This morning I dropped by the Woodrow Wilson Center, a serious think-tank here in Washington DC that’s headed by the near-iconic Lee Hamilton. They had a panel discussion that had been convened to help a man called Hussein Ibish launch a book he has just published, titled What’s Wrong with the One-state Agenda?
Now, as longtime JWN readers know, I’m personally agnostic on whether Palestinians and Israelis should aim at a one-state or two-state outcome to their lengthy and very damaging conflict. But I do think that anyone who discusses this topic– or, come to that, any other topic, either– has a duty to be fair-minded, and in particular not to mis-characterize the arguments of his/her opponents.
Sadly, that was just what Ibish was doing this morning. He stated so many things that were untrue about the position of one-state supporters! Here is a partial list of these untruths:
1. That “The one-state idea emerged in some Palestinian circles at the time of the Second Intifada”.
- No. The idea is much, much older in Palestinian politics than that. Indeed, the stated national goal of Fateh and the PLO from 1968 through 1974 was the establishment of a single and secular democratic state (SDS) in the whole area of Mandate Palestine. In 1974, the PLO moved toward reframing its goal as being the creation of a “national authority” in the West Bank and Gaza; but it didn’t jettison the idea of an eventual SDS until 1996. And even after 1996, attachment to the idea of an eventual SDS remained among many secular Palestinian nationalists, inside and outside the historic homeland. Among Islamist Palestinians, there is probably even greater attachment to the idea of a one-state outcome than there is among secular nationalists; but their version of the desired single state is, of course, an Islamist one.
2. “The one-state idea rejects Israelis.”
- Again, no. First of all, we should recall that the original authors of a one-state formula in modern times were brilliant Jewish members of the yishuv in Palestine like Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, both of them pioneers in the effort to establish a Hebrew-language university in Jerusalem. Their concept was for a binational unitary state in the whole of Mandate Palestine. My understanding of the position of the secular one-staters today is that they support essentially that same vision. Back in the 1960s, inside the PLO there were lots of discussions over which of Israel’s Jewish citizens should be “allowed” to remain in the SDS, once established– would it be those who were in Palestine before 1948, or only those there before “the start of the Zionist invasion” (roughly 1917), or which? Now, you don’t hear those very exclusionary discussions among one-state proponents. What you do hear is the idea that the single state they aspire to should no longer be one that privileges Jews over non-Jews– in immigration/naturalization policies, access to land and other national resources, or any other area of public life.
3. “The one-state idea is very confrontational against anything and everything Israeli.”
- This is not true, either. Go look, for example, at the biographies of the people who took part in the most recent big conference on the one-state idea, that was held in the Boston area back in March. Many of them are Israelis– both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis.
I have particular respect for Jewish citizens of Israel who are prepared to stand up and reject and oppose the highly discriminatory form of ethnonationalism that their country embodies to this day, as it has since 1948. They are important voices of conscience, on a par with those White South Africans who in the dark days of Apartheid spoke up against the discrimination on which their state was built (and of which they were, as they clearly understood, the unwilling beneficiaries.) But the Palestinian citizens of Israel who speak up for a one-state outcome are equally important. Ibish seemed to forget about their existence completely in his speech. Many of them, including significant intellectual figures like Asaad Ghanem or Nadim Rouhanna, see the one-state formula as meeting their community’s needs much, much more effectively than a two-state formula ever could.
4. “The one-state rhetoric exists on college campuses in the US, the UK, and Europe. But it is not connected to real politics in the US– or indeed, even in Palestine.”
- The implication here is that it’s just a fringe phenomenon, with no real resonance. (Well, if that’s the case, then Ibish is going to have a hard time trying to sell a book that deals with this topic– so he was doing a tight juggling act there: trying to tell this largely inside-Washington audience that the one-state phenomenon was important enough to care about, but still demeaning it as only a “fringe” view.)
