The end of the two-state solution

[geek tragedy]

The calculation is fairly simple. Close to 400,000 settlers live in the West Bank (not counting the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that are over the Green Line), and the numbers are only increasing. Even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were to reach a peace agreement tomorrow, Israel would have to transfer roughly 95 percent of West Bank land to Palestinian sovereignty. This means that the settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty — meaning about two-thirds of the Jewish population. In other words, Israel would have to evacuate roughly 130,000 Jews from the West Bank for the sake of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Is there anyone who believes that such a thing is possible? During the disengagement, the Israeli army managed to evacuate the settlers from Gaza in just a few days. But there were fewer than 10,000 settlers then, and the army looked different as well. Does anyone seriously think that the army in its present form — an army that has undergone such significant social transformations over the past two decades, whose best officers are members of the religious Zionist movement and live in the settlements — can carry out a task of that nature? The idea seems so unrealistic as to be ludicrous.

So perhaps the time has come to say it out loud. To the Israeli right wing: You have won. No Palestinian state will exist here beside the State of Israel.

And perhaps the time has also come to tell the members of the left wing: You have lost. You need to find a new agenda.

Incidentally, the Palestinian people already realizes it. It has mostly resigned itself to the situation, at least for the next few years. The prevailing attitude among Palestinians is one of support for the two-state solution, but with an understanding that the idea is unrealistic, and because of that, they must make accept the current reality until Israel becomes a binational state.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-end-of-the-two-state-solution/

Long story short, Zionism self-destructed.

[geek tragedy]

1. more

I visited Ramallah that same morning as part of another day’s work, meeting there with several leaders of Hamas in the West Bank. They made no radical declarations against the State of Israel, not the kind that called for a war or an Intifada. Instead, they said the opposite, emphasizing the need to reach a long-term cease-fire agreement with Hamas in Gaza. It seems that they too realize that victory is already in their pocket. The two-state solution has been shelved, and the status quo is now the new solution.

The Israeli policy in which the right wing takes such great pride — not resolving the conflict, but managing it — is a strategy that Hamas believes will lead to its victory. With no separation, with rapid demographic change, the Arabs will become a majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And the State of Israel as we once knew it will start to look different, beginning its inexorable slide toward eventually becoming a Muslim state.

This is where things will go eventually. An end to violence, greater economic integration, and the eventual dissolution of the Zionist state, to be replaced by a binationalist state equally recognizing Islam and Judaism as fully coequal sources of law and culture.

[BillZBubb]

2. I don't see that happening.

Yes, a realistic two state solution has been made a pipe dream by the Israeli strategy of delaying serious negotiations, inciting the Palestinians to violence, and using any excuse to expand the land theft (settlements).

But if anyone thinks the Israelis will allow the Palestinians to come even close to political parity with them in a combined state, they are as loony as those that think the settlements will ever be dismantled.

[geek tragedy]

3. Not right away, but Zionist Israel would go the way of Afrikaaners South Africa

sanctions, isolation, etc.

[Little Tich]

4. I don't support the one-state solution, but it seems like the only viable option.

And if it's the only viable option, Israel is in for a rough ride until the one-state solution happens.

[geek tragedy]

5. it may be smoother than they expect.

The Palestinians can say "okay, let's drop all this silly state talk and focus on economics and housing and transportation."

And tell their people, okay, we win by having kids and having them get old enough to vote.

The Israelis can only sit back and watch Zionism die a slow death, this time for good.

They've destroyed the state of Israel for their grandchildren's grandchildren, and a lot of them just don't know it yet.