http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10686.shtml">by Ali Abunimah
The constant focus on process and gimmicks -- like trying to get Arab states to normalize ties with Israel -- has obscured the reality that Obama's stated goal -- a workable two-state solution -- is almost certainly unachievable. The idea of separating Palestinians and Israelis into distinct ethno-national entities has become an article of faith within peace process circles, but rarely are its supporters asked to justify why a "solution" that has eluded them for decades has any merit.
Today, as a result of natural growth, Palestinians form half of the population living in historic Palestine despite decades of expulsion and exile. Within a few years they will once again be the majority. A two-state solution as currently envisaged would leave Palestinians with a state on no more than a fifth of the land, with less of the water and no real sovereignty. Even if Palestinian refugees agreed to return to such a state, there would be no room for them.
Nor would repartition actually separate the populations: no one involved in the "peace process" is talking about removing all, or even most of the half million Israeli settlers implanted illegally in the West Bank -- especially around Jerusalem -- since 1967. There is talk of compensating Palestinians for the land taken by settlers with "equivalent" land elsewhere. But whoever can find land that can "compensate" Palestinians for Jerusalem, would be just as likely to find land that could "compensate" the British for London or the French for Paris.
As for the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a two-state solution would only make their situation worse. Already treated as second-class citizens, they face escalating racist campaigns and a raft of legislation proposing to ban them from commemorating Israel's near-destruction of Palestine in 1948, forcing them to take loyalty oaths, or even to sing the explicitly Jewish Israeli national anthem. If Israel remains an unreformed ultra-nationalist "Jewish state," its Palestinian citizens are more likely to face apartheid conditions at best or ethnic cleansing at worst, than be allowed to live as equal citizens in the land of their birth. Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman represents the growing number of Israeli Jews who think a Jewish state should be cleansed of non-Jews.
This is why an increasing number of Palestinians, conflict resolution experts, and a small but growing number of Israelis are giving serious attention to the idea of a one-state, or bi-national solution for Palestine/Israel. This would dismantle the current system of Israeli ethno-religious domination and institute a democratic system guaranteeing the civic, political, religious and cultural rights of all citizens and communities.
Although peace process insiders constantly dismiss these ideas as far-fetched, utopian or naive, they continue to gain adherents. After all, similar, but even deeper-rooted conflicts between settler-colonial and indigenous communities were resolved peacefully along such democratic principles in Northern Ireland and South Africa.
As George Mitchell surely knows from his experience in Northern Ireland, when two national communities lay claim to the same land and one dominates the other by force, partition only changes the contours of the conflict. It was by dismantling the "Protestant state for a Protestant people" in the north of Ireland and replacing it with a bi-national democracy, increasingly integrated with the rest of the island, that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended a conflict long thought to be insoluble.
Neither South Africa nor Northern Ireland offer exact analogies or ready-made blueprints for Palestine/Israel. But to continue to pretend that these working bi-national and one-state models have nothing to teach is to condemn Palestinians and Israelis to decades more of conflict, as diplomats chase mirages and Israel pursues its colonial policies unchecked.