This is a guest post by Michelle Sieff of the American Jewish Committee.

As despair about the possibility of a two-state solution swells, Robert Mackey in the New York Times is contemplating the idea of a one-state solution. As he notes, even as early as 1999, Edward Said called for the abandonment of the two-state solution - embodied in the Oslo peace process - and the embrace of a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state. More recently, Tony Judt echoed these arguments in the New York Review of Books.

Z Word has already responded to the various arguments used to justify the one-state solution. It’s a respectable sounding idea which basically camouflages a policy of genocide against the Jews. So it’s a little shocking that the New York Times now believes that this is a legitimate topic of debate.

Mackey points out that advocates of the one-state solution frequently invoke the South African transition as evidence of its feasibility. At a 2007 conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London entitled “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Israel/Palestine,” Louise Bethlehem, a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, presented a paper on “Drawing Lessons From the Case of South Africa.”

The message is that the experience of South Africa after apartheid - blacks and whites living together in one state - should serve as a model for Israel. After all, the stated purpose of the conference was to push “for the power of a common one state vision.”

Ironically, by comparing the two conflicts, I can only come to the conclusion that the lesson of South Africa is that not even a two-state solution is possible so long as groups like Hamas articulate the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Though many observers wax poetically about the “miracle” of the South African transition, they fail to see that its success was not divine providence but instead the result of smart, strategic political choices by two political movements, especially the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s most important decision was to convince the white minority that the ANC had no intention of eliminating them from South African society. He accomplished this through both rhetoric and actions, such as abstention from terrorist violence.

Just read some of the rhetoric from Mandela and the ANC. This from the ANC’s Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955:

We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:

That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;

And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter;

Compare this to the rhetoric from the Hamas Covenant:

Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.

The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

Now I am certain that if the ANC or Mandela had ever used such extremist rhetoric about whites in South Africa, President F.W. De Klerk would never have initiated negotiations with the ANC in 1990.

In addition to its inclusive, moderate rhetoric, the ANC also refused to embark on the path of nihilist violence, such as Hamas’ suicide bombings and rockets attacks directed at Israeli civilians. Now just in case Professor Bethlehem, a literature professor, isn’t familiar with the history, she might read Mandela’s infamous “I Am Prepared To Die” speech, in order to understand how carefully he justified the ANC’s turn to violence in 1960.

In the speech, delivered in 1964 on the dock at the Rivonia trial, Mandela explained that the ANC embraced violence after the Sharpeville shootings in 1960 and the government’s declaration of the ANC as an unlawful organization:

This conclusion was not easily arrived at. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe. We did so not because we desired such a course, but solely because the Government had left us with no other choice. In the Manifesto of Umkhonto published on 16 December 1961, which is Exhibit AD, we said:

“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom”.

Mandela also emphasized that the ANC decided to engage in violence against government buildings and economic infrastructure - what he called sabotage - not violence targeting civilians.

Again, from the PLO to Hamas, all of the political groups that have represented Palestinians began with violent methods, as well as violent objectives, namely the “liberation” of Palestine. From the beginning, they intentionally directed violence against innocent civilians and have lost any claim to moral authority.

The real lesson of South Africa is that a political solution was possible only because the ANC assuaged the fears of the white minority and clearly stated that the white population was an essential part of a new South Africa. Until all Palestinian political groups clearly recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish presence and of Israel as a state, there will be no progress towards peaceful co-existence.

• Read Michelle Sieff’s latest piece on Ghana in the World Politics Review.