annexation "final borders" that no-one apart from Israel recognises, and an Israeli-dominated Palestinian statelet with borders that nobody outside Israel gives the time of day to, least of all the Palestinians. In the meantime, the really important changes are taking place on the ground, where you have deeper and perhaps irreversible settlement in the key areas of the West Bank that Israel simply has to get out of if there is to be a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories. And ultimately you end up with a territory that can no longer be split into two feasible parts, with a distinct and growing Palestinian majority on that territory as a whole.

So the end result is, as Gershon Basking mentions, there will be no viability for the establishment of a Palestinian state. But as he points out, it’s more than that: the ultimate result is that there will be no viability for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories, i.e. alongside Israel. And if you take away the prospect of a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories, you are not taking “Palestine” off the table but “Israel and Palestine”, or what we call the two state solution. If you annex the things that make possible a second state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, then you are building a single state. (And, incidentally, doing it in the worst way possible, i.e. by default, rather than by popular choice).

And I think that might explain why “convergence” leaves Fatah more agitated than Hamas.

Israeli journalist Amira Hass once summed up the effective difference between Fatah and Hamas as being 450 years. What she meant was this: Fatah believes that there will be an independent Palestine; that it will exist alongside Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders (and therefore without any substantial implementation of the right of Return); and that it will take about 50 years to achieve this. Hamas also believes there will be an independent Palestine, but believes that Israel will never agree to end the Occupation and is currently too strong for Palestinians to force it; so there will never be an independent Palestine in a two state solution. It believes that the best Palestinians can do now is to resist and be steadfast until the balance of power has shifted against Zionism, which will be ultimately dismantled. So Hamas too thinks there will be an independent Palestine, but this will be on all of Greater Israel/Mandate Palestine, and it will take about 500 years to achieve.

Obviously that’s a simplification in that it leaves out a million variables, the most important one being: What would happen to the viability of Hamas’ vision of the future if there really was a genuine two state solution on offer? But it does I think help explain why Hamas seemed less concerned about the ramifications of convergence than Fatah. From their perspective, if convergence takes off the negotiating table a two state solution that Israel never accepted in the first place, so what?

Footnote: As an aside, I should say that I don't think there is any possibility whatsoever that Israel will be able to fix its borders along those lines. I think Ehud Olmert had hoped to follow Ariel Sharon's policy of "it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks as long as you have George Bush on board", which is why he placed such emphasis on carrying out convergence by 2008, i.e. by the end of Bush's second term. But Olmert can see as well as anyone else that George Bush is suddenly and horribly turning into the lamest lame duck President that ever waddled lamely back into the Oval Office. Having George Bush on board in 2006 counts for a great deal less than having George Bush aboard in 2003. I think this means that those trappings of the convergence plan that match the underlying mood of mainstream Jewish Israeli public opinion (i.e. a preference for unilateralism and an estrangement from the settler movement) will be carried out - like the building of the Wall and maybe the dismantling of some outposts - but the grander scheme of convergence as the setting of "final borders" is already dead in the water.

So the fact I'm discussing the goals of the convergence plan doesn't imply that I think those goals are realistic.

Paging Natan Sharansky

On 28 February 2005, the U.S. State Department issued its annual country report on human rights practices in Israel and the Occupied Territories. And as Electronic Intifada notes, the most interesting fact in the report doesn't actually involve human rights violations, but concerns the State Department's population count for the area.

The report notes that Israel's population is approximately 6.8 million, comprising the following categories:

-- 5.2 million Jews (this includes those who live in illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories);

-- 1.3 million Arabs (i.e. the Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 and 1967);

-- 290,000 other minorities.

The State Department report doesn't give a total for the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories, but it does list the number of Palestinians by region, as follows:

-- Approximately 1.4 million in the Gaza Strip;

-- Approximately 2.4 million in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem;

-- About 237,185 in occupied East Jerusalem.

As a proud graduate of the British comprehensive school system of the 1980's, I can use a calculator as well as the next person. And my calculator tells me that - according to the U.S. State Department - there is currently a fully-enfranchised Jewish population of 5.2 million people living under Israeli rule, alongside (1.3 million + 1.4 million + 2.4 million + 237,185 = ) 5,337,185 slightly less enfranchised (or completely disenfranchised) Palestinians.