But the fact is, as a political idea within the Palestinian community this idea is neither a “new” one, as noted above, nor a fringe one. Many Palestinians look at it with great realism, understanding that it won’t be easy to achieve it– but also, judging that there is little remaining hope left, now, for the establishment of a viable two-state outcome, and that therefore the other major item that has long been on their menu of possible political goals needs looking at once again…
Well, in sum, Ibish seemed to be carefully assembling and erecting a straw man of how he wanted to portray the one-state idea to this audience, so that then he could rip it down. It was not a seemly performance.
These are matters of deadly, even existential, import for Palestinians everywhere. So I think the least that should be required of anyone trying to have a serious impact within this discussion is the basic sense of fairness of not wilfully mis-characterizing either the arguments or the standing of her or his opponents.
Ibish is a Lebanese-American who gained serious credentials as a Palestinian-rights activist through the good work he did with Electronic Intifada.* But for quite some time now he’s been working with the (Very) American Task Force on Palestine, an organization that just– by a hair– manages not to be a complete sock puppet for the US State Department. For example, both Ibish and VATFP president Ziad Asali, who spoke in the comments section at today’s event, stressed that there needs to be a complete freeze on Israeli settlement building if the plan to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel is to succeed.
And that differs from the State Department position, how? Um, actually, I’m not entirely sure… because of course, the folks in the State Department do also say the same thing from time to time. But they don’t want to take the next step of imposing actual costs on Israel for its continued defiance of this request…
And no, neither do Ibish and the VATFP, it seems. Well anyway, Ibish was openly derisive this morning about the growing worldwide movement to impose some combination of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
… The Crisis Group’s Rob Malley was also on the panel. His contribution was much more instructive. Later…
* Update Fri a.m.: Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada sent the following clarification: “While it is true that Hussein and I often wrote articles together in our personal capacities during the second Intifada, Hussein never worked for the Electronic Intifada, and never contributed any articles to EI. EI did on a few occasions republish articles he and I had co-authored for other publications. But we do that with many people. I just wanted to clarify that for the record.” ~HC
Helena, thank you for capturing so well my objections to Ibish’s talk this morning. During his presentation I kept wanting to cry out “Don’t you remember Edward Said?”
Ibish ,The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are all for a two state solution, neither they nor us can wish even upon a star for a one state solution.
That will immediately translate in the Zionist/Jews/Israelis the destruction of their democratic state
Divestment is antisemetic, expansion of settlements is natural growth of the extra special humans that occupy them . What else?
The late Arafat recognition of Israel as state in return for a two state solution turned him into a terrorist, Palestinian self defence is terrorism !!
Everything wrong is right in the minds of this colonial state that calls itself israel.
We are left with one option, a two state solution.
And if the likes of Ibish walked away from this option – which the occupier will love to hear-
it will give the zionists a freer hand to hasten the extermination of the occupied, the Palestinian
Both Tony Judt and Jimmy Carter have talked about how the two-state solution has been rendered pretty much impossible due to successive Israeli governments’ creation of “facts on the ground” in the Territories. If you look at a map of the West Bank, the region is completely peppered with exclusivist Israeli Jewish settlements connected by exclusivist roads that the occupied Palestinians are not allowed to use.
As things stand, a viable contiguous Palestinian state is impossible, and unless you have very significant settlement dismantling, a two state solution will not be viable due to these “facts on the ground” that Israel has intentionally created. Hence, some people’s opening up the one-state option.
Most people seem to be in denial about this concrete, on-the-ground reality. It’s as if discourse on the topic exists in some think-tank La La land of ideologized abstraction.
The Zionist goal has always been, and remains: all of the land and none of the people. They have been very successful in the “all of the land” part of the program, but have as yet failed to convince the rest of the world of the rightness of the transfer or apartheid options to achieve the second part. Their very success in the land issue however will lead to the inevitable destruction of the Jewish state. Their program has made a real two state solution impossible, as has been pointed out, with the apartheid settlements and apartheid roads. The 21st century civilized world will never accept transfer or apartheid as permanent solutions and the demographic issue grows every day. Just as Republicans in the US have lost control of the monster of hate they created, the Israeli government has lost control of the monster of settlers it has created. They dare not let go of the tiger’s tail.A one state solution is the only one possible now and it will come to pass eventually; not next year or even next decade, but inevitably Israel must succumb to history.
