The Two-State Solution Question

The question that is on the table in relation to the future of Judea and Samaria is not the "Double D" - either lose Israel's democracy or via Arab demography lose Israel as a Jewish state - but rather this one, as expressed by Raphaella Segal here and slightly rephrased by me:

what is more manageable - a threat to Israel from annexing the area, which has 700,000 voting-age Palestinians, or the security threat stemming from a two-state solution with the topographical domination the new "Palestine" would control?

Ron Breiman, a friend, has published this today:

If we weren't slamming our heads into the wall but were rather opening them to new ideas, it would be possible to set the Jordan River as the border between Israel to the west and Jordan/Palestine to the east.  There are some who are scared of a demographic threat, claiming that if we don't withdraw from our land there will soon be an Arab majority west of the Jordan River. However, it is precisely for this reason that supporters of a Palestinian state should ensure that such a state won't absorb Arab refugees, who would cause there to be an Arab majority west of the Jordan River.

And there are those who utter the catchy slogan "them there, us here," referring to the Arabs who live in the land of Israel. This phrase is of course false and misleading. It means a "peace" based on the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and while keeping Israeli Arabs in Israel. Enlightened individuals and peace seekers should rule out ethnic cleansing, both of Jews and of Arabs. Anyone who advocates a ban on Jews living in Judea and Samaria isn't enlightened and isn't a peace seeker. Ultimately, such a "peace" would turn Israel into a non-Jewish and non-democratic country, and therefore devoid of peace.

There also other concerns that mitigate against the two-state solution, among them -

Will the Arabs recognize the Jewish national ethos?

Will they implement, until the arrangements are signed, peace consciousness educational programs to raise a new generation more willing to accept Israel and Zionism?

Will the "Palestinian identity narrative" of Israel's Arabs be rejected and reversed?

Will the PA's President Mahmoud Abbas drop the insistence that Israel must return fully to the June 4, 1967 borders and thus refuse to acknowledge that "territorial compromise" applies to both parties?

As for demography, which I have dealt with numerous times (here; and here, recently) this is from today:

The population of Israel is expected to reach 11.4 million people by the end of 2035, according to an updated forecast published by the Central Bureau of Statistics. According to a more optimistic estimation, it is possible that the population could reach 12.4 million people.
• 73% of the entire population will be Jewish by 2035
• 23% of the entire population will be Arab by 2035

...[out of a total of] 8.8 million. The Arab population will be 2.6 million -- 23% of the entire population (nearly one in every four Israelis). There will be 8.3 million Jews by the end of 2035 (73% of the entire population); the Muslim population will be 2.3 million (20% of the population); the Druze will count for 1.6% of the population with 185,000 people; and Christian Arabs will account for 1.3% with 152,000 people.

and supports to prognosis of data.

Here is Jeff Jacoby, writing about The myth of the inevitable Jewish minority in Israel in the Boston Globe:

Yasser Arafat liked to say that the ultimate weapon in his arsenal against the Jewish state was “the womb of the Arab woman.”...

...As the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics began its first census in the West Bank and Gaza in 1997, the bureau’s director, Hassan Abu Libdeh, assured The New York Times that the results would amount to nothing less than “a civil intifada.” In 2005, the bureau predicted that Jews would be a minority in “historic Palestine” (i.e., west of the Jordan River) by 2010. Now it says the tipping point will come by 2020.

Don’t count on it.

Arafat’s boast notwithstanding, Palestinian women, like women throughout the Muslim world, are bearing far fewer children than they used to. Within Israel proper, the birth rate among Muslims has trended steadily downward and stands now at 3.5 children per woman. It is even lower for Palestinians in the West Bank — just 2.91, according to the CIA Factbook...But while Palestinian birth rates have dramatically declined, Jewish birth rates in Israel have been heading up. Israel now has the highest fertility level of any modern industrialized nation. The fertility gap between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, a yawning 5.8 in the 1960s, is just 0.5 today. Defying longstanding conventional wisdom, writes former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, it is Israel’s Jewish population that is undergoing a remarkable surge, rising from about 80,000 births per year in 1995 to 130,000 in 2012. (The annual number of Israeli Arab births has held steady at between 35,000 and 40,000).