Now, of course these figures are approximate. But - in view of the fact that a greying Jewish-Israeli population has a birth rate of about 2 children per family, while the Palestinian birth rate in an overwhelmingly young population averages about 4 children for Arabs in Israel proper, about 5 children in the West Bank, and 6+ children in the Gaza Strip - the trend is undeniable. EI's analysis notes that, "Israeli demographers have long predicted that in the next several years, Palestinians would once again become a majority in all of historic Palestine, with the risk that Israel would begin to be viewed as an apartheid state where an empowered minority rules over an effectively disenfranchised majority".

In fact, right-wing Israeli demographer Arnon Sofer contended in December 2003 that there was already a non-Jewish majority (soon to be an outright Arab majority) in Israel and the Occupied Territories. And now the U.S. State Department apparently agrees with that assessment. So what are we going to do about it? Surely we, as a nation on a democratizing crusade through the Middle East, are outraged that a minority population in Israel and the Occupied Territories should deny self-determination to the majority? Right?

Really, I hate to state the obvious here, but there are two democratic choices for Israel: either get out of the Occupied Territories and allow a fully-sovereign Palestinian state to emerge there, or stay in the Territories and give everybody the vote. An equal vote. Not a Jewish vote that puts an empowered national government in place, and a Palestinian vote that elects a PA "President" to supervise garbage collection in Ramallah while the future of the Occupied Territories is actually decided by the voters of Tel Aviv. An equal vote. One that actually allows for the Jewish minority to be democratically voted out of government, and into opposition.

You can go whatever lengths you like to pretend that 5.3 million Palestinians and 5.2 million Jews isn't a Palestinian majority. You can dilute the influence of the majority by dividing the Palestinians into as many minority groups as the State Department prefers - Israeli Arabs, West Bank Arabs, Gaza Arabs, Jerusalem Arabs... but they are still collectively a single people, and they are still going to be a majority. You can magnify the importance of the Israeli Jewish vote by allowing Israeli Jews to vote for an empowered national government regardless of where they live in Israel or the Occupied Territories, while limiting the Palestinian voice in choosing that government by allowing the vote only to Palestinians within Israel's 1967 borders. You can use whatever devices you like to ensure minority rule, but don't call it "democracy".

Don't wave your purple-dyed finger at me and tell me you believe in democracy, until the 5.3 million Palestinian and 5.2 million Jewish residents of Palestine-Israel have an equal voice in deciding how they will live - together or apart - in the land they share.

A Roger Maris Democracy

In the last edition of my alumni magazine, there was a summary of an interesting lecture at my former university, about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. The speaker was fairly optimistic, not about change imposed from the outside, but about the possibility of democratic developments from within. He cited how there are already countries in the region that one could call "democracies in the making", like Jordan (which doesn't have the full range of democratic institutions, but allows all sectors of the electorate equal access to those that exist), and Israel (which does have a full range of democratic instutions, but reserves the full benefits of those institutions to only one race among the electorate, i.e. to Jewish citizens).

So, naturally, in this month's edition, there is the obligatory letter from a Friend of Israel, reminding us that we should support Israel because it's "the only democracy in the Middle East. All Muslim states might emulate Israel's example."

I'm not going to go into what kind of democratic nation rations out the benefits of democracy in accordance with the race of its citizens, and regards citizens of the "wrong" race to be a threat, or candidates for expulsion, not because of anything they do, but just because they exist. And I'm not going to go into what kind of democracy you have when you spend 37 years slowly annexing lands that are not yours, denying even the most basic democratic rights to the people who live there, simply because if you absorb the people as well as their land into your "democracy" they would mess up your ethnocracy by declining to vote to keep the ruling race in its position of privilege.

Because there's a much more fundamental flaw with Israel's democracy, and it goes back not to 1967, but to 1948. To be blunt, Israel was created a democracy only because it used violence and the threat of violence to forcibly reduce the civilian Arab population to such a small minority that its vote could not effect political change. And Israel can afford to remain a democracy today only by continuing to pretend that those it expelled, and who have a legal right to return (and thence to vote!), simply don't exist.

Think of it this way. I live in a small town in rural Maryland. I could stand for Mayor here, and I'm pretty sure that I could be elected....if I were allowed to expel from town anyone who wouldn't vote for me. And, if I were to forcibly prevent my expelled neighbors from returning to their homes for year after year, decade after decade, election after election, I could be re-elected just as often as I want. Mayor-for-life! By ignoring the very existence of that dissenting would-be majority, I could even call myself the "democratically-elected" Mayor-for-life. But just saying I'm democratic wouldn't make it so to anybody who understood just how my "democracy" was founded and perpetuated.