I have to play my allotted role here as the member for the communist party, but before I do so please let me put my hand up in a general way for the one-state solution, and by the way, for that kind of polemic whose principal rule is not to “mis-characterize the arguments of… opponents”.
There is no such thing as a nation that is not based on the domination of a class, and in our time this means the bourgeois class. This is what was meant by Karl Marx when he said that “civil society” (a term that he seems to have invented) is bourgeois society. “Pecuniae non olet”. Money has no smell. Money is “fungible”. A bi-national bourgeoisie is a fiction, or a fig-leaf. Such artificialities should be left out of serious conversation, in my opinion.
No, the movement towards a simple confrontation between bourgeois and proletarians, described in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, continues in Palestine as it does everywhere. In my opinion, to remove the class struggle from consideration when it comes to Palestine amounts to a kind of racial discrimination. It exceptionalises that country in a way that has bad effects upon the population there. In that sense, class struggle is a right that we have no right to withhold from the Palestinians, or to suppress or exclude from discourse.
The communist in me also has to register an objection to any sentence, like Jack’s, that begins: “The 21st century civilized world will never accept…” Quite apart from the obvious untruth of such a statement, if there is a civilised view, it can only be a humanist view, meaning that human beings make history. We do not “succumb to history”. In this respect, nothing has changed since the Bhegavad Gita, maybe 27 centuries ago. If you are not prepared to act upon your judgement of right and wrong, then you are condemned by your inaction. There is no such thing as a force of “history” outside of yourself that will rescue you.
The United Semitic Peoples’ Kemalist Republic
“One Semite, One Vote; One State, No Yahwists…”
Given the bad blood between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs; the demonstrable, persistent and continuing efforts on the Palestinian side to turn anti-Semitism into the official ideology rather than preparing their people for peace; the promulgation within the Palestinian territories of ideologies that encourage genocide against Jews, the meddling of neighboring dictatorships and the Israelis’ awareness of these facts, a one-state solution is a recipe for a civil war that would be far more bloody, violent and appalling than Lebanon’s civil war.
Add to this the facts that Israel absorbed and mainstreamed 1,000,000 Jewish refugees who were ethnically cleansed the Arab/Muslim world (about half of Israeli Jews are descended from them), and both Israeli and Arab populations have skyrocketed. Arab society has been fed one crazy conspiracy theory after another. At this point, no matter how far leaders of a single state go, it will be absolutely impossible to convince the Palestinians that they have not some how been cheated. And once even a small percentage feel cheated, they’ll be prey for the Islamists or the Baathists, and BANG! The firestorm ignites.
Times have changed since the yeshuv. Many decades of history have rushed past. The societies of the region have learned lessons during that time – some valuable, some stupid and misleading, some self-destructive. Those societies have evolved. We need to be realistic and face the fact that sometimes, there is no way back to ideas that might (or might not) have worked once upon a time. Idealistic solutions penned 75-110 years ago, at a time when 1,000,000 more Jews lived in the Arab/Muslim world, or when Iraq’s finance minister was a Jew, or when Leila Mourad was a star in Egypt, or when Weizman signed an agreement with Faisal, don’t work in a world in which anti-Semitism is the knee-jerk, habitual reaction of large majorities within the Arab world in general and Palestinian societies in particular.
And finally, at a time when even the Palestinians can’t seem to agree on one Palestinian leadership, don’t expect Israelis to ever agree to share in the debacle that is Palestinian political culture.
