Back to the future
There are, writes
Marwan Bishara, only two options for solving the Palestinian/Israeli conundrum
Imagine the following scenario: the new Israeli government of generals Sharon/Mofaz (axe of good!), determined to break the Palestinians once and for all, finally "wins the war". Palestinians stop their uprising and send Arafat away on a long vacation. They raise white flags over the rooftops, burn their ID cards and weapons in the public squares with fanfare. They transform their ministries and police stations into schools, they take flowers to the Jewish settlements and shower the army check points with rice.
Ariel Sharon's victory could prove Israel's loss. Because, the-morning-after, Palestinians will put themselves at the mercy of the "Jewish state" that has ruled over them for decades and ask for their legal right to citizenship. After all, sharing the land is better than dividing the homeland -- Zionism's nightmare. But that's far too long term for many Palestinians and perhaps too utopian.
Now imagine the following scenario: The Palestinians get smart. They dissolve their government and official institutions and 30,000 armed men go underground. They confine their confrontation with Israel to the West Bank and Gaza and adopt a three-pronged strategy. A fraternity emerges based on steadfastness helped by social solidarity; there is a consensus-based national unity with coordination among all the political factions, and resistance is based on the international right to resist foreign military occupation. Many Israelis, like Westerners and the rest of the world, would support freedom from occupation. In time, Israel would be forced to withdraw its army and settlers from the occupied West bank and Gaza.
But back to the real world. Israel's government continues the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza while its army destroys all facets of authority and symbols of statehood in the autonomous territories. These deliberate policies have disrupted the geographic continuity of any promised Palestinian state and diminished its capacity to survive in the future.
Sharon will continue to develop a dual system of occupation: Israeli Jews and settlers will continue to be privileged as Palestinians are cantonised behind networks of by-pass roads built for the use of settlers. The Palestinian leadership will continue to tow the American line, following Washington's roadmap to nowhere. Governments may change but there will be no break in the move from one disappointment and humiliation to another as the Palestinian polity and economy is systematically destroyed. Suicide bombings will continue. Israeli oppression will intensify.
The truth is that neither side can win the war without either the coercive transfer of hundreds of thousands of settlers or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The legal arguments that support the first option, and the illegality of the second -- a war crime and crime against humanity -- will count for nothing.
Military occupation is temporary by nature and entails physical departure to end it. Apartheid, on the other hand, is dismantled. Today, Israelis and Palestinians live between military occupation and apartheid. If they choose to get rid of the system that reduced them to conflict and war -- namely Zionism -- Palestinians and Israelis would not have to get rid of each other in order to "win the peace". And once Palestinians and Israelis are convinced that undoing this Zionist-based apartheid is easier than eradicating the accumulated results of three decades-worth of occupation and settlements, a one-state solution will emerge as the best way out of the deadlock. For the Palestinians this means accepting Jewish settlers as neighbours. For the Israelis it means accepting Palestinians as fellow citizens. For both, Jerusalem will be an open capital.
For many this will sound far-fetched. The Palestinians are not yet ready for such a solution: instead they demand self-determination and independence in their own state. Israel, obsessed with demographics, will never accept it, say the doubters, though one should bear in mind that in the past Israel vowed never to negotiate with the PLO, never to divide Jerusalem.
Within two decades the "Jewish" state's own Palestinian citizens, so-called Arab-Israelis, will comprise one third of Israel's population. Then what? Ultimately, Israel needs to address demography through democracy. Democracy cannot be salvaged by ethnic cleansing.
Ironically, though Palestinians and Jews were never officially wedded, they have co-habited, for better and worse, for almost a century. Even when the UN recommended in 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states, it foresaw an economic unity. And had the UN realised then the instability that would arise from partition it would certainly have adopted the minority recommendation of a single, federated state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The country that emerges would be composed of a Jewish and an Arab entity with full self- government. The people would elect a transitional assembly that will declare its independence after the UN certifies that it has formulated a constitution.
Differences over Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, the Palestinian minority in Israel, Israeli security, borders, water, settlements and other regional questions could all be resolved within the framework of a single federal or confederal state. A democratic constitutional state is capable of guaranteeing the religious rights of Jews, Christians and Moslems, the ethnic/national rights of Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
The state would provide equal rights and privileges for all its citizens, Palestinians and Jews. Both peoples would have immigration rights, including the right of return for Palestinians. This process could be regulated by a joint Jewish/Palestinian commission according to the bi- national state's capacity to absorb new citizens. The new state would automatically enjoy friendly and peaceful relations with its neighbours, furnishing the region with a model of reconciliation and coexistence.
For the time being, though, none of this is viable. Israeli tanks roll down the streets of besieged Palestinian camps and towns destroying homes and instilling fear and defiance among the Palestinians. Palestinian suicide bombers continue to disrupt life in Israel. But once Israel realises it cannot rule over another people using all its force all the time, and the Palestinians realise they need a national strategy presaged on live and let live and not die and let die, then it will be clear that there are, really, only two options. If they cannot live together then they must divorce, as amicably, as fairly, as possible.