At least Israelis have lately begun to acknowledge that their state was created out of ethnic cleansing, even if they can't decide yet whether that is a bad thing (a la Ilan Pappe) or a good thing that just wasn't done efficiently enough (Benny Morris). But, as the absolute inability to talk rationally about the right of return illustrates, Israel is very far from coming to terms with 1948. And until it does, Israel will be a "Roger Maris Democracy": a democracy that appears in the history books with a perpetual asterix after its name, reminding us that what Israel means by "democracy" is not necessarily what the rest of us understand by it.

Bi-national Alternatives

After fifteen years as the consensus solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the two state solution is no longer the only game in town. The Sharon government is working towards the one-and-half-state solution of “unilateral disengagement”, in which Israel keeps most of the occupied Palestinian land but “disengages” from the Palestinian people who are to be confined by walls and fences to isolated islands on the parts of the Territories not annexed to Israel. At the other end of the spectrum, the idea of a one state solution is gaining supporters among Palestinians and Israelis.

In the current issue of Middle East Report, Gary Sussman of Tel Aviv University explains why the two state solution is losing popularity, and the one state solution is increasingly in vogue. He identifies who is backing the one state solution (and why), and describes the possible models a united Israel/Palestine could follow: whether it be a form of bi-national state in which two distinct peoples share power in confederation (the Northern Ireland solution), or a single, secular democracy which does not institutionally distinguish between citizens on the basis of religion or race (the post-apartheid South African model).

The Challenge to the Two-State Solution is an excellent, comprehensive survey of the possibilities for the one-state solution. Read the full article online here.

Original Sin

Galilee October 1948, Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians on their way to Lebanon. Courtesy of Palestine Remembered.

Meron Benvenisti is an Israeli journalist and former politician, and is today known as a leading proponent of the one state solution/binational state. As a child in 1948, he saw the Palestinians of Lod expelled from their homes to exile in the refugee camps of Ramallah, and stood in King George Street to watch the Palestinian survivors of the Deir Yassin massacre paraded through the streets of Jerusalem by the Jewish underground. In 1967, he saw the convoys of expelled Palestinian residents from Yalu, Beit Nuba, Emmaus and Qalqilyah, and the inhabitants of the vast Jericho refugee camps - already displaced in 1948 - struggling to safety over the Allenby Bridge to Jordan.

Yesterday, he was agonised to watch the grandsons of the Israeli soldiers of 1948 force the grandchildren of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 out of their homes once more, this time in Rafah refugee camp, and wondered if this is an "original sin" at the very heart of Zionism: is every generation of Palestinians condemned to be displaced and driven away, in order to preserve the Jewish state?

Read the whole article: An old refrain that stabs at the heart. Also, the informative and moving story of his conversion from the two state solution to binationalism, published last year in Cry, The Beloved Two State Solution, part one and part two.

Palestinians carry their belongings after Israeli armored bulldozers demolished houses in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, 14 May 2004. (AFP/Said Khatib)

Binationalism by Default

"Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived of the benefits of the present Convention by any annexation of the whole or part of the occupied territory".
- The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 47

"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".
- The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49

A Jewish settler stands in the entrance of an apartment which he had purchased with other settlers in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan March 31, 2004 guarded by Israeli border policemen. A group of settlers moved into a multi-storey building and a smaller nearby house in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood, sparking clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents. (Reuters: David Furst)

Israel: Stumbling into a binational state, one illegally-annexed Arab neighborhood at a time.

The Destruction Of Israel

Israel's settlement program in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so far advanced that the moment is approaching - if it has not arrived already - when there will be no possibility of a Two State Solution. The only alternative will be a One State Solution; whether it be a binational state, an apartheid state, or an ethnically cleansed state.

Former U.S. National Security Advisors are saying it:

We will not turn the Middle East into a zone of peace instead of a zone of violence unless we more clearly identify the United States with the pursuit of peace in the Israeli/Palestinian relationship. Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated de facto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall.

