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With
the ceasefire in Gaza and a projected unity government in Palestine,
the spectre of a two state solution has again risen to haunt
Netanuyahu. He has responded by announcing the annexation of nearly
1000 more acres of Palestinian territory for settlements. Meanwhile, a
new post-war poll by
the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that
79% of Palestinians think Israel lost the war and 72% favor an armed
intifada in the West Bank. That is a big change from a poll taken in Gaza June 15-17, when
73% said they favored non-violent resistance, though, as PSR points
out, Palestinian poll numbers always swing widely after a war: these
changes might be temporary.
The
Gaza war has thus made it more urgent than ever to get serious about
Palestinian nation-building. As Israeli elder statesman Uri Avnery has
pointed out many times, a secure, well-run, democratic state in
Palestine is the key to progress and economic development for the
region; it is also the only possible way either side can be secure.
Recently, however, prominent Jewish liberals like Anthony Lerman andJonathan Freedland have
begun to say that a two state solution has become impossible because
the growth of Israeli settlements have created an irreversible
situation. To Avnery, this idea is nonsense: "I can think of a dozen
different ways to solve the settlement problem, from forcible removal to
exchange of territories to Palestinian citizenship (meaning the
settlers will become Palestinan citizens).... All the Herculean problems
of the conflict can be resolved—if there is a will. It’s the will that
is the real problem."
The majority of people in both Israel and Palestine are
still convinced that two states are needed. 75% of Palestinians in the
new PSR poll reject a one state approach. Within the region, right
wing Israeli politicians are the main ones talking about one state—and
they certainly don't mean a state in which all citizens would be equal.
But the problem of political will is real. Israeli society has
succumbed to the despairing worldview of the Likud, which sees any talk
of peace as either fantasy or treachery. As David Grossman says,
"the right has not only vanquished the left: It has vanquished
Israel.... In the area most critical to its survival, today’s Israel is
practically immobile, one might even say incompetent....(There is) a
void of actions, a void of consciousness, a void in which an efficient
suspension of moral judgment prevails, a failure to notice the injustice
at the root of the entire situation."
At
this crux, people who still believe in a two state solution have got to
get smarter and tougher, particularly in the US, where groups that
support this goal have tended to be timid and overly focused on Beltway
politics, hoping that, if they play nice, they will be accepted by
conservative Jewish institutions. This approach hasn't worked.
In
fact, the only dynamic anti-occupation groups in the US are those that
support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ( BDS) - but they do not have a
two state perspective. The goals of the BDS movement are
to end the occupation and dismantle the separation wall; give full
equality to the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel; and promote the
right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as guaranteed by
UN Resolution 194. The last demand, for the right of return, is usually
understood to mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. AsNoam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have
both observed, this demand will limit the base of BDS support to
college campuses and the left, making impossible the kind of broad-based
movement needed to change US policy.
The
US is Israel's chief enabler. Congress, more focused on donors than on
votes, is totally one-sided on this issue. The Republicans, led by
their Christian Zionist wing, can be relied on to push for war in the Middle East, hoping it will lead to the rapture, while even the most progressive Democrats, like Bernie Sanders, stand up for Israel right or wrong—Hillary Clinton now
seems poised to make doing so central to her campaign strategy. The
Obama administration has been more reserved in its support than
Congress, even holding up a shipment of Hellfire missiles in August because of the Gaza war. But all are basically responding to a strong public identification with Israel.
On
Aug. 28, 2014, after seven weeks of a war in which Israeli attacks on
Palestinian civilians received much more coverage than usual, 66% of
thosepolled by the Pew Research Center sympathized with Israel. A broad coalition against the occupation needs to be able to reach the many Democrats who are"liberal on everything but Israel;" this requires much more energetic organizing for a two state solution.
Two main obstacles stand in the way of this solution.
The
first is the religious-nationalist right on both sides—Hamas and the
Likud coalition. They have a symbiotic relationship: Israel's
destruction of Gaza has enormously increased the popularity of Hamas,
while the rockets of Hamas have strengthened the Israeli right. And
both have historically opposed a two-state solution, though on Sept. 5,
according to the Lebanese weekly Al-Akhbar,
Khaled Meshal, head of the political wing of Hamas, agreed to accept
two states within the 1967 borders. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is
more intransigent than ever, as he said in a speech last month:
“there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we
relinquish security control of the territory west of the River
Jordan.”
But
Palestinian support for Hamas is not written in stone. Hamas is an
offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and, if it ever actually
becomes part of the government of a Palestinian state, is likely to have
the same problems reconciling its ideology with the need to govern as
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia. The youth of Gaza in particular have
found Hamas politically incapable and far too repressive; they want
peace, freedom and development, not a theocracy. Nor does Islamism mesh
well with the secular ideals of the Palestinian National Charter,
written in 1963 and amended in 1968, which calls for setting up a
nation founded on "freedom of worship and of visit (to Jerusalem) to
all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion."
Like
Hamas, the Israeli right is an obstacle to a two state solution, as
shown by its practice for the last twenty years. It includes the
religious fundamentalists of the National Religious Right,
who think God gave them the right to all the land "from the river to
the sea," and the ethnic nationalists of the Likud coalition. Some,
like Netanyahu, are traditional maximalist militarists; others are open
racists and advocates of ethnic cleansing, like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and
Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Moshe Feiglin. Of the five parties in
the current governing coalition, all except Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah are
relentlessly opposed to giving up land occupied by settlements, sharing
Jerusalem, or doing anything else that could bring about an independent
Palestinian state. They do not conceal their views; Feiglin wrote a
recent op edproposing total war on the civilian population of Gaza, to be followed by ethnic cleansing:
"After
the IDF completes the 'softening' of the targets with its fire-power,
the IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to
minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations....The
enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and separated itself
from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with
international law and will be allowed to leave.... Subsequent to the
elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel
and will be populated by Jews."
The
second obstacle to a two state solution is a lack of concrete progress
towards a Palestinian state. Unless nation-building begins soon, the
whole idea will seem like a hopeless fantasy.
While
the new coalition between Fatah and Hamas is a step in the right
direction, it is a far cry from a democratically elected government
based on the rule of law. Palestine needs a functioning economy, an
updated secular constitution, political parties, transparent elections,
and a strong civil society. It also needs better leadership than it has
at present— which is why freeing Marwan Barghouti must
be a key international demand. Nation-building will require capable
honest leaders who are younger and less compromised than Mahmoud Abbas
and are not militaristic theocrats like the leaders of Hamas.
The
parameters of a two state solution have been clear for many years: a
return to the 1967 borders with just and mutually agreed upon solutions
to the refugee problem and the question of Jerusalem. The details can
only be settled by real peace negotiations leading to a settlement, not
just by temporary breaks in a permanent state of war. The urgent task
of the anti-occupation movement is to build enough international
pressure to force such a settlement.
