By JONATHAN COOK
Editors’ note: On Monday we ran Michael Neumann’s
argument against the so-called “one state” solution for
Israel and Palestine. This is the second of three replies.
AC / JSC.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most
intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel
debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved
by a single state embracing the two peoples living there
or by a division of the land into two separate states,
one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.
The philosopher Michael Neumann has dedicated two
articles, in 2007 and earlier this week, for CounterPunch
discrediting the one-state idea as impractical and
therefore as worthless of consideration. In response,
Kathy Christison has mounted a robust defense,
neatly exposing the twists and turns of Neumann’s
logic. I will not trouble to cover the same ground.
I want instead to address Neumann’s central argument:
that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging
behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a
single state. That argument, the rallying cry of most
two-staters, paints the one-state crowd as inveterate
dreamers and time-wasters.
The idea, Neumann writes, “that Israel would concede a
single state is laughable. … There is no chance at all
[Israelis] will accept a single state that gives the
Palestinians anything remotely like their rights.”
According to Neumann, unlike the one-state solution,
the means to realizing two states are within our grasp:
the removal of the half a million Jewish settlers living
in the occupied Palestinian territories. Then, he writes,
“a two-state solution will, indeed, leave Palestinians with
a sovereign state, because that’s what a two-state solution
means. It doesn’t mean one state and another non-state,
and no Palestinian proponent of a two-state solution will
settle for less than sovereignty.”
There is something surprisingly naive about his arguing that,
just because something is called a two-state solution, it will
necessarily result in two sovereign states. What are the
mimimum requirements for a state to qualify as sovereign,
and who decides?
True, the various two-state solutions proposed by Ariel Sharon,
Ehud Olmert and George Bush, and supported by most of the
international community, would fail according to Neumann’s
criterion because they were not premised on the removal
of all the settlers.
But an alternative two-state solution requiring Israel’s
withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders might still not
concede, for example, a Palestinian army -- equipped
and trained by Iran? -- to guard the borders of the
West Bank and Gaza. Would that count? And how
likely does Neumann think it that Israel and the
US would grant that kind of sovereignty to a Palestine state?
Correctly, Neumann repeatedly reminds us that those with
power are the ones who dictate solutions. In which case we
can be sure that when the time is right Israel and its sponsor,
the United States, will impose their own version of the
two-state solution and that it will be far from the
genuine article Neumann advocates.
No matter. Let us leave aside that particular somersault
of logic for the moment and return to the main argument:
that the creation of two states is inherently more achievable
and practical than the establishment of a single state.
Strangely, however, from all the available evidence,
this is not how it looks to Israel’s current leaders.
Prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has expressed
in several speeches the fear that, should the Palestinian
population under Israeli rule -- both in the occupied
territories and inside Israel proper -- reach the point
where it outnumbers the Jewish population, as
demographers expect in the next few years, Israel
will be compared to apartheid South Africa. In his words,
Israel is facing an imminent and powerful “struggle for
one-man-one-vote” along the lines of the anti-apartheid
movement.
According to Olmert, without evasive action, political logic
is drifting inexorably towards the creation of one state in
Israel and Palestine. This was his sentiment as he addressed
delegates to the recent Herzliya conference:
“Once we were afraid of the possibility that the reality in
Israel would force a bi-national state on us. In 1948, the
obstinate policy of all the Arabs, the anti-Israel fanaticism
and our strength and the leadership of David Ben-Gurion
saved us from such a state. For 60 years, we fought with
unparalleled courage in order to avoid living in a reality of
bi-nationalism, and in order to ensure that Israel exists as
a Jewish and democratic state with a solid Jewish majority.
We must act to this end and understand that such a
[bi-national] reality is being created, and in a very
short while it will be beyond our control.”
Olmert’s energies are therefore consumed with finding an
alternative political program that can be sold to the rest of
the world. That is the reason he, and Sharon before him,
began talking about a Palestinian state. Strangely, however,
neither took up the offer of the ideal two-state solution
-- the kind Neumann wants -- made in 2002.
Then Saudi Arabia and the rest Arab world promised
Israel peace in return for its withdrawal to the pre-1967
borders. They repeated their offer last year. Israel has
steadfastly ignored them.
