One State,
Two People
By Ali Abunimah
The
Electronic Intifada
17 October 2003
Peace
in Palestine through territorial partition is a doomed fantasy and the
time has come to discard it. While it may once have worked on paper,
in practice the Israeli state has succeeded, through the relentless
colonization of the Occupied Territories and lately its grotesque separation
barrier, in its long-standing goal of rendering any workable partition
impossible.
While Israel was
conceived as a state for Jews, Edward Said explained in 1999, the "effort
to separate (Israelis and Palestinians) has occurred simultaneously
and paradoxically with the effort to take more and more land, which
has in turn meant that Israel has acquired more and more Palestinians."
The result is that Israel can in the long run only remain a "Jewish
state" through apartheid or, as some Israeli Cabinet ministers
demand, ethnic cleansing.
Armed Palestinian
resistance has rendered the colonization effort extremely costly to
Israel, but has been unable to stop or reverse it. The "road map"
was the final test of whether a two-state solution could be realized
through peaceful means. The refusal of the US to exert any pressure
on Israel, despite an unprecedented 51-day cease-fire by all Palestinian
factions, leaves no doubt that a US administration, no matter how determined
its rhetoric, cannot in good faith work toward such a solution. There
is no other coalition of countries that is ready, willing and able to
act as a counterweight to the US.
Recognizing years
ago the implications of the intertwined population and complex geography
that Israeli colonization has created, Said wrote that "the question
is not how to devise means for persisting in trying to separate,"
Israelis and Palestinians, "but to see whether it is possible for
them to live together as fairly and peacefully as possible." Said
believed that the way to achieve this is in a single state.
While Said's logic
and vision were irresistible, the strongest counterargument was the
pragmatic one: that something like peace could be most quickly achieved
through ending the occupation and establishing a state for Palestinians
in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, an international
consensus and framework of international law contemplating this outcome
had been painstakingly built over three decades. To discard it, many
Palestinians feared, would have been to take a leap into the unknown.
But it is inescapable
now that what already exists is in effect one state: Israel, in which
half the population -- the Palestinians -- have second-class rights
or no rights at all, not even citizenship.
The insistence on
partition, not on one state, is increasingly a delusional deviation
from this reality. I want to be clear that my belief that the two-state
solution is unachievable derives not from an analysis that the status
quo of settlement and occupation is irreversible, since anything built
by humans can conceivably be dismantled by them, but that the political
dynamic that has created the present situation is irreversible within
the current framework.
The only way to
rob the Israeli colonization project of its raison d'etre is not to
continue to throw ourselves into the path of a superior force, or to
continue to plead with the United States, but to render the motive of
territorial conquest irrelevant. In one state, all people will be able
to live wherever they want, provided they obtain their homes legally
on the same basis as everyone else, not through force and land theft.
In other words, we have to break the link between sovereignty, ethnicity
and geography within Palestine.
It is the moment,
therefore, for us to declare the era of partition over and commit to
a moral, just and realisable vision in which Israelis and Palestinians
build a future as partners in a single state which guarantees freedom,
equality and cultural self-determination to all its citizens. Refusing
to make this choice now means effectively agreeing to the endless bloodshed
and extremism offered by Israel's political-military establishment and
Hamas.
The path to one
state contains obstacles, the greatest being Jewish Israelis' desire
to maintain the power and privileges they enjoy today. But whatever
resources they possess, ideological opponents of one state will suffer
from an insurmountable weakness: They will be arguing against the most
basic and deep-rooted principles of democracy -- "one person, one
vote" and equality before the law.
It will take enormous
efforts to convince a majority of Israelis that the security and legitimacy
they will never achieve through conquest and repression can be achieved
by merging their political future with that of the Palestinians. I am
convinced, however, that for most Israelis, resistance to this concept
will not stem from an ideological commitment to a status quo in which
they are privileged and others oppressed, but will arise from simple
fear of discarding today's certainties, no matter how dismal. To get
them to do so, they must be presented with a convincing alternative.
Even without such a campaign, several prominent Israelis have recently
declared their support for one state. This is a hopeful development.
We should be under
no illusion that seeking a one-state solution is a short-cut to peace.
On the contrary, we need to prepare for years of sustained political
struggle. But at least this path offers an alternative to violence combined
with the prospect that real peace can be achieved. Persisting along
the present path offers hope of neither.
Although the goal
of a single, democratic and secular state was long the central platform
of the Palestinian national movement, until it was abandoned in the
late 1980s, Palestinian leaders made no serious effort to convince Israelis,
or for that matter ordinary Palestinians, that they were not simply
proposing to replace Israeli with Palestinian domination.
The burden to persuade
Israelis lies largely with Palestinians, who while demanding equal rights
and an end to the Jewish Israeli monopoly on power, must hold out a
future in which the two communities express their identities as equals
rooted by right and history in the same land.
This is undoubtedly
an unfair burden, but it is a fact that oppressed groups must often
show their oppressors a way out of the tunnel they have dug. This was
true in South Africa, where even in the darkest days of apartheid, the
African National Congress under Nelson Mandela offered white South Africans
a future of reconciliation, not revenge. As in South Africa, a truth
and reconciliation process can help both peoples overcome the pain of
the past even as they build a just future together.
Israeli and Palestinian
supporters of a one-state solution must build a new movement. This partnership
must work to translate the vast international sympathy for the Palestinian
cause into active support for the transformation -- with international
assistance and guarantees -- of Israel and the Occupied Territories
into a democracy for all its inhabitants. It must be a movement that
builds political and moral power through non-violent resistance and
civil disobedience, and mobilizes the widest possible base. Only through
such a movement, I am convinced, shall we create peace in our lifetimes.
Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. This article
first appeared in the Daily Star on 16 October 2003