Common Sense on the Question of Palestine

[arisbe]

"The time has come to think the unthinkable. The two-state solution -- the core of the Oslo process and the present "road map" -- is probably already doomed. With every passing year we are postponing an inevitable, harder choice that only the far right and far left have so far acknowledged, each for its own reasons. The true alternative facing the Middle East in coming years will be between an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel and a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. That is indeed how the hard-liners in Sharon's cabinet see the choice; and that is why they anticipate the removal of the Arabs as the ineluctable condition for the survival of a Jewish state.

"But what if there were no place in the world today for a "Jewish state"? What if the binational solution were not just increasingly likely, but actually a desirable outcome? It is not such a very odd thought..."

from "Israel: The Alternative" by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books, via Jude Wanniski

Comments

[kiaroskuro.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the talk that the late Edward Said gave at Princeton a few years ago. He said that the only way the Israeli-Palestinian issue would ever be resolved is if Arabs and Israelis can live together in a multinational state that does not give preference to one faith or another, but treats all citizens as equal. It's not such a far-fetched idea, but for people who believe in a Jewish state, it can be unthinkable.

Thank you for posting such thought-provoking pieces.

Said dead too?

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I really am out of the loop!

It is really a Zen-like paradox that Abouna Elias Chacour, whose family suffered the fate of other Palestinians, is a loyal citizen of Israel, and seems to have some hope that his Jewish neighbors will some day accept him, or at least his students, or their children, as such.

But how many more must die, not only Israelis and Palestinians, but Iraqis -- and Iranis and Syrians, whoever is next -- and Americans, like the two thousand two blocks from where I am typing?