Don't gamble with Israel's future on unreliable statistics.

Or as Zehava Englard wrote:

Not only is the price of the One State Solution affordable, Israel can’t afford NOT to implement this plan of action.

^

The Hamas One-State Solution

Zahhar: Israeli borders will disappear

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahhar on Wednesday said a new era of civilization was dawning in which borders created by Israel will disappear.

Israel’s borders are not determined by nationality or identity, al-Zahhar said in a speech at the headquarters of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

I wonder, if the borders disappear, what happens to Israel.

Does he mean Israel disappears?

Is that a civilized option?

^

Best Pessimistic News Yet

My good acquaintance, Daoub Kuttab pointed me here, where I read:

Ahmed Qurei...was quoted as saying that the time for establishing a true Palestinian state had passed.
"We must not continue to deceive ourselves and our people. The chance for the establishment of a real Palestinian state, that would be truly viable and enjoy territorial continuity, is over. We therefore must seek an alternative, namely the establishment of a unitary state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean in which all people can live equally as citizens irrespective of their religion of ethnicity," Qurei said.

..."I believe that everyone has lost hope for the two-state solution. And I think that President Mahmoud Abbas is one of those who believe that pursuing the vision of having a viable Palestinian state has been reduced to a sort of wishful thinking given Israel's phenomenal settlement expansion. I think the one-state solution will be the Palestinian strategy for the future."

...Some PA pundits have speculated that Abbas might resort to dismantling the PA once and for all and let the international community take care of the situation.

The "international community" will take care of nothing. Your best bet, Pals., is to make peace and accept Israel and liove a very good life. ^

Two States for Two Populations

From this academic paper, entitled "The Unexplored Option: Jewish Settlements in a Palestinian State" by David M. Phillips, Professor at Northeastern University School of Law: -

...Israeli settlements, first and foremost, need not be an obstacle to peace for the reason that their location may influence the eventual borders between Israel and a Palestinian state, but need not determine such borders. Just as Palestinians can and do live within the predominantly Jewish state of Israel, Israeli Jews can live within a predominantly Palestinian nation...

...The approximately 20 percent of Israel’s present population that is Arab does not so threaten Israel’s Jewish character. Similarly, if the raison d’etre of a future Palestinian state is to provide a political sovereignty for Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians, whether or not they reside in that state, Palestine’s Arab identity should not be threatened by a Jewish minority that would become a majority. Two conclusions flow from this construct. The first of these is that, indeed, some Jewish settlements like Maale Adumim that are contiguous or substantially contiguous to the 1967 borders of Israel will surely remain part of Israel in any final settlement, with land swaps...even some of the most pro-Palestinian Israeli politicians, like former Foreign Minister Yossi Beilen...acknowledge the need for border adjustments that would integrate into Israel settlements that border on the old armistice lines of Israel...

The second conclusion is that the remainder of the settlements and the Jewish settlers there, including those in the Hebron area, need not be the obstacle to a peace settlement that is commonly portrayed. Even if close to 100,000 settlers remain (a rather high estimate, if major settlement blocs contiguous to the Green Line are incorporated into Israel in exchange for other Israeli land), that number would probably constitute no more than 2 percent of the population of such a Palestinian state and probably less. The land area of those settlements would constitute considerably less than 2 percent of the land under Palestinian sovereignty.

Let us return to the African-American analogy tendered at the beginning of this article. Most Americans, especially liberal Americans, would never think that the solution to conflict within a predominantly white ethnic neighborhood, whether Irish, Italian or other, if an African-American family moved into it would be to remove the African-American family. Rather, substantial resources would be devoted to insuring that the neighbors respect the new inhabitants. Instead of reiterations of the assumption that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, thought and resources should be devoted to a serious discussion of the context and conditions under which Jews might continue to live on the West Bank. While both reason and justice support the creation and co-existence of two states west of the Jordan River, neither justice nor other reason is served by requiring that one of these states be free of Jews.