There are times for idealism and there are times to face reality. There are times when ideology can change things for the better, and times when the road to hell will be paved by blind and unwavering idealism. Israelis of all backgrounds cheered when Sadat visited Israel. Many Israelis celebrated Oslo. But Israelis from across the political spectrum have been burned *far* too many times to want to be guinea pigs in a viciously unrealistic social engineering experiment like Qaddaffi’s “Isratine”. And Palestinians, for their part,have been drowned for too many decades in real and imagined Jewish hatred, legitimate or distorted distrust of Israelis, and the endless blood-soaked Arabist/Islamist rhetoric that makes many Palestinians truly believe that they alone have a claim and that they will one day wipe out the Jews.
Please consider about alternatives that can actually work. Reparations. Borders. A trial separation.
Better fences can sometimes make better neighbors. If your family is constantly fighting with your neighbor’s family, you certainly would not knock down your houses and move into one big room together.
I could go on at equal length about most of your other points, but I’m going to be merciful to everyone’s eyes and stop here.
Howard makes a good point. If the Palestinians can’t agree on how to share their political power among themselves( Hamas vs Fatah), how do you expect them to agree with Israelis on how to share and transfer power peacefully? At least Israeli parties don’t have their own militias.
Also, you can’t just say that the two-state solution is becoming less and less feasible, without saying how the one-state solution is more feasible.
And to build on that, how exactly are you supposed to advance and push the pieces into place so that the one-state solution does become a reality? Those pieces look much heavier than those that advance the two-state solution.
Just face it, Israel isn’t going to let itself turn into a Lebanon, a country that fought a 15 year civil war, and hosts several militias many of which are backed by neighboring dictatorships and oppressive regimes(specifically Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran).
I really must note that Domza’s POV is extremely relevant to the extent that one-state-potential institutions like the Palestine Railway Union were alive and functioning back when Socialist parties that defined themselves as Communist were part of the Palestinian-Arab and Palestinian-Jewish political landscape. In fact, these parties both fed off of and nurtured a Palestinian political identity that might have transcended religion and nationality, given time. What its detractors may have labeled as “PalSoc”, and what was never really given a chance has since collapsed into the “Alphabet Soup” of the smaller Palestinian nationalist parties, PFLP, DFLP, etc, whose one-state rhetoric is more inclusive than most but who have an addiction to armed action which belies that. (And, well, some municipal-level Arab parties, and parts of Hadash and Balad.) The infrastructure, personnel, and ideology of the unitary Palestinian state existed from 1926-1948, and they were systematically done to death by both Ben-Gurion and the Mufti.
Speaking as one who has lived in the ME for years and studied the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict at university and privately for decades, I am convinced that the inevitable outcome will be one state. I also believe, however, that a period of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israeli Jews is absolutely necessary which will require two states for an indeterminate period. In the end, both peoples will realize that it is very much to their advantage to form one democratic secular state.
Ja, well, no, fine, Eurosabra. Thanks for the support. Of course, as you point out, the actualisation of class politics is best carried out by overt organisation, and it is interfered with, but not abolished, when such class-based organisation is disrupted.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” That quote is from the beginning of the Communist Manifesto. It means that class struggle continues, whether consciously or not. It means that all historical struggles have been class struggles, and they continue to be, right up to the present time.
Please note that I was in the first place addressing my remarks to this this forum, to say that it is idle to continue indefinitely here without any rehearsal of the class dimension, whether in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or any other place.
To you I would say that it would take nothing away from this argument of mine even if it was true that all overt class-based organisation had ceased in Palestine and Israel, (which in fact is very unlikely to be altogether true, and as far as I know is not true; but let’s not argue about that.)
This is because the class struggle continues with or without the self-conscious formal organisation of it. One must add that the suppression of working-class-based organisation is very strong evidence of the existence of class struggle, and is not evidence of any absence of class struggle.
Having said all that in deference to your kind response, please now let me point out that I was quite specifically referring, not to the proletarian component of the class struggle, but to the bourgeois component.
The bourgeoisie as a class is eternally divided against itself, which is why it must appear as The State, which is its executive committee and its only possible unified manifestation. The State, and only The State, is the bourgeoisie “speaking with one voice”.
