A Case for the One-State Solution
Presented by CEIA-SC to the congregation of First Unitarian Church on February 1, 2009
Zionism is committed to the belief that it is a good idea to establish, in the country of Palestine, a sovereign Jewish state that attempts to guarantee, both in law and practice, a demographic majority of ethnic Jews in the territories under its control. –Uri Davis
The modern state of Israel is an outcome of the Zionist ideology. When, in the late 1890’s, the founding fathers of the modern Jewish state first formulated their desire to establish a Jewish state in the land of Palestine they did not have in mind the idea of sharing that land with its indigenous population, the Palestinians. Hence they have propagated the notion that Palestine was “a land without people for a people without a land”. As such, Zionism is both a colonial and racist ideology, as its purpose is not merely to exploit the local Palestinian people, but to remove them from their land and replace them with a new and foreign settler community.
The two-state “solution” has its roots in the original 1947 UN partition plan, which granted 52% of historic Palestine to the Jewish state, with the remaining 48% allotted to a Palestinian state. Jews at the time, had succeeded in purchasing only 6% of historic Palestine, and constituted roughly one-third of the population — many of whom were recent immigrants.
From its initial conception, the Palestinians were opposed to the partition plan; why would they be expected to give up 52% of their land? At the end of the First World War the Middle East, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, was divided up between the European powers. The British were given a “Mandate” over historic Palestine that included a prior promise to create “a national home for the Jewish People.” Due to this fact, the Palestinians did not formally accept the Mandate. The Jews did, however, which gave them the right to establish certain quasi-governmental agencies that would become the government of the new state, and a paramilitary organization that would be the precursor to the modern IDF. These rights were denied the Palestinians.
At the end of the 1948 war, 78% of historic Palestine was in the hands of the nascent Jewish state, from which 800,000 indigenous Palestinians, whose families had lived and worked the land for centuries, had either fled in fear or been forcibly expelled. Hundreds of entire villages had not only been depopulated but obliterated, their houses blown up or bulldozed. This is known to Palestinians as “Al Nakba” — the catastrophe. Together with their descendants, more than 4.3 million of these refugees are registered with the U.N. – over 1.7 million are not.
In spite of this premeditated, planned attempt to remove the indigenous Palestinian people, 20% of the population of the newly founded Jewish state was composed of the remaining non-Jewish Palestinians, a percentage that remains to this day. From 1948 until 1966, most lived under martial law, limiting their freedom of movement and livelihoods. Many that are internally displaced, approximately 300,000, have been designated “present absentees,” thereby allowing the state to confiscate their property based on a series of laws created for just this purpose. The refugees outside of the 1948 Armistice line were alienated from their rights to both citizenship and their lands and properties in the new state. In response to this state of affairs UN Resolution 194, calling for the return of the refugees, was passed in 1948, and has been reaffirmed by the U.N. every year since then. To this day, none have been allowed to return, nor have any received compensation for their losses.
At the end of the 1967 war, when the historical opportunity presented itself, Israel consolidated its control over the remaining 22% of Palestine, with the occupation of the Gaza strip and West Bank. Construction of “settlements,” i.e. colonial outposts, which are forbidden by international law, began almost immediately.
Since 1988 the PLO has officially called for a two-state solution in which Israel would keep the 78 percent of Palestine that it has controlled since 1948, and a Palestinian state would be formed on the remaining 22 percent that Israel has occupied since 1967 (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). Israel would withdraw completely from those lands, return to the pre-1967 borders and a resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 would be negotiated between the two sides. In exchange, the Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel. Based on this the Oslo Accords, meant to be implemented in the 1990’s, were developed.
At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel supposedly "offered extraordinary concessions" that constituted "the most far-reaching offer ever" to create a Palestinian state. Camp David was said to be "an unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat supposedly “walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer.” It is said that “Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood.” This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. The generous offer consisted of a Palestinian “state” on 18% of historic Palestine.
Under the plan, Israel would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank--while retaining "security control" over other parts--that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government.
The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region's scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to “give up” a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic waste dump.
Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new "independent state" would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called "bypass roads" that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and thus waiving all further claims against Israel.
The “settlement” construction that began in the late 1960’s, has continued unabated, supported, financed and planned by the Israeli government. A recent study by the defense establishment has shown that construction on the vast majority —75%— of the colonies has been carried out without appropriate permits or contrary to permits that were issued. In more than 30 colonies, extensive construction of buildings, infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas, and police stations), has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian residents of the West Bank. Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible for a Palestinian to get a building permit — in Israel as well as in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip —and if they build without a permit their houses are inadvertently demolished with little or no warning.