Isn't that a reasonable review of the situation?

^

New Book: Only Israel Will Be A State West of the Jordan River

Recently, there was a Sovereignty Now conference and I know the Yesha Council is planning a similar campaign idea and now we have this:

Dear Friends,

...While teaching Middle East Studies for 35 years at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I researched and wrote extensively on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian question, minorities in the Middle East, Islam, and U.S. foreign policy.

My new book "ONLY ISRAEL WEST OF THE RIVER" defends the Jewish national state narrative, rejects the Palestinian state idea, argues in favor of Jerusalem united under Israeli rule, elucidates the Jewish settlement enterprise, while offering a coherent paradigm to contend with the Israeli-Palestinian conflct.

ONLY ISRAEL WEST OF THE Jordan river is my core proposal to generate new political discourse and conflict-resolution toward a vision of peace. My book cuts through the fog of disinformation on behalf of reality, truth, and justice.

For a learning experience on the most controversial and potentially explosive political issue of our times, order now ONLY ISRAEL WEST OF THE RIVER at: www.createspace.com/3584834 or on www.Amazon.com at list price $8.99.

Mordechai is a good friend and has written this previously in a book review:

...The use of terminology such as "‘the occupied territories" and the definition of West Bank settlements as an "obstacle" to peace exhibit standard pietism...alleged Palestinian moderation, though sullied by the rise of Hamas with its Islamic agenda and jihad ethos, is conventionally contrasted with Israeli obstinacy in these works.

Two alternative explanations can be proposed to explain the impasse. One relates to the objective parameters characterizing the political paralysis: the tiny geographic size of the country in which the aspirations and growth of the two national communities must be satisfied; the complexity, rather than criminality, of the Jewish settlement enterprise across the land; and the intermixing of the Jewish-Arab populations in the Jerusalem urban metropolis. A second explanation relates to the explicit Palestinian objection to recognize Israel as a Jewish state...

The entire political edifice of the Oslo paradigm, based on PLO moderation and the two-state prescription, is challenged by the inherent logic embedded in the sacred doctrine of rogue Palestinian nationalism, and also in the transient character of a political solution limited only to the post-67 borders. Indeed, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be less than a political solution for the Palestinian problem and more of a "final solution" to the Jewish problem. Perhaps sentimental optimism may eventually give way to a stroke of realism in consideration of such political affairs.

...A new political paradigm for conflict-resolution will arise and acquire public support only when, after stages of disappointment and disintegration of cooperative efforts, the inability of the old paradigm to solve the problem at issue is recognized. The two-state solution seems neat and simple, but is unworkable. The Palestinians and the Israelis both want more than the 1967 lines offer; neither is willing to consider those lines as their optimal choice...The new paradigm will presumably posit not two states - Israel and Palestine - west of the Jordan River, but only one, meaning that there will not be a third state between Israel and Jordan. The one-state solution will forge in new ways the parameters of its social-demographic and political-constitutional makeup.

^

A New "Green-Lined" Post

On the one-state solution, at the Jerusalem Post.

Here.

^

This Is A "Yiddishe Kop"?

Professor Yehuda Shenhav:

Rather than a two-state solution, then I suggest to look at the conflict from a different angle which renders the traditional political categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’ irrelevant. First and foremost, the Jewish society in Israel needs to understand that a return to 1948 is an essential condition to resolving the conflict. Israel has to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories and to treat this issue as the most salient issue of the conflict. It requires a solution for the Palestinian refugees problem, including their return under conditions which will not endanger the lives of the Jews. I lay out these conditions in the book.

I also suggest that we need to think about re-partitioning of the space based on multiple sovereignties and spheres of control, allowing for the return of Palestinian refugees without jeopardizing the achievements of the Jews during the last sixty years. At the same time it also allows for some of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank to remain intact, conditioned on accepting the broader plan and providing compensations. If we accept the 1948 paradigm it can turn Israel’s political map on its head.