Instead an alternative version of two states -- the bogus
two-state solution -- has become the default position of
Israeli politics. It requires only that Israel and the
Palestinians appear to divide the land, while in truth
the occupation continues and Jewish sovereignty over
all of historic Palestine is not only maintained but
rubber-stamped by the international community.
In other words, the Gazafication of the West Bank.
When Olmert warns that without two states
“Israel is finished”, he is thinking primarily about how
to stop the emergence of a single state. So, if Neumann
is to be believed, Olmert is a dreamer, because he fears
that a one-state solution is not only achievable but
dangerously close at hand. Sharon, it seems, suffered
from the same delusion, given that demography was
the main impulse for his disengaging from Gaza.
Or maybe both of them understood rather better than
Neumann what is meant by a Jewish state, and what
political conditions are incompatible with it.
In fact, the division of the land demanded by Neumann,
however equitable, would be the very moment when the
struggle for Israel to remain a Jewish state would enter
its most critical and difficult phase. Which is precisely
why Israel has blocked any meaningful division of the
land so far and will continue to do so.
In the unimaginable event that the Israel were to
divide the land, a Jewish state would not be able to live
with the consequences of such a division for long.
Eventually, the maintenance of an ethnic Israeli state
would (and will) prove unsustainable: environmentally,
demographically and ultimately physically. Division of
the land simply “fast-forwards” the self-destructiveness
inherent in a Jewish state.
Let us examine just a few of the consequences for the
Jewish state of a genuine two-state solution.
First, Israel inside its recognized, shrunken borders
would face an immediate and very serious water shortage.
That is because, in returning the West Bank to the
Palestinians, Israel would lose control of the large mountain
aquifers that currently supply most of its water, not only to
Israel proper but also to the Jewish settlers living illegally
in the occupied territories. Israel would no longer be able
to steal the water, but would be expected to negotiate for
it on the open market.
Given the politics of water in the Middle East, that would
be no simple matter. However impoverished the new
sovereign Palestinian state was, it would lose all legitimacy
in the eyes of its own population were it to sell more than
a trickle of water to the Israelis.
We can understand why by examining the current water
situation. At the moment Israel drains off almost all of the
water provided by the rivers and aquifers inside Israel
and in the occupied territories for use by its own population,
allowing each Palestinian far less than the minimum amount
he or she requires each day, according to the World Health
Organization.
In a stark warning this month, Israel’s Water Authority
reported that overdrilling has polluted with sea water
most of the supply from the coastal aquifer, that is the
main fresh water source inside Israel’s recognized borders.
Were Palestinians to be allowed a proper water ration
from their own mountain aquifer, as well as to build a
modern economy, there would not be enough left over to
satisfy Israel’s first-world thirst. And that is before we
consider the extra demand on water resources from all
those Palestinians who choose to realize their right to
return, not to their homes in Israel, but to the new
sovereign Palestinian state.
In addition, for reasons that we will come to, the sovereign
Jewish state would have every reason to continue its
Judaization policies, trying to attact as many Jews from
the rest of the world as possible, thereby further straining
the region’s water resources.
The environmental unsustainability of both states
seeking to absorb large populations would inevitably
result in a regional water crisis. In addition, should Israeli
Jews, sensing water shortages, start to leave in significant
numbers, Israel would have an even more pressing reason
to locate water, by fair means or foul.
It can be expected that in a short time Israel, with the
fourth most powerful army in the world, would seek to
manufacture reasons for war against its weaker neighbors,
particularly the Palestinians but possibly also Lebanon, in
a bid to steal their water.
Water shortages would, of course, be a problem facing a
single state too. But, at least in one state there would be
mechanisms in place to reduce such tensions, to manage
population growth and economic development, and to
divide water resources equitably.
Second, with the labour-intensive occupation at an end,
much of the Jewish state’s huge citizen army would become
surplus to defense requirements. In addition to the massive
social and economic disruptions, the dismantling of the
country’s military complex would fundamentally change
Israel’s role in the region, damage its relationship with
the only global superpower and sever its financial ties to
Diaspora Jews.
Israel would no longer have the laboratories of the occupied
territories for testing its military hardware, its battlefield
strategies and its booming surveillance and crowd control
industries. If Israel chose to fight the Palestinians, it would
have to do so in a proper war, even if one between very
unequal sides. Doubtless the Palestinians, like Hizbullah,
would quickly find regional sponsors to arm and train their
army or militias.
