One State: Threat
Or
Promise Of Peace?
By Hasan Abu-Nimah
The
Electronic Intifada
23 October 2003
In
a recent visit to Luxembourg, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher
voiced his grave concern over the fading promise of a Palestinian-Israeli
settlement, based on two-state solution. What he said sounds more like
a recognition of a harsh reality than what may otherwise be viewed as
a warning to avoid the worst.
Warnings of this
kind were heard before, from prominent Arabs, Israelis and others. They
were hardly heeded, or even taken seriously. Most of us assumed that
such warnings were no more than good efforts to expose the dangers of
Israeli procrastination, with the positive intent of urging parties
to work harder for peace. This must also have been Muasher's motive,
as he did indeed concluded his admonition by stressing that "it
is becoming very imperative on all of us to renew our efforts in order
to put the roadmap back on track and in order to effect a two-state
solution, because the alternatives are very dire, very serious for all
of us".
The significance
of the minister's statement, though, lies mainly in what preceded his
concluding advice. He said that Israel's settlement policy and building
of the wall "which would basically carve up the West Bank into
a number of small entities would render a two-state solution impossible".
Here he is absolutely right. He further elaborated by listing the "very
serious and dire alternatives" in case this very dangerous development
of bypassing the two-state solution is allowed to happen.
He said that if
the "security wall" is completed, the Palestinians will either
ask to become equal citizens in Israel, which Israel will certainly
and strongly reject, or will have to remain under Israeli occupation
"and that situation is also unsustainable, nor would it lead to
any security in the region". Again, this is perfectly correct.
By asking to become
equal citizens in the state that already exists, Israel, the Palestinians
would have abandoned their aspiration for their own state, programmed
by President George Bush and the Quartet roadmap for production, albeit
with no approved specifications, in 2005. This clearly means one state
instead of two; one state for both the Israelis and the Palestinians,
which transforms the status of the Palestinians from occupied subjects
to citizens, and transforms Israel from an oppressive, racist, occupying
regime into a possible democracy.
While this notion
is seen by some as a threat, others view it as a promise. By continuing
to create illegal facts on the ground, to render Palestinians territorial
independence impossible, Israel is enforcing the one state option by
making it the last and only option, and indeed more of a de facto promise.
This, however, is
not new. The PLO has maintained for decades a political platform which
called for a "secular democratic state in Palestine" for both
Arabs and Jews, as the final settlement of the conflict. Its acceptance,
in the eighties, of the two-state option was meant to be a great concession
to Israel. It was the first signal of Palestinian recognition of the
Jewish state, as it was the first indication that the PLO was willing
to share, rather than claim, the entire historic land of Palestine.
But Israel always managed to undo the value of such gestures by considering
them as accrued gains, rather than opportunities for reciprocation and
confidence building.
Exactly a year ago,
the UN envoy in the region, Terje Roed Larsen, wrote in Haaretz, expressing
his grave concern over the dangers facing the two-state solution. Amongst
many other factors, Larsen stressed two: the Israeli settlements, and
the Israeli destruction of the Palestinian National Authority. The apartheid
wall was not an issue at the time.
At about the same
time (Oct. 25, 2002), a report by Marc Berelman appeared in The Forward.
It revealed significant details of a PNA letter, which was handed to
top American officials, expressing concern at the escalation of Israeli
settlement activity, describing it as a grave reality forcing the authority
to reconsider the two-state option. The ten-page letter, accompanied
by five detailed maps of Israeli settlement expansion, had been delivered
on Oct. 7, 2002 to Secretary of State Colin Powell and his aide David
Satterfield by PNA minister Salem Fayyad.
The same package
was received the day after by Condoleezza Rice who, according to the
report, was surprised. The report further reveals that Ahmad Qureia,
the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at the time, sent, a week
later, a similar message to the White House, reaffirming the same fears
and warning that "Israel's ultimate goal is to permit a Palestinian
'state' which would be in effect the equivalent of a Native American
Indian reservation".