Let us not kid ourselves. At stake is the destiny of a democratic country, Israel, to the security of which, the well-being of which, the United States has been committed historically for more than half a century for very good historical and moral reasons. But soon there will be no option of a two-state solution. Soon the reality of the settlements … [will] mean there will be no opportunity for a two-state solution… Indeed as some Israelis have lately pointed out, and I emphasize some Israelis have lately pointed out, increasingly the only prospect if this continues is Israel becoming increasingly like apartheid South Africa — the minority dominating the majority, locked in a conflict from which there is no extraction.

American academics are saying it:

All the while and day by day, Israeli construction crews have been crunching and grinding through the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, laying roads and erecting thousands of new housing units in well-planned communities. 'Settlement' suggests a few hilltop caravans defended by zealots, but what we have is a massive grid of towns penetrating deep into the West Bank and Gaza and now housing some 200,000 people (in addition to the 180,000 in the East Jerusalem city settlements, which no one believes will be abandoned). Tens of thousands of homes and apartments are served by schools, shopping malls, theatres and arts centres, connected by major highways, elaborate water and electricity supplies, dykes, walls, perimeter fences and surveillance systems. The grid is immovable both because of its massive infrastructure and because of the psychological investment of its residents. A decade ago, a concerted international effort might have arrested its growth. But it has now gone too far, and nothing stands in the way of its expansion.

Carved up by populous Jewish-Israeli settlements, neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip is a viable national territory. And it follows that if there can be no reversal of the settlement policy, a Palestinian state is not practicable….[T]he one-state solution, in whatever form (binational or ethnically cleansed), is now the only option.

The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State is warning of it:

The demographic picture is very stark. Within the next decade or so, Jews will be a minority in the area encompassing Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. As Israeli settlements expand and their populations increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the two peoples will be separated into two states. The fact is that settlements continue to grow today, encouraged by specific government policies -- and at enormous expense to Israel's economy. And this persists even as it becomes clear that the logic of settlements and the reality of demographics could threaten the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy.

Eminent scholars are saying it:

[I]f a two-state solution were to provide the stability and security that both peoples so desperately crave, the resulting Palestinian state would have to be just as viable as the Israeli state with whose fate it would always be so closely entwined. But continued implantation of Israeli settlers and all their supporting infrastructure into the West Bank has brought about a situation in which the establishment of a viable Palestinian state looks impossible.

Over the years, Israel has planted more than 400,000 settlers into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. All that land - like Gaza, like Syria's Golan - has the status in international law of being "occupied territory," and the 4th Geneva Convention expressly states that it is illegal for the occupying power (Israel) to transfer any of its citizens into these occupied lands…

But now, most of the 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank want to stay in the luxurious communities that hefty government subsidies have provided. Politically, it would now be almost impossible for any Israeli government to suggest that they move back to Israel - or to leave them where they are under a Palestinian ruler. But if they stay where they are, and under Israeli sovereignty, then the land left for the Palestinians can never provide the basis for a viable Palestinian state. As with the "Bantustans" created by the old apartheid regime in South Africa, the Palestinian-ruled area would be resource-starved and totally under the control of the stronger power. No recipe there for long-term stability - for white South Africans, or for Israelis.

Israel's former chief negotiator is saying it:

Ending our rule in the territories and ceasing to manage the lives of millions of Palestinians is an existential Israeli interest. In less than a decade the Palestinians will constitute the majority of the population between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In other words, unless Israel divests itself of rule in Judea-Samaria and the Gaza Strip as far as possible, though not necessarily in the form of an agreement, it will with its own hands put an end to the Jewish state and bring into a binational state into existence. The hour is ripe for this because more and more sane Israelis, from the right and the left, understand the importance of a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and the danger that threatens the very existence of such a state.

Jewish historians are discussing it:

Israeli liberals and moderate Palestinians have for two decades been thanklessly insisting that the only hope was for Israel to dismantle nearly all the settlements and return to the 1967 borders, in exchange for real Arab recognition of those frontiers and a stable, terrorist-free Palestinian state underwritten (and constrained) by Western and international agencies. This is still the conventional consensus, and it was once a just and possible solution.

