The One-State Solution Is A...Fraud? (More Agha/Malley)

Who says it is a fraud?

Marty Peretz.

Here:

The one-state solution is a fraud. Those who press it know that it is a fraud. And those who publish it do, as well.

But, of course, he is thinking of a one state dominated by the Arabs due to demographics and the desire of the Jewish state not to be considered a non-democratic state.

He even gives some history:

Let's face facts: every Israel prime minister except Yitzhak Shamir has favored a two-state solution. It was the essence of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine which was the underpinning of Israel's international legality. Ben Gurion was for a two-state solution, and Sharret and Eshkol and Allon and Golda Meir and Begin and Rabin and Peres and Sharon and Olmert and Netanyahu, too.

Marty, I don't think Menachem Begin supported a second "Palestinian/Arab" state in the territory of the British Mandate - and in fact I am positively sure of that. Jordan was more than enough for Begin. And Sharon held to the "Jordan is Palestine" idea even to the end, although his end is somewhere neither here nor there at the moment.

And you're right on the mark here:

Had the Arabs accepted a two-state solution after the Six Day War, they would have gotten everything back that they lost, save for the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. But that is history that almost no one knows which is because almost no one knows any history at all.

And Peretz goes one:

...of course, the major impediment for the Arabs of Palestine and the Arabs outside Palestine is that Israel is and can only be a Jewish state. There is a certain insane chutzpah for the Arabs to object to the Jewish character of Israel. The fact is that its Jewish character was written into its very charter by the General Assembly 62 years ago. Indeed, the whole idea of peoplehood which informed the Wilsonian framework of the post-World War I formula for peace after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire is deeply enmeshed with Zionism. The envisioned Jewish commonwealth was as clear as a nation-state could be...

Marty, you could have quoted the League of Nations decision, based on Balfour:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

Non-Jews, not Arabs, not Muslims, not Christians. Simply put: there are Jews who deserve a national home in the area of their national homeland and everyone else gets less than that - no political right but full civil, personal and religious rights.

And there was nothing known as 'Palestinian Arabs' as an "existing community" at that time.

And he bangs away at Agha and Malley, as I have done:

Why the essential Jewish character of Israel should be problematic when all of the neighboring states--those actually adjoining and also the non-abutters--define themselves as both Arab and Muslim are exempt from the tribulations of self-definition is difficult to assess. It's not that any of those states are at all achievers. In fact, there is no Arab state that is a success, let alone a secular success.

Imagine for a moment the one-state solution in historic Palestine west of the Jordan. What peace will there be? What economic progress? What laws and what justice? What science? What kind of class system? Try to deny that all of this would be a nightmare.

Goodness. Such (deserved) anti-Arab flack in the pages of the liberal TNR.

But there is always the possibility of one state (Israel) and another, less-than-a-state entity for the Arabs that can't live among Jews.

Why not try it.

And as for the demographic/democracy threats, it's all not really there. Not in the numbers and not in the presumed apartheid.

It's all in the minds of Arabs who can't live under a non-Muslim regime, that's all.