The liberal Zionists in Israel who support a two states solution do it out of fear of the Palestinans. The idea of a Jewish and democratic state is an oxymoron since Israel is a democracy which is founded on a constant state of exception and emergency measures. The Israeli liberal left is a leading force in denying 1948 and the refugees problem. I suggest to create productive coalitions among Palestinians, the Israeli radical left, and democratic groups among the Jewish settlers who reject the two state solution but express desire for political justice to replace the current apartheid system of rule.

Why One State Now

Let's quote Emanuele Ottolenghi:-

Three times in the past 10 years, the Palestinians were presented with comprehensive peace proposals that would establish a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza, would put its internationally recognized capital in Arab Jerusalem, would offer a solidly funded, reasonable and dignified solution to the refugee issue, and would put an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict once and for all. First, it was Ehud Barak’s Camp David proposal. Then it was the Clinton Parameters. Then it was Olmert’s peace plan. Each time, confronted with an Israeli prime minister who was ready, pen in hand, to put his name on the dotted line and face the fury and discontent of part of his political constituency to take a risky peace gamble, Palestine’s acclaimed peace seekers — Yassir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas — walked away.

This history alone should encourage U.S. and European leaders to recognize that the burden of proof, when it comes to peace credentials and readiness for compromise, is on the Palestinian side, not the Israeli one. But history lessons and Aristotelian logic do not always intersect.

For one thing, the Palestinians have learned that every time they say no, sooner or later pressure will be brought to bear on Israel, and a new offer — better than the previous one — will be coming their way. Meanwhile, their tireless efforts to undermine, isolate, delegitimize, and demonize Israel in the international arena strengthen their bargaining position over time and enable them to expect more for less.

This, incidentally, offers at least a partial answer to David Hazony’s post from the other day, when my colleague was understandably puzzled about a growing support for a one-state solution among Palestinians. Why would a national movement give up its dream and settle for such a solution? After all, the Palestinians never seriously entertained this notion when a handful of Jewish intellectuals were toying with the idea in the 1930s and early 1940s. Brith Shalom and Ihud, the two small organizations that counted Yehuda Magnes and Martin Buber in their ranks, after all, not only could not get traction within the Yishuv — they never even got a single Arab leader interested in discussing their vision of a bi-national state for the Palestine Mandate, where Jews would forever be relegated to the role of a minority.

Clearly, the difference is that, back then, the Zionist movement was weak, its staying power in Palestine was questionable, its backing from Britain was waning, and its reservoir of support in Europe’s Jewish Diaspora under mortal threat of annihilation. Why would the Palestinians concede little when they believed — as they certainly did then — that they could have it all?

History offers some reckoning and what looked like a flight of fancy in the mid-1930s is more attractive today. A bi-national state is actually more promising than a nation-state, at least for Palestinian intellectuals, not so much because it would force them to renounce their aspirations but because it would keep their nationalist dream alive — a dream whereby, as Professor Fouad Ajami once so artfully put it, “there still lurks in the Palestinian and Arab imagination a view, depicted by the Moroccan historian Abdallah Laroui, that “on a certain day, everything would be obliterated and instantaneously reconstructed and the new inhabitants would leave, as if by magic, the land they had despoiled.” Arafat knew the power of this redemptive idea. He must have reasoned that it is safer to ride that idea, and that there will always be another day and another offer.”

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.

Goldberg Finally 'Gets' It

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in a book review of Benny Morris' new book:

In March, Muhammad Dahlan, a former chief of one of the Palestinian Authority’s multifarious secret police organizations, and once a tacit ally of the C.I.A., defended Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, from the charge, made by Hamas, that it had previously recognized Israel’s right to exist.

“They say that Fatah has asked them to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and this is a big deception,” Dahlan said. “For the 1,000th time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Rather we are asking Hamas not to do so, because Fatah never recognized Israel’s right to exist.”