But I suspect that we are already too late for that. There are too many settlements, too many Jewish settlers, and too many Palestinians, and they all live together, albeit separated by barbed wire and pass laws. Whatever the "road map" says, the real map is the one on the ground, and that, as Israelis say, reflects facts. It may be that over a quarter of a million heavily armed and subsidized Jewish settlers would leave Arab Palestine voluntarily; but no one I know believes it will happen. Many of those settlers will die—and kill— rather than move. The last Israeli politician to shoot Jews in pursuit of state policy was David Ben-Gurion, who forcibly disarmed Begin's illegal Irgun militia in 1948 and integrated it into the new Israel Defense Forces. Ariel Sharon is not Ben-Gurion.

The time has come to think the unthinkable. The two-state solution— the core of the Oslo process and the present "road map"—is probably already doomed. With every passing year we are postponing an inevitable, harder choice that only the far right and far left have so far acknowledged, each for its own reasons. The true alternative facing the Middle East in coming years will be between an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel and a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. That is indeed how the hard-liners in Sharon's cabinet see the choice; and that is why they anticipate the removal of the Arabs as the ineluctable condition for the survival of a Jewish state.

Even the Palestinian Prime Minister can publicly talk about it.

Well, no; actually he can't. Because when the Palestinian P.M. states what is obvious to everyone, i.e. that there cannot be a Two State Solution if one state has taken all the land, he is of course "making an empty threat that Israel is obviously not going to think seriously about", and trying to bring about "the destruction of Israel".

It will in fact cause such a scandal that the PA will be forced to issue a clarification, venturing to point out that P.M. Qureia is simply stating the obvious, and entering late into a discussion that is aready well advanced in Israeli society, and in academic and other interested forums worldwide.

How ridiculous that the people most affected by the swallowing up of the land that was supposed to be their state are the only ones not allowed to mention the obvious outcome. In accusing the PA of seeking "the destruction of Israel" because they dare to say the words "binational state", the Israeli government is simply using emotive codewords to prevent honest debate about a perfectly legitimate political issue. In this respect, "the destruction of Israel" serves the same purpose as throwing "self-hating Jew"/"anti-Semite" in the face of anyone who dares disagree with current Israeli government policy. Both have the same purpose of intimidating legitimate critics into silence, but both have the same drawback: once your critics catch on to the ruse, they will take you no more seriously than the boy who cried wolf. In a world where there are people who really do seek the destruction of Israel, and who really are anti-Semites, how short-sighted do you have to be to cynically misuse these terms till you empty them of any real meaning?

The Final Solution

The demographic reality of an impending Palestinian majority in Israel and the Occupied Territories is the reason for the sudden popularity of unilateral "disengagement" from the Palestinians among politicians on the Israeli Right, such as P.M. Ariel Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert. According to one current estimate, the Jewish community currently comprises about 55% of the population of Greater Israel/Mandate Palestine. By 2020, that proportion will have fallen to about 46%, and by 2050 Jews are expected to comprise little more than one-third of the population. And this is a conservative estimate of the speed with which the Palestinian majority will arise, based on the optimistic assumption that there will be an increase in prosperity and modernity among the Palestinians, leading to a lowering of their current birth rate.

Professor Amnon Sofer of Haifa University maintains, however, that even this projection overestimates the Jewish proportion of the population, as it fails to take into account the non-Jewish immigrants and foreign workers in the country. (As a result of its determination to reduce its dependence on Palestinian laborers, Israel now numbers among its residents about 250,000 foreign workers. And in its enthusiasm to boost its population in the 1990’s by promoting aliyah among Russians of Jewish descent, Israel became home to hundreds of thousands of new citizens who are not Jewish by halacha’s definition, and who are in fact practicing Russian Orthodox Christians). According to Professor Sofer, if these more complex demographic realities are taken into account, non-Jews are already in the majority, with Palestinians poised to become the absolute majority.

Even Jerusalem remains stubbornly binational, despite the fact that Israel’s demographic objective in the years since 1967 has been to achieve a uninational city with a Jewish majority of 80-90%, by encouraging Jewish immigration and squeezing out Palestinian residents. In fact, as Moshe Amirav, director of the Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya College pointed out in a Jerusalem Post op-ed of 16 December 2003 (JPost available by registration only; but article reproduced here), the combined Palestinian and Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jewish) populations already give the city a non-Zionist majority which, by 2025, will have shifted to become an absolute Palestinian majority. In Amirav’s words, Israel’s options come down to this: If we don’t divide Jerusalem, we are going to lose it.

