I am surprised and disappointed to see that Bob from Brockley - a normally sensible left-wing blogger - appears to have embraced the one state solution. The reasons he offers are the following:
Many of my friends on the anti-anti-Zionist left think that the one state solution is essentially equivalent to the genocidal destruction of the Jewish nation. They argue that the Arabs (who have demography on their side, and formidable military allies in the form of the Saudis, Iran and so on) have proven themselves unable to share space with Jews. I reject this fatalistic view, and having recently been in Northern Ireland am more confident than ever that we can forge our own futures if we unshackle our imaginations. It feels to me that the idea of the two state solution [I think this must be a typo and that he means “one state solution”. Otherwise the rest of the text makes no sense] is steadily gaining ground, not just among the hardcore advocates of a “free Palestine”, but among younger Jews in both Israel and the diaspora. This slow awakening comes with a growing sense that another Zionism is possible, and a recovery of the memory of pre-1948 Zionism, the Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Joseph Trumpledor, AD Gordon and Judah Magnes, which called for a “national home” for the Jews and not necessarily a nation-state. By the way, I have at various other times in my life called for a one state solution also for South Africa, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Ireland and Cyprus.
Anyone who still believes that a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River can be brought about without exterminating and expelling the vast majority of Jews living in the territory should watch this sordid little fantasy about the “liberation” of Tel Aviv, courtesy of the genocidaires of Hamas.
Declaring in the LA Times that “the problem is Zionism,” novelist Ben Ehrenreich opens his article with a 1944 quote from the then President of the American Council for Judaism describing the goal of a Jewish state as a “Hitlerian concept.” This is yet another display of what is fast becoming a tiresome rhetorical technique; that words uttered against Zionism by a Jew contain intrinsic merit and privileged insight.
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.
Ed Morgan is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. In this fascinating column, he relates two recent experiences which persuaded him that rational, informed debate is not always the norm in the ivory tower.
Writing in Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper, leading Palestinian intellectual and Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh runs through the reasons why the “one-state solution” is enjoying a revival. Nusseibeh, however, is emphatic in his rejection of a unitary state between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
As in the United States, conversation in Europe today will doubtless be dominated by the decision of six central banks, among them the European Central Bank, to cut interest rates by half a point in yet another measure to stem financial chaos. Very few people will be talking about another challenge with potentially far-reaching consequences: whether the Belgian state remains intact.
The Mennonite Central Committee, one of the religious groups which broke bread with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his recent visit to New York, has issued a statement about that encounter.
Luz Gómez García takes the one state solution out for a spin here in today’s El País. Channeling the sainted Edward Said as an authority, she quotes him as believing the one state solution, in the form of a single bi-national state, to be both desirable and inevitable for the following unconvincing reasons,
UPDATE: The text of Ahmadinejad’s address to the UN, in which he claimed that “Zionists…have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries,” can be read here.
Perched in a suite at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in town for the UN General Assembly, has been making nice with the press.
There is a grim irony in the fact that, in a year marking the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s creation, mainstream media interest in the so-called “one state solution” - something that would signal Israel’s demise - has been unprecedented.