This was not a helpful statement, at least not to the peace-processors in Washington and in Europe, and to their diminishing band of confederates in Israel and the Palestinian territories. But Dahlan’s comment helps buttress the main argument of Benny Morris’s new book, “One State, Two States.” Morris, a professor of history at Ben-­Gurion University in Israel, argues that Arab rejectionism is so profound a force that only the terminally obtuse could believe that Palestinians will ever acquiesce to a state comprised solely of the West Bank and Gaza...

...

Morris is equally dismissive of those who believe that a so-called one-state solution might work in place of a two-state solution. Muslim anti-Semitism and the deep cultural divide that separates Arab from Jew, among other realities, make this notion a fantasy. In this short book Morris asserts there is no one-state solution to the Middle East crisis, and no two-state solution. Morris does promote the possibility of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan, but he makes the case anemically and cursorily.

This is not to say that Morris isn’t convincing at times, for instance when he says that one-staters, like the constitutional scholar Daniel Lazar and the historian Tony Judt, who envision a utopian post-Zionist future, in fact are calling for Israel to be eliminated.

Yet Morris, like Judt, has an almost irretrievably dark vision of Israel’s future as a Jewish-majority state. The difference is that Morris does not believe that Israel’s mistakes — even the settlement movement that colonized the West Bank — are what might doom it. The culprit is the implacable fanaticism of Arab Islamists, who are unwilling to accept a Jewish national presence in what is thought of as Arab land, a position that hasn’t changed since the meeting of the third Palestine Arab Congress, in 1920, which rejected Jewish claims to the land since “Palestine is the holy land of the two Christian and Muslim worlds.”...

VOA Report Is A Bit Misleading

VOA broadcast a story recently:

Obama Endorses Two-State Solution for Arab-Israeli Conflict

...President Barack Obama sent his Middle East envoy to the region to kick-start a process to end the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The effort will focus on the so-called "two-state solution," which would establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip coexisting peacefully alongside the Jewish state.

...Obama sent his special envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, to the region...Mitchell said reaching a peace agreement will be tough.

...Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank constitute one of the toughest problems on the way to peace.

Some 200 thousand [actually much more. FMEP has 282,000 at end of 2007 (excluding Jerusalem I guess); the PCB counted 483,453 at end of 2007, including Jerusalem; & Peace Now claims 285,000 at end of 2008, again w/o Jerusalem and East Jerusalem Jews numbered 184,057 at the end of 2005 which means almost 200,000 at the growth rate FMEP recorded which means over one-half million Jews the Arabs consider "settlers"] Jewish settlers(*) live there. Most would have to be relocated in Israel proper, under the usual view of the two-state solution.

..."I think that rather than build peace exclusively from the top down with political agreements, we have to add to the political process building peace from the bottom up by making the lives of our Palestinian neighbors a lot better so they have a stake in peace," Netanyahu said.

James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. He says Obama must be tough with Israel on West Bank settlement and the continuing occupation if a solution is to be found. "Certainly, they [the Israelis] are not going to move unless they are moved, and they are not going to be moved unless the U.S. president says, 'This must end,'" Zogby said.

On the Palestinian side, there are also problems. Palestinians are divided between Fatah, the moderate faction running the West Bank, and Hamas, the militant group that rules in Gaza and refuses to renounce violence. Israel and the United States refuse to engage with Hamas.

Ali Abu Minnah is a Palestinian author living in Chicago. He advocates a one-state solution, in other words, a bi-national state. "The two-state solution is neither available nor stable nor just, and this is why we have opened the discussion," he said.

William Quandt worked in the Carter administration in the 1970s and was involved in negotiations that led to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979. He says the two-state solution is the only hope. "I think the two-state solution comes back into focus for us because there is no good alternative in terms of a negotiated solution," the University of Virginia professor said.

Zogby says Arab states should help with reconstruction in the Gaza Strip and with Palestinian nation building, and also offer Israel incentives for peace...