The experience and reputation Israel has acquired --
at least among the US military -- in running an occupation
and devising new and supposedly sophisticated ways to
control the “Arab mind” would rapidly be lost, and with
it Israel’s usefulness to the US in managing its own
long-term occupation of Iraq.
Also, Israel’s vital strategic alliance with the US in dividing
the Arab world, over the issue of the occupation and by
signing peace treaties with some states and living in a state
of permanent war with others, would start to unravel.
With the waning of Israel’s special relationship with
Washington and the influence of its lobby groups, as well
as the loss of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, the
Jewish Diaspora would begin to lose interest in Israel.
Its money and power ebbing away, Israel might eventually
slip into Middle Eastern anonymity, another Jordan. In
such circumstances it would rapidly see a large exodus of
privileged Ashkenazi Jews, many of whom hold second
passports.
Third, the Jewish state would not be as Jewish as some
might think: currently one in five Israelis is not Jewish but
Palestinian. Although to realize Neumann’s two-state
vision all the Jewish settlers would probably need to leave
the occupied territories and return to Israel, what would be
done with all those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship?
These Palestinians have been citizens of Israel for six
decades and live legally on land that has belonged to
their families for many generations. They are also growing
in number at a rate faster than the Jewish population,
the reason they are popularly referred to in Israel as a
“demographic timebomb”.
Were these 1.3 million citizens to be removed from Israel
by force under Neumann’s two-state arrangement, it
would be a violation of international law by a democratic
state on a scale unprecedented in the modern era, and an
act of ethnic cleansing even larger than the 1948 war that
established Israel. The question would be: why even bother
advocating two states if it has to be achieved on such
appalling terms?
Assuming instead that the new Jewish state is supposed
to maintain, as Israel currently does, the pretence of
being democratic, these citizens would be entitled to
continue living on their land and exercising their rights.
Inside a Jewish state that had offically ended its conflict
with the Palestinians, demands would grow from
Palestinian citizens for equal rights and an end to
their second-class status.
Most importantly, they would insist on two rights that
challenge the very basis of a Jewish state. They would
expect the right, backed by international law, to be able
to marry Palestinians from outside Israel and bring them
to live with them. And they would want a Right of Return
for their exiled relatives on a similar basis to the Law of
Return for Jews.
Israel’s Jewishness would be at stake, even more so
than it is today from its Palestinian minority. It can be
assumed that Israel’s leaders would react with great
ferocity to protect the state’s Jewishness. Eventually
Israel’s democratic pretensions would have to be jettisoned
and the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian
citizens implemented.
Still, do these arguments against the “practicality” of
Neumann’s genuine two-state arrangement win the day
for the one-state solution? Would Israel’s leaders not put
up an equally vicious fight to protect their ethnic privileges
by preventing, as they are doing now, the emergence of a
single state?
Yes, they would and they will. But that misses my point.
As long as Israel is an ethnic state, it will be forced to deepen
the occupation and intensify its ethnic cleansing policies to
prevent the emergence of genuine Palestinian political
influence -- for the reasons I cite above and for many
others I don’t. In truth, both a one-state and a genuine
two-state arrangement are impossible given Israel’s
determination to remain a Jewish state.
The obstacle to a solution, then, is not about dividing the
land but about Zionism itself, the ideology of ethnic
supremacism that is the current orthodoxy in Israel.
As long as Israel is a Zionist state, its leaders will allow
neither one state nor two real states.
The solution, therefore, reduces to the question of how
to defeat Zionism. It just so happens that the best way
this can be achieved is by confronting the illusions of the
two-state dreamers and explaining why Israel is in
permanent bad faith about seeking peace.
In other words, if we stopped distracting ourselves with
the Holy Grail of the two-state solution, we might
channel our energies into something more useful:
discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology
of Zionism that upholds it. Eventually the respectable
façade of Zionism might crumble.
Without Zionism, the obstacle to creating either one or two
states will finally be removed. And if that is the case, then
why not also campaign for the solution that will best bring
justice to both Israelis and Palestinians?
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq,
Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published by
Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
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