So, how to deal with what Prof. Sofer refers to as the approaching demographic whirlwind? Well, there is one obvious answer: Israel wants separation from the Palestinians? It's so simple - it should evacuate the settlements. Unfortunately, that piece of clarity comes not from an Israeli politician, but from Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Rather than going for the obvious answer of a no-strings withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israelis have been coming up with a variety of other interesting suggestions instead, aimed at preserving a Jewish state in the face of the disappearing Jewish majority.

1. One possibility is to prevent assimilation of Jews by banning non-Jewish residents of Israel from having sex with the locals. Really, I’m not making this up.

2. Alternatively, you can build walls. Not just the infamous one inside the West Bank, but also inside Israel proper between Jewish Israelis and their Muslim fellow citizens. Like, for example, the earthwork being built between the Israeli-Arab town of Jisr al-Zarqa and its Jewish neighbours in Caesarea, who [e]very time they looked up … would see an Arab first thing in the morning. Now they don't see anything any more, except for the new hill, about one kilometer long and about 12 meters high. Or the separation wall going up in Lod between the poor Arab neighborhood of Pardess Snir and the well-to-do Jewish community of Nir Zvi, whose residents say right out that they don't even want eye contact with [Arabs].

3. If, behind their walls, your Arab neighbours still insist on threatening you by reproducing, you can always hit them with racially-targeted birth control. At this year’s Herzliya security conference, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, a senior researcher at the Israeli government's Armaments Development Authority, called for Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population." In case his meaning wasn't clear, Ravid added: "the delivery rooms in Soroka Hospital in Be'ersheba have turned into a factory for the production of a backward population." Never mind the fact that, as Ali Abunimah pointed out, Ravid's comments almost certainly violated the 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, whose definition of genocide includes "imposing measures intended to prevent births" within a specific "national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Not only is committing such acts considered genocide under international law, so too is "direct and public incitement to commit genocide."

4. If all else fails, you can of course fall back on “massive ethnic cleansing”, as recommended by Israeli MK Uzi Cohen (Likud) in an interview with Israeli public radio on 4 January 2004. Mr Cohen suggested that the Palestinians be removed to northern Jordan; he recommended that they should be given 20 years to leave voluntarily…[but] … In case they don’t leave, plans would have to be drawn up to expel them by force. It is chilling to read, and yet sadly appropriate, that Cohen characterizes his proposal as a “final solution” .

The entertainer Tom Lehrer was once asked why he had stopped writing and performing his songs of biting social satire. He answered that he decided to stop on the day that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because at that moment real life became funnier than satire. Personally, my “Kissinger moment” arrives when an influential politician of Israel’s ruling party starts talking about a “final solution” to allow the Jewish state to get rid of undesirables of another race. I have always advocated a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, but if these are the lengths that either Israelis or Palestinians would go to in order to safeguard the racial identity of an ethnically-based homeland, then I am happy to kiss the two-state solution goodbye. If race-based nationalism only leads back to the 1930’s, maybe it is time for Israeli and Palestinian Jews, Muslims and Christians alike to bite the bullet and join the 21st century in one democratic, secular and multinational state.

Sari Nusseibeh's Comet

As you can see from the sidebar, I am putting together online biographies for some leading Palestinian personalities, as there seems to be a dearth of such information on the Web. It’s a slow process: this morning, I completed my third biography, and at this rate I should be finished shortly before our sun turns supernova. This morning's addition was Sari Nusseibeh, co-author of the Ayalon-Nusseibeh People’s Voice peace initiative.

I enjoy biographies: apart from the fact that people are inherently interesting, it is also fascinating to see how researching the life of one person who has lived through historic events can be a more manageable way of understanding that history than looking at the broad sweep of things. For example, Nusseibeh was born in Jerusalem in 1949, and grew up just a few blocks from the Green Line. You cannot help but notice how the experience of growing up in divided and later occupied Jerusalem manifests itself in his political initiatives. He remembers as a child walking down the street to the Green Line, stopping at the gate leading to West Jerusalem through which he could not pass, and wondering what it would be like to pass through the gate like Alice in Wonderland into another world. It is no coincidence that when he grows up and articulates how the two state solution might work, he has a vision of porous, permeable borders, and Jerusalem as an open city, where nobody has to stop at the gate and wonder about the strangers who live on the other side.