One year later,
the situation has only gravely worsened. Israel continues to build settlements
and, by building the apartheid wall, it continued to further complicate
an already complex situation. During the same period, the PNA position
was also badly weakened. Washington's decision to shun and call for
the overthrow of the democratically elected president, Arafat, who had
been put by Israel under virtual office arrest, left the PNA in no position
to pursue the one state path, even if just to expose the Israeli detrimental
measures, to gain Washington's sympathy. Any such sympathy now requires
more appeasement of Washington and, for that matter, of Israel, and
the path towards that goal runs directly in a direction opposite to
any "disturbing" reference to the one-state option.
Ironically, and
despite the widely recognised reality that the real obstacles in the
way of Israeli's best long-term interest (the creation of an independent
Palestinian state) are the facts which Israel has been steadily creating
on the ground -- mainly the occupation, the settlements, the by-pass
roads, the security zones and recently the wall -- Israel will never
volunteer to reverse these facts on its own. The unique US-guaranteed
and protected exemption of Israel from the requirements of the rule
of international law, the absence of any likelihood that this will change
in the foreseeable future, accompanied by lack of any real local or
regional challenges to the Israeli lawlessness (except for the Intifada)
will keep Israel's hand free to do much worse.
Where does that
leave the region?
Any remaining validity
of the two-state option depends largely on the fulfilment of an essential
prerequisite: Israel should end its occupation and withdraw its forces
and settlers right to the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem
included. This certainly is not an option, not only due to the Israeli
usual intransigence, but also, and painfully, because in most of the
unfulfilled agreements and the unofficial understandings reached between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, the latter agreed to allow most of
the Jewish settlements to remain in place and accepted weird territorial
arrangements, including in Jerusalem. This is doubly harmful. On the
one hand, it encourages Israeli greed by providing Israel with precious
justification for its illegal settlement policy; and on the other, it
directly undermines a contiguous Palestinian state.
Maintaining the
occupation is not a viable option either. That will cost Israel its
"democracy" and transform it into an apartheid regime instead,
but with a perpetual condition of no peace and no security. It would
be very strange if Israel settled for that.
From an Israeli
point of view, ethnic cleansing would probably be the ideal solution
to its multiple dilemma. Israel started this process since its early
days, with the expulsion from their land, by horrifying means, of over
half of the entire population of Palestine (1,380,000) in 1947/1948.
A determined and pre-planned policy of cleansing the land of its indigenous
population has been constantly maintained in various forms along successive
decades of occupation, including the systematic destruction of the Palestinian
infrastructure and houses, confiscation of land and resources, bulldozing
of trees and farms, and crippling limitation of opportunities to live,
work and get education.
Sharon would not
be restrained by any moral, humanitarian or legal considerations from
committing the worst atrocities, should that lead to the mass exodus
of the Palestinians in any direction.
This is not an option
either. It is true that Israel, not only Sharon, has all the malicious
intentions, but not the practical means to force mass deportation of
Palestinians. Israel had anticipated that the less than the three quarters
of a million Palestinians who stayed behind in Israel, the West Bank
and Gaza in 1948 would disappear. They have quadrupled in numbers, instead.
Their attachment to their land, their determined resolve to remain,
will not be broken by any such Israeli attempt to uproot them. Individual
cases of occasional departures, which continue to take place, will not
have any significant effect.
It is fairly right
to assume that Israel would oppose the one-state option at any cost,
because it would mean the end of the Jewish character of the state;
the PNA would oppose it because it would end its monopoly on power;
and the US would oppose it because Israel does. Why, then, should it
be an option?
The imperatives
of history, along with the dynamics of a finally accepted formula of
one land for two people, will offer the two peoples the choice of perpetual
war or democratic and peaceful coexistence. Who would opt for a state
of perpetual war?
The writer is former ambassador of Jordan to the UN. This article first
appeared in The Jordan Times.