Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state, which simply doesn't accept half of its population as citizens.
You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.
>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out.
The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism.
A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975).
A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed.
The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
The UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it.
Israel has never made a prolonged effort to build the mutual trust necessary to reach a negotiated settlement. During the Oslo Accords, the Israeli settler population nearly doubled.
One only need observe how Palestinian territory has shrunk decade after decade ever since 1948 to see that it is not merely Palestinian intransigence that has prevented peace.
Clearly then there are other values being pursued here other than peace first and foremost. But if you don't have power, you do need to suck up your pride if you want to move forward at all.
Israel never really accepted two state solution either (US has been vetoing against it, and together with Israel they still threaten any politician who seriously floats the idea of Palestinian state). There is other evidence as well, but I don't think blaming either party is constructive.
So if neither party accepts the partition, the only conclusion is they will have to learn to live together on the same territory. It's not rocket science, everywhere else in the world this is possible.
I also think we passed the window for a two state solution.
Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation.
If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
Based on what? The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best. It is true that there are many differing groups of people living in that area, but they were often simply under the dominion of one imperial power or another. This pat caricature is the equivalent of shrugging one's shoulders and saying "well that's how it's always been."
> The concept of nations is perhaps two centuries old at best.
The modern model of statehood (which is probably what you are referring to) -- sometimes referred to as the "nation-state" model, but it is not actually particularly centered on the coextensiveness of the nations and states, and certainly orthogonal to states being ethnonationalist -- is at least ~300 years old (its often attributed to being ~400 years old and originating in the two peace settlements collectively known as the "Peace of Westphalia", but that's not really accurate.) OTOH, the concept of nations (which are basically the coextension of an ethnic community and a land) is much older.
But, in any case, it has not been the case at all that the history of the Levant is one of two local adjacent coexistent ethnonationalist polities, whether or not they look like modern states. That's just a simply false claim made upthread which needs no reference to the history of models of nations or states to rebut; before 1948, for a very long time, the Levant was more often either under one (multinational, imperial) polity or split between a couple of adjacent ones (often in the process of transitioning from unified control of one to the other), whether it was the British Empire, or the Ottoman Empire, a series of different Arab-led empires, the Eastern Roman Empire, the (pre-split) Roman Empire, various Greek-derived empires, the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, etc.
I was actually thinking of the idea of nationalism itself, which really got off the ground in the 1800s after the Napoleonic Wars. Though yeah, I miswrote the "concept of nations."
During the times there was an external security guarantor, conflict would by definition go down (assuming the external power was sufficiently potent and stable). So you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times.
> One could argue this history of chaos goes back to the Hittites and Bronze Age collapse.
And one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani.
> you can't say that both chaos and dominion were happening simultaneously at all times
Nobody said this.
> one could claim that the history of chaos in Central Europe goes back to the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, or the Ostsiedlung, or perhaps even before the Romans made contact with the Germani
Well, yes. It’s a nexus of navigable waterways. It has taken millennia of negotiating, atrocity and—ultimately—an external security guarantor twinned with mutual forgiveness to attain, for a short period, peace.
It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there.
Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
My point was that AFAIK, Palestinians would include Jews in the potential citizens of a Palestine. So that the conflict is not between two ethnonationalist groups.
There certainly is rhetoric around the ethnic origin of some Israeli citizens being Northern European rather than middle eastern, so perhaps the original claim has some validity.
I guess I meant it as more of a longer term solution.
In that, given a few years/decades of a two state solution, you'd have a partition occur, whether by force as was in India/Pakistan, or by more natural processes over time.
Honestly, I could see a partition occur as a condition for a two state solution. One side for the muslims, one for the jews.
I guess I should amend my comment to say theocratic ethno-nationalist / ethno-religious states, but I am likely messing up my greek/Plato (?) here. Suffice to say, the state of Palestine would have a super majority of muslim Palestinian citizen voters (currently-ish 87%, ~6M people total, though hard to define really), and the state of Israel would have a slight majority of jewish citizen voters (currently 48% jewish, 48% arab, ~14M people total, but Israeli Arab enfranchisement is a thing). Though 'steady state' numbers would likely shift the voting blocs towards the representative religions due to some partitioning as I described. Just FYI, there are about 6.3M jews and 4.5M muslims in the US currently.
The total numbers of jews and palestinians that would be 'in theatre' is hard to determine, but think about 8M jews and about 9M palestinians for guestimations.
So, I think I'm on pretty stable ground calling the likely resultant two state solution an ethno-religious solution. Other commenters are right in that the definition of 'nation' is a bit difficult with these two groups.
Look either way, the two state solution is like, maximally bad. Having these two people with their histories and hatreds literally sharing walls is just crazy as it stands. Then giving them both access to the global arms market, let alone just Israel, is so crazy.