Similarly, he remembers the 1967 War and the beginning of the Israeli occupation with mixed feelings: sadness, that Arab East Jerusalem is under foreign military occupation, but also relief that the city which has been home to the Nusseibeh’s in a unbroken line for at least thirteen centuries is again whole, even if Israelis and Palestinians have yet to find a way to share the city as equals. I am sure that from this experience of reunification comes his early and persistent interest in the possibility of making peace through the establishment of a single, binational state in which Israelis and Palestinians alike enjoy full citizenship.

As early as 1987, Nusseibeh courted controversy by suggesting that Israel should annex the Palestinian Territories, reunify Mandate Palestine as a single state, and grant citizenship to all its residents. In an interview with Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz – which bears quoting at length - Nusseibeh revisited his 1987 suggestion, and commented on whether he still felt the same way:

When I was looking at processes that were taking place in the West Bank and Gaza during the first twenty years of occupation, I saw a process of integration into Israeli society, which was contrary to the stated aims of the Palestinian strategy that called for disintegration. I believed that this schizophrenic situation cannot continue for a long time. In order to bridge the gap, there was a need to change one of the two components: either to disconnect from the Israeli system – something that has already happened in the intifada - or to change the declared strategy, and to make an effort to integrate into the Israeli system, consciously. I think that is still applicable. In other words, I believe that if the strategy of disintegration will fail, then maybe the Palestinians will change direction and say: We couldn’t do it, therefore let us make the best out of integrating into the Israeli system.” He was asked whether that would inevitably lead to a binational state. “By definition”, Sari replied, “if we don’t reach agreement on a two-state partition in five to six years, then what happens in fact – no matter what you call it – is a nondemocratic binational state.”

… And, he warns, the psychological clock is ticking. “The entire populace is becoming radicalized as a result of the continued Israeli occupation”, he explains. “The symptom of this [shift] is that more and more people are turning to Muslim fundamentalism. One shouldn’t overestimate its importance” he cautions, but one should draw the appropriate conclusion.

The message is that while an independent Palestinian state is still attractive to most Palestinians, both inside and outside the territories, it may not be for very much longer. “Today you could sell this to the people, not that they would fall in love with the idea,” says Sari. He cautions: “The national psychological readiness for a two-state solution is not a permanent fixture of the Palestinian psychology. It’s in the Palestinian heart now, but it can quickly fade if there is no response to this feeling of opening up. It’s like a star or a comet that comes close by and then goes away. One has to catch it when it is close to your quarters.”

Now, Nusseibeh is not saying anything new here about the window that is closing on the two-state solution; indeed it is the widespread realisation that the chance for the two-state solution is passing that has led to the current flurry of articles about the possibilities (or dangers, depending on your viewpoint) of the binational state. What is interesting is that this Ha'aretz interview is not a product of the current debate, but was in fact published in the fall of 1989, at the height of the first intifada. This highlights not only how prescient was Nusseibeh's thinking, but also how, no matter how many people are killed, or settlements built or speeches given, the underlying issue always remains the same: how will Palestinians and Israelis live together, in one state or in two?

As a Fateh activist and political organizer during the first intifada, Nusseibeh is well qualified to describe the motivation behind that uprising, and he describes it in terms of a choice between the one-state or two-state path. The Palestinian experience of the Occupation was one of being torn between, on the one hand, ever-increasing immersion in Israeli society (with the implicit hope that this would lead to equality in a single state), and on the other the nationalistic hope of independence in a separate Palestine. It was the frustration of living twenty years in the limbo of occupation, with no positive move toward either outcome, that was the spark for the first intifada.

Instead of waiting to for Israel to decide upon one state or two, Palestinians made their own decision in 1987, and it was a decisive no to a binational state. The first intifada was a cutting of the strings that tied Palestinians into Israeli society, breaking the economic links (through strikes and boycotts), and the political links, by building grassroots political structures to run their own lives and lay the foundation of their own state. Most importantly, for Nusseibeh, occupied Palestinians did this without waiting for the approval of the external PLO or, above all, the permission of the Israelis. In this respect, the 1987–93 intifada was a no to occupation, and a yes to independence in a two-state setting. It was the Oslo agreement, with its promise of an end to occupation and a Palestinian state based on the Occupied Territories, that ended the first intifada.

In practice of course, Oslo did not bring an end to occupation, at least not of the land. While the inhabitants of the main Palestinian urban centers were granted autonomy, the Israeli grip on the land itself intensified, leaving Palestinians confined to isolated, self-governing islands in an Israeli sea. From a Palestinian perspective, it was the realization that Oslo was leading them to a self-governing Indian reservation that sparked the second (al-Aqsa) intifada.

