By Thabet Abu-Ras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Historical Background of Palestine's Geography

Historic Palestine / source: Palestine Remembered

Since the appearance of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century, there have been many endeavors to partition Palestine. The first partition plan took place under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, as part of placing Arab lands under the control of the two major colonial powers of Britain and France. One year later, Britain's Balfour Declaration proclaimed the intention to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, whose geographic borders were not defined at the time and when the Jewish population comprised less than 10% of Palestine. Two years following the declaration, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the World Zionist Organization announced its intention to implement it by creating a state with borders exceeding those of historic Palestine, to include Transjordan and southern Syria. This proposed Jewish state would extend from the Litani River in the north to the city of Arish in the south. The recommendations brought by the Peel Commission–formed in 1937 following the outbreak of the 1936 Arab revolt in Palestine–are considered to be the first to suggest that Palestine be partitioned into two equal entities, an Arab and a Jewish one, keeping Jerusalem under the governance of the British Mandate. The United Nations Partition Plan of Palestine of 1947 granted 56% of historic Palestine towards the establishment of a Jewish state and 43% for an Arab Palestinian state. Jerusalem was to be placed under international administration.

The Jewish state was eventually created on 78% of the land of Palestine, following the 1948 Nakba and the expulsion of over two-thirds of this portion's native residents. While the West Bank was annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Gaza Strip was placed under Egyptian control. In 1967, the arm of the Israeli occupation reached the remaining two parts of Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, placing the whole country under Israeli control. Reviewing this history provides important background for considering today's reality.

The Geopolitical and Natural Components of One State

• The Geographic Borders of Palestine. In 1948, Palestine's geographic unity–comprising 27,000 sq. km.–was severed into three geopolitical units: the state of Israel (20,770 sq. km.), the West Bank (5,860 sq. km.) and the Gaza Strip (365 sq. km.). The last 63 years witnessed many attempts to redraw or establish new borders based on different partition proposals, ceasefire lines, administrative borders, and others. However, all these attempts have failed. The land of Palestine, impervious to political proposals that have attempted to establish new boundaries, has maintained its well-established natural borders.
• The Oslo Accords. Neither the Oslo Accords of 1993 nor the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 succeeded in affecting Palestine's historic and natural borders. Furthermore, the growing Jewish settlement activity in Palestine, though creating a new geographic and demographic reality, has also failed to affect Palestine's geographic unity. In addition, the difficulty inherent in the creation of two independent states within the 60 kilometer stretch between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River (as proposed by the 1947 UN Partition Plan) has been confirmed.
• Groundwater and Natural Resources. Groundwater and other natural resources are the most unifying components of Palestine's geography. For example, the idea of transferring a population from one place to another becomes impossible when considering groundwater. The control over groundwater and other natural resources has thus been among the most charged topics between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; for that reason, reaching an agreement on this topic has been tabled until the final status negotiations, along with the issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders. Furthermore, for Israel, the issue of water is a matter of security, demonstrated by the Israeli term, "water security."Accordingly, Israel considers the groundwater aquifer that lies under the mountains of the West Bank as a strategic reservoir not to be conceded to a future Palestinian state. The same can be said about the coastal groundwater aquifers that lie along the Mediterranean coast between the Gaza Strip and the city of Haifa. The current water crisis that exists today, and which will become more severe in the future, will force Israeli and Palestinian water experts to create a joint water system, as well as to develop a joint water policy that considers all residents between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
• Transportation and Communication Network. The transportation and communication networks that exist in historic Palestine comprise one continuous network. The major east-west highways traverse current borders to connect the east to the west of historic Palestine. The best example is Highway 5, the so-called "Trans-Samaria Highway" that connects Tel-Aviv with Palestinian cities and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Furthermore, Israel constantly uses Palestinian airspace for civil, as well as military, purposes. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority must rely on Israeli ports, which are under full Israeli control, to transport products internationally. In communications, an Israeli company established networks in areas of Palestine that were occupied in 1967, and continues to operate them to this day.
• The Labor Market and Economic Cooperation. After the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations, signed by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, aimed to fortify economic cooperation inside the borders of historic Palestine. Of course, Israel was the major winner of the protocol. Cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was not limited to Palestinian usage of Israeli ports as Palestinian markets became an extension–and backyard–to Israeli companies and tradesmen. The Paris Protocol also decreed a unifying customs system and implemented the use of the same currency, the Israeli Shekel. Israeli electric companies further provide electricity to vast areas of the West Bank, including to major Palestinian cities and most of the Gaza Strip, even now after the Israeli withdrawal from the latter.
• Population Distribution and Demographic Components of One State. Today, the population inside historic Palestine stands at about 10.6 million, out of which 5.5 million are Jewish and 5.3 million are Palestinian. Of the latter, 2.5 million Palestinians are residents of the West Bank, 1.5 million are residents of the Gaza Strip, and 1.3 million live inside the State of Israel and hold Israeli citizenship. The remaining 300,000 are considered residents of Jerusalem, under Israeli authority, but without holding Israeli citizenship.Furthermore, Israeli settlement policies push towards greater interconnection, as the number of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank now stands at more than 300,000, distributed among 144 settlements and 130 unofficial Jewish outposts (Ma'ahazim). In addition, 15 additional Jewish settlements are neighborhoods of "Greater Jerusalem," which includes territory occupied in 1967 that Israel has annexed and claimed as belonging to an indivisible Jerusalem.

Conclusion

Palestine has resisted, and endured, all attempts of geographic partition and segmentation over the last 100 years. Today, Israel controls the totality of historic Palestine, while exerting pressure, locally and internationally, for its recognition as a Jewish state without drawing its final borders. Zionism has hereby reached an impasse in its attempt to build an ethnic Jewish state.

