6 ms·

Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state,

by js8 1y ago

Is two-state solution possible? Just look at the map of the territories under palestinian control, they're bantustans. Israel/Palestine is factually one state, which simply doesn't accept half of its population as citizens. You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. So support for 2-state is just a form of delaying the inevitable. I am now firm believer in one-state solution as the most fair one. Peter Beinart has some good arguments in its favor. And I think it would be a poetic justice for all the racist settlers (or islamists) to have the people they hate as their neighbors.

sjapkee 1y ago
[flagged]
- falcor84 1y ago
  You reminded me of this interview with Harlan Ellison that was making the rounds a while ago [0]. I think there's some kernel of truth there. I've heard a lot of people from both sides say that they prefer to die than to leave the land. So following up on Harlan's proposal, I would be in favour of the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other to do so, until (hopefully) they sort out their differences and decide to declare peace and join the international community. [0] https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other This roughly describes the current situation. Israelis are internationally mobile. And while Palestinians are not, it’s hard to imagine enough of them emigrating to destabilise the current conflict conditions.
  - pyrale 1y ago
    So basically the international community should allow a genocide by "whoever" is stronger?
    - falcor84 1y ago
      Here's my phrasing: the international community should not expend resources to support people who prefer to fight and die for their land than to live peacefully elsewhere.
      - pyrale 1y ago
        One side, a ragtag group of civilians who barely find food, and the other side, a well-armed modern army without too many moral dilemmas. "Let's not spend resources to support either" looks awfully like allowing a genocide.
  - nradov 1y ago
    There is no such thing as an "international community". No other country wants to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees. Regardless of whether this is fair or not, they are seen as a security risk.
alkyon 1y ago
At the moment, the two sides only agree on wishing the other dead. So even in the ideal world it is a very remote possibility.
- Balgair 1y ago
  I also think we passed the window for a two state solution. Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation. If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
  - ckemere 1y ago
    It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there. Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
      - ckemere 1y ago
        My point was that AFAIK, Palestinians would include Jews in the potential citizens of a Palestine. So that the conflict is not between two ethnonationalist groups. There certainly is rhetoric around the ethnic origin of some Israeli citizens being Northern European rather than middle eastern, so perhaps the original claim has some validity.
guelo 1y ago
Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  > Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. Who have they bombed recently? I make it Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Gaza (is this bombing themselves? Palestine?). It’s darkly hilarious how terrible neighbouring Israel would be.
Adverblessly 1y ago
A one-state solution will just result in a civil war, followed swiftly by an actual genocide (i.e. 5,000,000+ dead).
- js8 1y ago
  They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states. Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table. You need to bring some argument.
  - Adverblessly 1y ago
    > They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states. Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war? The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position). > You need to bring some argument. When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
    - js8 1y ago
      > The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. In the modern world, if you accept universal human rights, every minority in the world has to accept that it's a minority, and every majority in the world has to learn to accept the minority. In addition, everyone is a minority is some sense and somewhere - depends on your worldview. What you're saying is a very condescending (and frankly antisemitic) claim - that Israelis (or Jews) are somehow "special" in being so stupid to never accept this. Of course they can accept it, just like everybody else in the world learns to accept there are other ethnicities and races. Americans, for example, learned to accept it. Likewise, all Jews outside Israel have accepted being a minority. It's not really a problem that racists make it out to be (at the end of the day, people individual differences and conflicts trump most group differences). > When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm That's why modern biethnic countries have laws and other systems that prevent that - see my comment above. A good example is Belgium. The point is, you can change the perception from 2-states to functioning 1-state without having to give up anything related to each ethnicity's cultural heritage. Has been done many times in history.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Is two-state solution possible? More than a one-state solution. Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will. In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.
jdietrich 1y ago
>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism. A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975). A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed. The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.
- istjohn 1y ago
  The UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it. Israel has never made a prolonged effort to build the mutual trust necessary to reach a negotiated settlement. During the Oslo Accords, the Israeli settler population nearly doubled. One only need observe how Palestinian territory has shrunk decade after decade ever since 1948 to see that it is not merely Palestinian intransigence that has prevented peace.

