Is it too late for two states?
Here is a view from Ben White, a writer on Electronic Intifada:
“…The real paradigmatic shift is not to be found in talking about the ‘two-state versus one-state’ solution or anything else in between, because this debate misses the point. It’s not a question of proposing a ‘one-state solution’, but of recognizing the ‘one-state reality’. This has been brought about by Israel’s integration of East Jerusalem and the West Bank into the infrastructure and legal fabric of the Jewish state since 1967, to the extent that there is de facto, if not de jure, annexation. This is plainly observable on the ground when, for example, one drives from Tel Aviv to the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with no discernible shift in territorial sovereignty. The road networks intersecting the West Bank are just one part of the territorial homogeneity from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. The same aquifers provide water for both Palestinians and Israelis, albeit currently on a discriminatory basis enforced by Israel. From border ’security buffer zones’ to settlements, the occupied territories have been carved up and colonized, absorbed physically and bureaucratically. Even more tellingly, in the areas of confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank — what Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has called ‘a non-contiguous archipelago of thousands of separate ‘islands’ ‘ — it is Israeli law that is applied … so that the settlers living in the colonies can enjoy the normal rights afforded to (Jewish) Israeli citizens … it is grossly disingenuous to apocalyptically predict a future one-state solution as guaranteeing a bloodbath or “anti-Jew genocide.” There already is “one state” and the remaining question, and real debate, is over its character. Will different laws and rights continue to be afforded to people on the basis of their ethnicity? Will it be an exclusivist, apartheid state — or a democracy where Jews are no more privileged than Palestinians?” The article on Electronic Intifada is here.
Tags: Palestine, Two State Solution