For all the disillusionment with Oslo, the al-Aqsa intifada is, like its predecessor, an intifada for a two-state solution. These days, Nusseibeh himself does not advocate the unification of historic Palestine but, through his People’s Voice initiative, campaigns for two states on the basis of the 1967 borders. It is ironic that he is a vocal champion of the two-state solution today, when it is apparent that we are reaching the point at which the comet that came close to us is now moving away, and there is a growing movement towards the views that he so controversially expressed in 1987.

The second intifada will certainly be the last Palestinian uprising for a state alongside Israel. If there is a third, it will be the intifada for civil rights, and Israelis will be wishing they had bitten the bullet and made the “land or peace” decision that has been crying out for an answer since 1967. By the time Palestinians are asking not for independence but for “one person, one vote”, Israel as a Jewish state will be facing limited choices, and none of them very appealing.

Goodbye Two States, Hello One?

Well, nobody's taking the actual provisions of the Road Map very seriously, but the possible repercussions of its apparently imminent failure are stirring up some profound currents on both sides of the Green Line. The Palestinians have gone in for a feeding frenzy of a leadership struggle, while on the Israeli side there is a realisation that, whatever the fate of the Road Map, a solution still has to be found to Israel's demographic crisis, and quickly. Maybe the distasteful spectacle of the Knesset passing a race-based marriage law is helping to focus Israeli minds on what kind of ugliness it will take to keep Israel a "Jewish democracy" when the majority under Israeli rule is no longer Jewish, but Palestinian.

One response has been renewed discussion of the usually-unmentionable-in-Israeli-society One-State Solution. Ha'aretz has an interview - Cry, the Beloved Two-State Solution [ part one, part two ] - with veteran Israeli leftists Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi, who have independently come to the conclusion that there is no longer any prospect of ending the conflict by means of a two-state solution...The time has come to establish one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: a binational state. There's something poignant about two Israeli elder statesmen discussing the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state, but something even more profound and hopeful in knowing that they reached their conclusions not because they are passively resigned to the demographic trend, but because they understand that the land was always home to the Palestinians too, and positively welcome what the indigenous people have to offer. "Without the Arabs, this is a barren land", in Benvenisti's words.

Professor Dror Wahrman broaches the possibility of a bi-national state too in his letter to The Grauniad Two Nations, One State? He is more resigned than enthusiatic about the prospect, but recognises that the effective annexation of the best land on the West Bank by the settlement program might just have made untenable the establishment of a Palestinian state on what remains. He concludes with a big, fat, sarcastic "Well Done!" to the wide-eyed Messianics who, in their zeal to grab all of Greater Israel in the name of their God, might just have succeeded in finally ending the experiment to create a Jewish homeland.

Personally, I can see the appeal of a secular, democratic, binational state. There is something about the idea of my tax dollars going to fund racially-segregated settlement housing and "Jewish only" bypass roads that stops me dead in my tracks and gives me one of those, "Eh? WTF?" moments. Subsidies for segregation from a country where housing discrimination is illegal.......hmmm. For me, however, the big drawback to the One State Solution is that it is a wonderful final destination, with no apparent route to it from where we are now. I see no possibility whatsoever that the majority of Israelis today would voluntarily relinquish the idea of a Jewish state as a safe haven for the Jewish people: I think we are still too close in time to the shadow of the Holocaust for that.

Maybe one day, a hundred years from now, four or five generations of Israelis and Palestinians will have lived in their two states side-by-side. And, maybe, they will have started to move on from the bitterness of their founding to the practical issues facing small nations and small economies in a world of multinational corporations and global markets. In those circumstances, I can see Israelis and Palestinians (and perhaps even Jordanians) coming together in an economic union, leading to political cooperation and even confederation. But in the real world of 2003, with small but vocal lunatic fringes in both societies seemingly unable to accept that the other side even has a right to live, never mind live together in a single state, the binational solution is an unaffordable luxury. The emphasis of all those who seek peace should be on what is practical in the current situation and that, for all its difficulties, is the Two-State Solution.

As Uri Avnery sums it up, in similarly giving a thumbs-down to The Bi-national State: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb" prophesied Isaiah (11:6). This is possible in our times too -- provided you bring a new lamb every day.