by js8 1y ago

sjapkee 1y ago

[flagged]

falcor84 1y ago
You reminded me of this interview with Harlan Ellison that was making the rounds a while ago [0]. I think there's some kernel of truth there. I've heard a lot of people from both sides say that they prefer to die than to leave the land. So following up on Harlan's proposal, I would be in favour of the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other to do so, until (hopefully) they sort out their differences and decide to declare peace and join the international community. [0] https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > the international community owning up to the situation and offering full asylum and permanent resettlement with a short-term path to citizenship to every single person living in Israel & Palestine who prefers to live than to stay there, and then just letting those who prefer to stay and kill each other This roughly describes the current situation. Israelis are internationally mobile. And while Palestinians are not, it’s hard to imagine enough of them emigrating to destabilise the current conflict conditions.
- pyrale 1y ago
  So basically the international community should allow a genocide by "whoever" is stronger?
  - falcor84 1y ago
    Here's my phrasing: the international community should not expend resources to support people who prefer to fight and die for their land than to live peacefully elsewhere.
    - pyrale 1y ago
      One side, a ragtag group of civilians who barely find food, and the other side, a well-armed modern army without too many moral dilemmas. "Let's not spend resources to support either" looks awfully like allowing a genocide.
- nradov 1y ago
  There is no such thing as an "international community". No other country wants to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees. Regardless of whether this is fair or not, they are seen as a security risk.

alkyon 1y ago

At the moment, the two sides only agree on wishing the other dead. So even in the ideal world it is a very remote possibility.

Balgair 1y ago
I also think we passed the window for a two state solution. Having two ethno-nationalist states next to each other is bad. Giving them a very complicated border is worse. Having them hate each other with centuries of history and territory claims is even worse still. Then giving them both, let alone one, access to the global arms market is asking for never ending wars of annihilation. If you could design a situation that was maximally terrible for neighboring states, the two state solution would be it.
- ckemere 1y ago
  It is unclear to me that Palestinians represent an “ethnonationalist” block. My understanding is that the definition of “Jewish” for the purposes of immigration to Israel is a somewhat precise combination of genealogical or religious criteria. But I don’t know of an equivalent definition for Palestinian. Can someone educate me on this? In the absence of such a definition, it seems that the primary conflict is whether Palestine should be specifically designated as a home for all “Jews” or merely as a home for the people that currently live there. Again - I’d love further education about legal definitions.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Any ethnonationalist definition is inherently subjective and thus inherently fuzzy. It’s an exercise that derives from a time when some thought one could scientifically classify races.
    - ckemere 1y ago
      My point was that AFAIK, Palestinians would include Jews in the potential citizens of a Palestine. So that the conflict is not between two ethnonationalist groups. There certainly is rhetoric around the ethnic origin of some Israeli citizens being Northern European rather than middle eastern, so perhaps the original claim has some validity.

guelo 1y ago

Besides, Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. A Palestinian state would be Lebanon x 1000, never ending war and no respect for borders. The real problem is Europe and America's funding and insane levels of political and diplomatic support for Israel, to the point that we are willing to gut international law and even our own citizen's civil rights to prop up the zionist invasion.

lostlogin 1y ago
> Israel sees themselves as having the right to bomb and invade their neighboring states at will. Who have they bombed recently? I make it Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Gaza (is this bombing themselves? Palestine?). It’s darkly hilarious how terrible neighbouring Israel would be.

Adverblessly 1y ago

A one-state solution will just result in a civil war, followed swiftly by an actual genocide (i.e. 5,000,000+ dead).