And no, I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell to do. No one does.
The only reason the Palestinians are considered "ethno-nationalist" is that they are opposing a facist, genocidal, actually ethno-nationalist state that has spread its propaganda that any disagreement on any grounds is anti-semitism.
It's ridiculous and I know the moment I see someone dig into their bag of slander with that they are not arguing in good faith.
Hey, I know this a rando internet commenter here, but what do you think is the solution then? To me, adding more money and guns into this conflict sounds like a really bad idea. But I'm not there and I'm just a fool as a result. I'm honestly asking and not just trolling, really. I'd love your perspective.
Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
Regarding the hostages? Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
I'll preface that my knowledge of the situation is 'bad'. In that, I think I'm likely not qualified to give informed opinions on it. Okay, that out of the way...
> Ideally? Palestinian accepting the existence of Israel, foregoing their demands for the right to return and East Jerusalem, and then we can peacefully coexist.
Right to return is a tricky one here. It's been very long that they have been 'out' of their homes/locations. So much so that it's difficult to say whose it is now. Which, yeah, that's not good. I come at this from a Native American perspective. In that, my ancestors took land away and had land taken away from them. I can feel that pain still in the family and that listlessness and hurt in me to a (absurdly) small degree.
From what I know, the sticking point of all sticking points is the Temple Mount. Each side wants it to the exclusion of the other. And from what I can see, each side is willing to mortgage their children's and grandchildren's lives on that point. Literally, this is the hill they are willing to die on, and sacrifice their progeny on too, endlessly (ancient allusions come flying out here without much effort).
I used to think that someone could 'Kind David' that land and just nuke it or something. But no, they would fight over the glowing green hole too, like the irradiated wasteland in Fallout 4. To an outsider, it's hopeless, I don't think that either side is willing to ever peacefully relent on the Temple Mount, let alone all the other land.
> Realistically? Maintaining strong border security, erect more walls, prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, legally or illegally, control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
I don't see how treating the Palestinians poorly is going to make things better. Their incentives are badly aligned with Israel's if they are treated in such a way. I don't think that trying to forcibly make them a separate entity is going to get them to do what Israel needs. To me, the best way to get Palestinians to stop the violence is to have them 'grow' their way out of it. In that, they are so busy thriving that they no longer care about the past issues. This, I admit, is a very American perspective, and a western American one at that. I know that my idea here is a longer term one, and right now the short term is very critical. But, for me, it's a matter of incentives. If Israel can somehow make it so that the conditions exist that Palestine is more interested in something other than the destruction of Israel, then all the better. I have no feasible way to accomplish this though. I can only say to look at places and times where such things did occur. My terribly brief survey of this says that it's a matter of poverty and growing out of the 'hole' was the solution when it did occur. Still, I know that the deep and long hatreds overshadow it all.
My solution is a glib one. The participants just need to stop being who they are. These ways don't seem to work well. My automatic reaction is that they all just need to do the hard work of true forgiveness. But, again, that's not who the participants are. That is a Christian method for Muslims and Jews; it's not going to happen.
I guess my main disagreement is that the proposed solutions don't deal with the longer term, just the shorter one, and they don't accept the agency and feelings of the Palestinians and their incentives.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss and learn more. Please tell me where I am wrong and missing out on things. Also, sorry for delays in response and I think we're in quite different time zones and schedules.
I can't wait until the US government cuts Israel off from the weapons teet and tells them to fight their genocidal wars of aggression with their own money instead of the American taxpayer's money.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an israeli as he was working toward a two state solution. Yasser Arafat recognized the right of Israel to exist in 1988 was assassinated. (sorry, "died of mysterious causes for no reasons and toxicology report said it was all good no biggie we don't know what Mossad uses anyways.). Israel spent the last 40 years systematically destroying any hope at giving palestinians any chance to ever want to "accept" Israel
>foregoing their demands for the right to return
Promised by God 3000 years ago for me but not for thee. Israel exiled millions of Palestinians from the land they were inhabiting.
>and East Jerusalem
Holy land for all three major abrahamic religions, but I guess it's israeli now. And muslims are banned. Cool cool. Now onto the cool stuff:
>Maintaining strong border security
Which ones, the ones that already existed where IDF soldiers shot children for fun ?
>erect more walls
Build a better prison ?
>prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel
Let's see. Walls on land. Naval blockade. Yep, building a better prison. And since the IDF is, day after day pushing palestinians into whatever city is left. Khan Yunis is gone, Rafah is gone, Gaza City is gone, Jabalyia is gone, Beit Hanoun is gone. Five of the seven major cities of Gaza are rubble, and palestinians are forced to move to ever smaller encampments with no food, water or health care, while Israel is systematically stopping any attempts at sending aid.