The internal divisions of the bourgeoisie are many, and they are often lethal, but race or religion are not normal divisions of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois market is set up deliberately to transcend such remnants of the barbarian or feudal past. Whether it is called a two-state or a “binational” one-state, the material ruling power can only be a single bourgeoisie.
That is what made the imaginary meeting of all the sectarian heads in Lebanon, that Helena posted not long ago, you may remember it, so funny. All of them are so bourgeois!
If the material ruling power is in fact a single bourgeoisie, then any “two-state” or “binational” thing will be a Potemkin state, or pair, hiding some other reality.
My challenge to experts like Helena, with all her empirical knowledge, is to ask her: Why can you not show me a credible picture of what the Middle Eastern bourgeoisie, as a class, looks like? It is lacking. In the end, the lack of that clear picture of the ruling bourgeoisie becomes an overwhelming block against a functional, potentially consequential, understanding of the Middle East.
Hi, David.
I think that you are talking about several hundred years of transition. Maybe that would work; it’s possible but still highly unlikely. It is much, MUCH easier for societies to create a pernicious, deeply embedded knee-jerk hatred than it is for them to cure it. Curing such hatred is a very gradual, frequently interrupted process that takes a long, long time even when the urge to decency is diligently nurtured by sane and non-totalitarian leaders across the political and religious spectrum – something that has not happened even once in the Arab world in the last 60 years. Not even Israel’s “peace partners” make any effort, within their countries, to depict Israeli Jews as human beings. 24×7 poison will never set the stage for coexistence.
If you’re thinking 20-50 years out, then I say that tragically, the middle east will only become more violent over the next 100 years, either because oil will begin to run out in parts of the region or because a replacement will found and many of the societies built heavily on oil will begin to crack. We cannot predict what forms the violence will take. Population explosions in places like Egypt are already putting severe stress on societal norms in those countries – and we don’t know how that process will proceed. Any proposed Israeli-Arab relationship will need to be stable enough to weather the turmoil boiling beneath the surface calm.
Creating another Lebanon is not the answer. I love the Lebanese, and I respect them deeply. They have so much going for them; but their state is an utter disaster. Most Lebanese will tell you that they don’t even identify with Lebanon, but with their sect, and this is precisely why the country is deadlocked and why the neighbors perpetually fight proxy wars there. A Qaddaffi-esque “Isratine” would start out similarly and, fueled by the openly genocidal ideologies of Hamas and the habitual machinations of certain regional regimes, rapidly explode into a bloodbath.
No human rights advocate could possibly want that to happen. No human rights advocate should ever shut their eyes to the hard realities of the region, lest they help the terrorist and the demagogue to shut the door on the only types of solutions that can ever really work.
A more realistic goal would be 2 states (where the WB and Gaza might need considerable autonomy from each other, particularly if Hamas continues its forced Islamization program in Gaza), and some regional frameworks that are a bit like the EU, but less centralized. The parties need stable borders in order to feel safe from each other. The distrust is simply too deep. Over time, maybe that safety will allow the parties to make the borders that exist a bit less significant, and cross-border cooperation will become more significant. But to knock down the borders altogether simply won’t happen in any middle east that looks even *remotely* like the one that exists today, or one in which population pressures on both sides of the fence continue to grow.
So David, we may partly agree, if your time horizon is very long. I think that only a 2-state (3-state?) solution with (1) some form of reparations, and (2) a law of return that lets Palestinians go home their own national state in the WB or Gaza, has even the smallest chance of working in anything remotely resembling the current middle east (I think we agree on that much). Where we seem to part ways is that assuming that the 2 states remain at peace for 50-100 years, that both are democratic and have gained enough trust that they would consider a closer relationship – well, then, if they are 2 democratic sovereign states, I believe that it will be up to them, and not to us in 2009, to decide where they should go from there.
Oops. Did it again. I promise to try to comment more briefly in the future.