One-State Solution, the way forward in Palestine

What is the issue?

For more than 50 years, attempts to bring peace to historical Palestine have adhered to the two-state solution as the only way forward.
But here is why the whole premise of the two-state solution is wrong, providing Israel the immunity to continue its ethnic cleansing.

What was a similar offer made earlier?

The idea of partitioning Palestine is not new.
It was already offered by the new British occupiers of Palestine in 1937.
The Zionist movement was hardly 50 years old then.
The Zionist goal was to turn historical Palestine into a Jewish state.
To this, a chunk of the Palestinian homeland was proposed as a future state.
[Back then, this was similar to an offer as decolonising India by partitioning it between a British India and local India.]
No country would have ever consented to such a post-colonial arrangement, and it was naturally rejected by the Palestinians.

What was the catastrophic event that followed the proposal?

International community back in 1940s insisted that the Palestinians should give half of their homeland to the settler movement of Zionism.
But Palestinians kept reiterating that the settler movement of Zionism would not be content with just half of the country.
Coming true, in less than a year, under the guise of UN support, the new Jewish state took over nearly 80% of historical Palestine.
They ethnically cleansed almost a million Palestinians (more than half of Palestine’s population).
They demolished half of Palestine’s villages and most of its towns in 9 months in 1948.
This was an event known by the Palestinians as the Nakba, the catastrophe.

What happened following Israel’s occupation?

In 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine.
In the process, they expelled another 300,000 Palestinians.
It was impossible after 1948 to repeat a massive ethnic cleansing.
So, it was substituted by incremental ethnic cleansing.
The last stage in this process was one of the root causes that ignited the cycle of recent violence. (Click here to know more.)
It is to do with the proposed eviction of Palestinians from Shaykh [Sheikh] Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighbourhood.
The eviction is part of an overall attempt to Judaise East Jerusalem.
Imposing military rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after they were occupied was another means.
This enclaved the people there without basic human and civil rights.
A version of an Apartheid regime was imposed on the Palestinian minority in Israel.
Also, there was constant refusal to allow the 1948 refugees to return.
This completed the matrix of power that allowed Israel to retain the land.

What is the tw0-state solution proposed now?

The two-state solution proposes establishing two states for two peoples: Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people.
The solution was offered for the first time by liberal Zionists and the United States in the 1980s.
It was seen by some Palestinians as a way to end the occupation of the West Bank, and help the partial fulfilment of the Palestinian right for self-determination and independence.
This was why the Palestine Liberation Organization was willing to give it a go in 1993, by signing the Oslo Accords.
But the Palestinian position has no impact in the current balance of power.
Israel’s interpretation is what matters more now, and no global power would challenge its interpretation.

What is Israel’s idea of a two-state solution?

The two-state solution is another means of having the territories of West Bank and Gaza Strip, without incorporating most of the people living there.
In order to ensure it, Israel partitioned the West Bank (which is 20% of historical Palestine) into a Jewish and an Arab part.
This happened in the second phase of the Oslo Accords, known as the Oslo II agreement of 1995.
The Palestinians were forced to accept it under American and Egyptian pressure.
One area, called area C (consists of 60% of the West Bank) was directly ruled from 1995 until today by Israel.
After 2009, under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is in the process of officially annexing this area, while ethnically cleansing the Palestinians living in it.
The remaining 40% of the West Bank, areas A and B under Oslo II, were put under the Palestinian Authority.
The Authority optimistically calls itself the state of Palestine.
But in essence, it has no power whatsoever, except that given to it, and withdrawn from it, by Israel.

What was the Bantustanisation attempt?

[The white-dominated government of South Africa classified the country’s Black Africans as Bantu.
A Bantustan was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of its policy of apartheid.]
Similar to creating a Bantustan, in Israel, the Gaza Strip was divided too.
Israel hoped that another Bantustan, like the one in areas A and B, would be established there under the Palestinian Authority’s rule and under the same conditions.
But the people of Gaza opted to support a new player, Hamas, and its ally, the Islamic Jihad, which resisted this offer.
Israel responded by imposing a callous siege and blockade on the Gaza Strip.
To complete the partition of the West Bank, its Bantustanisation, and the siege of Gaza, Israel passed a citizenship law in 2018.
Known as the nationality law, it made Palestinian citizens in essence to be the “Africans” of a new Israeli Jewish apartheid state.

Why is a two-state solution flawed?

The two-state solution is essentially based on the assumption of parity, approaching the conflict as one fought between two national movements.
But, this is not the real case.
It is instead a settler colonial reality which began in the late 19th century and continues until today, motivated by “the elimination of the native”.
It thus essentially involves genocide, ethnic cleansing operation, etc.
The presence of more than 600,000 Jewish settlers, with a very high rate of natural growth, means that Israel will never consider moving them out.
And without that, even a soft version of a two-state solution is impossible.
In all, the two-state solution is not going to stop the ethnic cleansing and instead, it provides Israel international immunity to continue it.

What is the best way forward then?

The only alternative is to decolonise historical Palestine and build a new State - a State for all its citizens all over the country.
This should move forward with –

dismantlement of colonialist institutions
fair redistribution of the country’s natural resources
compensation of the victims of the ethnic cleansing and allowing their repatriation

Settlers and natives should together build a new state that is democratic, part of the Arab world and not against it.

Source: The Hindu