In addition to the slicing up of the West Bank caused by the “settlements” and bypass roads (on which only Israelis may drive), construction of the “security fence” — or, more appropriately, Apartheid Wall, has further separated Palestinians from their farmlands and from each other — in some instances dividing towns and villages in half, in other cases encircling towns completely, leaving only one way in or out, subject to closure by the military at any time. Add to this nearly 600 checkpoints and it becomes clear that the possibilities for any kind of sovereign and viable state for the Palestinian people is out of the realm of possibility.
“Negotiations” and the “Peace Process” have been systematically used to prevent any positive change, and to further imprison, isolate and oppress the Palestinian people. The 2005 “withdrawal” from Gaza was disguised as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza:
“What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”
So far, we have reviewed how it has become nearly impossible to create two states in the area of historic Palestine.
Aside from the “facts on the ground” as they are called, there is also the legal and moral side of the equation. Let us say simply that the giving away of half of historic Palestine, which turned into the taking of 78%, was illegal, unjust and immoral to begin with. Regardless of the Nazi holocaust, creating a “national home” for the Jews on someone else’s land cannot be accepted as a just response to that crime. So, any two-state “solution” rests on the acceptance of the theft, and subsequent ethnic cleansing, that was required to bring the Jewish state, a state with special rights for Jews, into being and maintain its existence as such. It also requires denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, an inalienable collective and personal right that is enshrined in international law.
The primary Israeli opposition to the one-state solution is the fact that it would change the demographic “balance,” thereby endangering the “Jewish nature” of the state. Israel currently keeps its identity as “Jewish and democratic” by maintaining an ethnic majority of Jewish citizens. Should that majority no longer exist, its identity would have to become simply a “democratic” state, with equal rights for all of its citizens. The demographic “balance” is also the root of opposition to allowing the right of return for refugees. When they return the demographic change will make the two-state solution obsolete, for there will no longer be a Jewish majority nor, by extension, a Jewish state. The need to divide the land will be non-existent.
Here, it is important to acknowledge the fact that Israel, within its 1948 “borders,” is an apartheid state. While it is true that non-Jews can vote and serve in the government, there was a recent attempt to outlaw the “Arab” parties in Israel. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, counted 20 laws that explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. In this short presentation we cannot cover all of the Israeli laws and practices that give special rights to Jews, both within Israel and The West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip. Our organization, along with many others, believe that Israel is an apartheid state. Should the demographic “balance” shift, taking the majority status away from Jewish Israelis, they would have to make a choice between becoming fully democratic, or attempt to maintain their privileged position through a further consolidation of the apartheid regime.
Another supposed obstacle to a one-state solution is that there is supposedly no place for the returning refuges; their villages have been destroyed, other people live in their homes now. It’s been 60 years! If a robber destroys a home or builds another floor on it, is he entitled to keep it? In that case, under what premise did the European Jews recover their homes and property, up to the last painting, from their fellow European citizens after half a century, without the help of a single UN resolution?
But these Israeli claims about the impracticality of return are patently false. There is room. In fact, 90% of their destroyed villages have never been built upon. Most of the confiscated Palestinian land (93% of Israel) is utilized by the Israeli army and by the bankrupt kibbutzim, whose population make up only 1.5% of Israeli Jews.
80% of Israeli Jews live in 14% of Israel. The rural Jews in the southern half of the country are less in number than a single refugee camp. By contrast, more than 6,000 refugees per square kilometer live in the Gaza strip, while just over the barbed wire their ancestral lands are practically empty.
Creating a single, democratic, secular, pluralistic state with equal rights for all its citizens, in all of historic Palestine, with full right of return and restitution as required by international law for all refugees and their descendants wishing to return, is the only just and practical solution.
In closing, let us consider the following points:
History has presented us with the option to either repeat the tragedy of so many indigenous populations, decimated forever by genocidal colonial-settler movements, or to repeat the transition towards equality represented by the end of apartheid in South Africa.
White South Africa did not willingly accept equality; they did not have a change of heart and suddenly become anti-racist; the world’s civil societies were called upon to isolate South Africa and thereby force them to abandon apartheid. The Palestinian people have called upon us to do the same.