So, we had a non-interviewed quotation from Netanyahu and Obama and Mitchell and then Zogby, Abu Minnah and Quandt.

Another balanced media background report.

That the reporter's name is Mohamed Elshinnawi has nothing to do with this.

----------

(*)

Another reason not to use the word "settlers":

The Settlers (also known as Serf City, original German title Die Siedler) is a slow-paced Real Time Strategy computer game by German developer Blue Byte Software, first released in 1993 for Commodore Amiga and in 1994 for the PC. It was the first game of its type, blending together principles which had not been seen in a single game before, and defined the line of the later Settlers games. On the hardware available at the time, the game could control a maximum of 64,000 individuals, all behaving autonomously.

That's why I prefer "revenants".

Is Carter The Real Catastrophe?

Well, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday that Israel will face a "catastrophe" unless it revives the Mideast peace process and establishes an independent Palestinian state.

To be exact:

"If we look toward a one-state solution, which seems to be the trend _ I hope not inexorable _ it would be a catastrophe for Israel, because there would be only three options in that case," Carter said.

One would be to expel large numbers of Palestinians, which he said would amount to "ethnic cleansing." [but ethnic cleansing of Jews is okay in that Jews must leave "Palestine", if it is established and worse, since the Arab population in Israel remains, the liberal Carter has created a homogeneous, uni-ethnic entity]

The second would be to deprive the Palestinians of equal voting rights, which he said would amount to "apartheid." ["amount" or is? there are perhaps 300,000 or more Jews that can't vote for the Knesset either as they are not citizens. maybe they could vote for the Jordanian Parliament, as Jordan is part of "Palestine", and some arrangement is feasible?]

The third would be to give the Palestinians equal voting rights, and therefore the majority, he said. [and if his demographic projections are correct, not that they are, in, say, 50 years will Arabs within Israel be a majority in any case? what then? then do we expell or limit enfranchisement?]

"And you would no longer have a Jewish state," Carter said. "The basic decisions would be made by the Palestinians, who would almost very likely vote in a bloc, whereas you would have some sharp divisions among the Israelis, because the Israelis always have different points of view." [you notice that? the Arabs are, what, monolithic?]

Carter spoke to The Associated Press as his new book, "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land," was released. [oh, he's making money off of our conflict?]

Qaddafi Gets NYTimes Op-Ed Space for "Isratine" Idea

The New York Times now recognizes psychopaths as legitimate op-ed authors by having Muammar Qaddafi contribute a piece today entitled:

The One-State Solution

Here's one whopper just to give you an idea:

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

And why were they expelled from Spain? "They" being the Jews. Religious persecution. But Arabs also were expelled. Why? Because they illegally conquered the country, persecuted the Christian indigenous population and the Spanish reconquered their homeland.

That's for starters.

Here's his proposal:

The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.

Let's take a look at some other of his more outlandish facts and opinions:

the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

Actually, it always existed because the "Palestinians" came into being only as a reaction to Zionism which they always fought starting in 1920. Prior to the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate decision, the Arabs resident in the Land of Israel were known as either Southern Syrians or Beduin. Not as "Palestinians".

Another:

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable.

No, when Herzl founded modern political Zionism - in addition to the religious-based nationalism of "returning from Exile" - he felt an urgent need due to the "Jewish question", that is, the persecution of Jews but that was the need for a political organization, not the ideology. The ideolgy was there for centuries, otherwise, why would Jews constantly be going back to the Land of Israel ever since the Roman conquest? The hotels at Eilat didn't exist then.

An important truth:

Thus the Palestinians believe that what is now called Israel forms part of their nation, even were they to secure the West Bank and Gaza. And the Jews believe that the West Bank is Samaria and Judea, part of their homeland, even if a Palestinian state were established there.

and another truth:

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point.

So, maybe he's not that crazy?

Nope, he is:

A key prerequisite for peace is the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the homes their families left behind in 1948. It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

A solution?

...only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

As I have always said, the territory available is to osmall, unless we include Jordan and then redraw borders.