js8 1y ago
They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states. Look at my proposal above. War didn't happen in postapartheid JAR, despite everybody saying it would. What would people fight for, after all? They are all citizens of the same (biethnic) country, that's the perspective the world "leaders" should bring to the table. You need to bring some argument.
- Adverblessly 1y ago
  > They already are in a civil war, if you stop (wrongly) looking at Israel/Palestine as two different states. Okay, so in your opinion, there is exactly one state that is currently engaged in a civil war. How would world leaders telling them "You are actually one country engaged in a civil war" stop that war? The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. The muslim arab majority would not accept a jewish minority living within them, they consider them foreign colonialists that need to be purged (and you may have heard of one or two groups currently leading those muslim arabs that have that exact official position). > You need to bring some argument. When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre (picked as an example because of the "humour" of having to disambiguate it from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1517_Hebron_attacks ) no one thinks going back to that is viable.
  - js8 1y ago
    > The Jewish minority in that case would not accept living in a muslim arab state since they consider Israel to be the sole refuge for jews in the world, the only place in the world where they don't have to be a minority. In the modern world, if you accept universal human rights, every minority in the world has to accept that it's a minority, and every majority in the world has to learn to accept the minority. In addition, everyone is a minority is some sense and somewhere - depends on your worldview. What you're saying is a very condescending (and frankly antisemitic) claim - that Israelis (or Jews) are somehow "special" in being so stupid to never accept this. Of course they can accept it, just like everybody else in the world learns to accept there are other ethnicities and races. Americans, for example, learned to accept it. Likewise, all Jews outside Israel have accepted being a minority. It's not really a problem that racists make it out to be (at the end of the day, people individual differences and conflicts trump most group differences). > When Israel was "a single biethnic country" this was the norm That's why modern biethnic countries have laws and other systems that prevent that - see my comment above. A good example is Belgium. The point is, you can change the perception from 2-states to functioning 1-state without having to give up anything related to each ethnicity's cultural heritage. Has been done many times in history.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> Is two-state solution possible? More than a one-state solution. Would it be nice if people could get along and not require militarised borders to keep them from killing each other? Sure. This was essentially the colonial assumption when the Middle East (and Africa’s) modern borders were drawn—that local preferences could be overcome by force of will. In reality, where you draw borders on a map matters less than the people on the ground’s identities and guns.

jdietrich 1y ago

>You could also say that "two-state solution" has been tried in 1948, but (for whatever reasons) didn't work out. The Arab world overwhelmingly rejected the UN Partition Plan in principle, which led directly to the 1948 Palestine war and the first Arab-Israeli war. Likewise, the signing of the Oslo Accords (and the rejection of those accords by Hamas, PIJ and other factions within the PLO) led directly to the Second Intifada. Most of the Arab world has now conceded that Israel isn't going anywhere and huge steps have been made in normalising Arab-Israeli relations, but Palestinian politics is still dominated by a fundamentally futile anti-Zionist absolutism. A credible option of full statehood and international recognition has been on the table for nearly eighty years, but Palestinians have consistently failed to establish a workable consensus on taking up that option. The PLO's intransigence has alienated most of their allies in the region, primarily because they instigated civil wars in both Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1975). A one-state solution is no solution at all while there remain extremists on both sides who are simply unwilling to coexist; unless Israel can reign in the religious right and the Palestinians can establish a political consensus in favour of coexistence, it's a straightforward path to war. There's no "poetic justice" in making people who hate each other live together, just an inevitable perpetuation of bloodshed. The political debates about land rights are intractably complex, but the fundamental realpolitik question is about how much the Palestinians are willing to suffer for the principle of "from the river to the sea". Israel is militarily dominant and is likely to remain so regardless of how much international pressure is brought to bear. In simple practical terms, the ball is in the Palestinian court and it is for them to decide whether to seriously engage in a two (or three) state solution with international support, or whether to continue pursuing an unwinnable conflict. A post-Netanyahu Israel is highly likely to support a serious two-state solution, but simply isn't going to accept a one-state solution; even if you believe a one-state solution to be the only just outcome, it isn't a workable outcome.

istjohn 1y ago
The UN partition plan was a plan to take a huge chunk of Palestine and hand it to foreign settlers. Of course, Palestinians did not love it. Israel has never made a prolonged effort to build the mutual trust necessary to reach a negotiated settlement. During the Oslo Accords, the Israeli settler population nearly doubled. One only need observe how Palestinian territory has shrunk decade after decade ever since 1948 to see that it is not merely Palestinian intransigence that has prevented peace.