>control any gate they have with the outside to prevent smuggling of weapons.
You already do, and you miserably failed at it. What next, nuke Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt because they might have tunnels ?
>Besiege Gaza until they are returned.
Not only have you ensured that a vast majority of hostages will never be returned by flattening Gaza and burying a vast majority of them, that's something called collective punishment.
Let's tally it up. Collective punishment. Ethnically cleansing a land (which is what the Nakba was). "God given right". Systematic and intentional starving, dehumanization and imprisonment of a group. Military occupation. Concentration camps.
Right, the government which I voted for in 2021 in a democratic and free election, composed of entirely secular Jewish parties, and included an Arabic party as part of the coalition, that’s an example for a theocratic government.
Honestly, I wouldn't ask Israelis or Palestinians for their opinion. I think the OSN should mandate and using peace forces:
- Establish a new, transitional government of Israel/Palestine, nominated by the UN
- Give citizenship to every Israeli and Palestinian for the whole territory
- Mandate a 50/50 ethnic quotas system in the military, police, judiciary and all government institutions, and minimum 30% ethnic quotas in every other employer
- Create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, modeled after JAR; it would figure out what reparations are needed to each citizen
- Mandate both hebrew and arabic as official languages, and teach every kid both in school
- Once things would settle down, after 1-2 years, run a new elections but with constitutional provisions (5-10 years) against dismantling the quotas
Heck, even US could do this unilaterally (just like British did), if they wanted to pursue human rights.
What a silly, unrealistic idea. No other country or coalition is going to launch a violent ground invasion of Israel and Palestine in order to impose peace terms on them. Protecting human rights in other countries is not our responsibility. They'll have to solve their own disputes one way or another.
No ground invasion is needed, not even serious economic sanctions for non-compliance. Just a simple phone call from American president, that Israelis are now free to fend themselves from "hostile Arabs", without US military aid (there's a precedent btw). After all, it's Israel's own responsibility to protect human rights, isn't it?
If the United States launched a land war on Israel and Palestine, Russia and China. It would be an opportunity to bog down the United States in the Middle East for another generation.
I haven't confirmed the numbers, but I saw an estimate of 75% of Israeli military funding came from foreign aid (primarily the US) and those numbers did not include the US sitting in the Mediterranean with ships intercepting rockets.
If they had to cut down their military to 25% they would collapse from outside attacks. Israel would probably figure out the funding so it wouldn't drop by that much though.
Which "hostile arabs"? Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States want military cooperation with Israel to counter Iran. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc are too busy with their own affairs and have no desire to fight a unnecessarily destructive war.
Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will.
In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.
They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table.
> They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states.
Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war?
The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position).
> You need to bring some argument.
When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
> The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority.
In the modern world, if you accept universal human rights, every minority in the world has to accept that it's a minority, and every majority in the world has to learn to accept the minority. In addition, everyone is a minority is some sense and somewhere - depends on your worldview.
What you're saying is a very condescending (and frankly antisemitic) claim - that Israelis (or Jews) are somehow "special" in being so stupid to never accept this. Of course they can accept it, just like everybody else in the world learns to accept there are other ethnicities and races. Americans, for example, learned to accept it. Likewise, all Jews outside Israel have accepted being a minority. It's not really a problem that racists make it out to be (at the end of the day, people individual differences and conflicts trump most group differences).
> When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm
That's why modern biethnic countries have laws and other systems that prevent that - see my comment above. A good example is Belgium. The point is, you can change the perception from 2-states to functioning 1-state without having to give up anything related to each ethnicity's cultural heritage. Has been done many times in history.
But South African apartheid, as well as American Jim Crow laws, were about people who didn't think they occupied different countries, and didn't think they should. It was about changing how the law saw people within the same country, with everyone agreeing they should be in the same state, under the same government.
Israel/Palestine seems to be two groups of people who really do not want to live together, and would prefer to be rid of the other side.
You reminded me of this interview with Harlan Ellison that was making the rounds a while ago [0]. I think there's some kernel of truth there. I've heard a lot of people from both sides say that they prefer to die than to leave the land. So following up on Harlan's proposal, I would be in favour of the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other to do so, until (hopefully) they sort out their differences and decide to declare peace and join the international community.
There is no such thing as an "international community". No other country wants to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees. Regardless of whether this is fair or not, they are seen as a security risk.
> the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other
This roughly describes the current situation. Israelis are internationally mobile. And while Palestinians are not, it’s hard to imagine enough of them emigrating to destabilise the current conflict conditions.
Here's my phrasing: the international community should not expend resources to support people who prefer to fight and die for their land than to live peacefully elsewhere.
You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable.
I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor.
And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.