It is a well-established fact that Israel is the only state in the world that was established without defining its borders, which corresponds to the flexibility of Israeli citizenship; it does not align with geographic boundaries of a state as predominates in the rest of the world. Instead Israeli citizenship correlates to the boundaries of the Jewish religion around the world. Therefore, an Israeli settler in a West Bank settlement is considered an Israeli citizen, whereas a Palestinian living a kilometer away, who is an indigenous inhabitant of the land, is prevented from attaining citizenship. Thus we must ask the question: If the political and spatial interconnections, which exist between the Palestinian and Jewish societies inside the boundaries of historic Palestine, are inseparable and make partition non-amenable, how then can the future of these two societies start seeking alternatives to partition? Such a future requires that they work against the neo-apartheid regime and towards the establishment of one democratic, bi-national state.

* Dr. Thabet Abu-Ras is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Development at Ben-Gurion University.

A Realist's Utopia

By Landon Frim* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This month marks the 44th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and the bordering states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It was this conflict in June of 1967 which has shaped Arab-Israeli relations ever since, primarily because of Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the whole basis for the perennially stalled peace process between the Palestinian people and the Jewish state centers upon what portion of these occupied territories will become the new, sovereign state of Palestine.

However, a simple return to "1967 borders" has always been something which the Israelis have publically rejected. Ostensibly, this is because these borders are deemed geographically indefensible should another armed conflict arise. So when last month President Obama became the first American commander in chief to publically set the 1967 borders as the starting point for peace negotiations, all hell broke loose. It was not much longer than Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard-line, Likud prime minister of Israel, hopped on a plane to personally tongue-lash the president and then deliver a scheduled speech in front of a joint meeting of congress - to thunderous applause.

So there we had it; this was a Manichean war of words between two irreconcilable worldviews. President Obama was the liberal universalist, naively enthusiastic about emerging democracies promised by the so-called "Arab Spring." Besides, to the conservative imagination, Barack Hussein Obama did not exude the same intuitive love for the Jewish state which could otherwise be expected of any patriotic American, let alone the president himself. Netanyahu was the experience-hardened, Israeli realist. He knew the proper limits of such idealistic enthusiasm, and he knew the real price for Israeli security. An emerging, sovereign, Palestinian democracy could not be trusted to be friendly toward Israel. The establishment of such as state on the supposedly indefensible borders of 1967 would, therefore, be out of the question. American pundits weighed in on either side of the melee with articles and op-eds. Characteristic of the tone was the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and his oft-quoted piece, "Dear Mr. Netanyahu, Please Don't Speak to My President That Way."

Not so radical after all

Of course, obscured by the rancor was the plain fact that none of this was at all new. Some variant of the "Two State Solution" has been a part of the mainstream discourse since Israel's inception in 1948. In fact, the suggested demarcation of the border was much more generous to the Palestinians during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950's than it is today. The last Bush administration publically affirmed a Two State Solution which, de facto, would have to be drawn largely along the 1967 border; though, crucially, this language was never used in any high profile speeches. (Instead, in a 2005 press conference, President Bush employed the term "1949 armistice lines" which, in fact, amounts to basically the same thing.) Even Netanyahu himself has acknowledged in June 2009 the ultimate goal of a Palestinian state within the territories of the West Bank and Gaza (where else?) with certain land swaps so as to ensure the Israeli retention of the large, Jewish settlement blocks. True, emotionally and politically charged issues remain - first among these is the future of east Jerusalem, a point on which Netanyahu has never shown any flexibility. Nonetheless, at its core, this supposedly polarizing debate is mostly a semantic one after all, at best a protracted political dance where each participant jockeys to win an edge at the bargaining table where the final lines will be drawn. No one, though, really thinks that this table can ultimately be avoided.

Two states - A consensus of dunces

Unfortunately this "hidden consensus" is totally disengaged from reality. Two basic facts preclude the Two State Solution as being a truly viable option. The first can largely be placed under the heading of "geography." The basic premise behind any Two State Solution is, first, the recognition of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state, and second, the recognition of a sovereign and independent Palestine alongside. Yet within the very heart of the West Bank exists very large Jewish settlement blocks. Even the most dovish Israeli politicians acknowledge that these enclosed settlements, which now truly amount to mid-sized towns and cities, must be retained within Israel proper if and when a Palestinian state is declared. The problem is that these enclaves will have to be connected with one another and to the rest of Israel via secure roads, manned by Israeli police and military officials.

This means that, not only will Palestine continue to be divided geographically between the West Bank and Gaza; The West Bank itself will necessarily be completely fragmented to the point where Palestinians, in order to travel between one West Bank town to another, will have to pass through Israeli checkpoints. How this amounts to a sovereign Palestinian state, I cannot fathom. (All of this is aside from the very real interdependence of Israeli capital and Palestinian labor which, itself, necessitates a porous yet highly militarized border.)

In the words of the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, "The geopolitical condition that's been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," (60 Minutes interview, January 25th 2009)

It is also the case that, largely because of these same geographic concerns, any future Palestinian state will be a demilitarized one. This was, incidentally, also a feature of Obama's high profile speech. Not to valorize militarism for its own sake, but it is far from clear what politicians really mean when they claim to support a Two State Solution. What does it mean to support a "sovereign" Palestine which is totally disarmed and geographically divided by a hostile Jewish state brimming with military might?

The second obstacle for any Two State Solution is far more intractable. This is basic demographics. Leaving aside the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, we can shortly expect a demographic tipping of the scales within Israel itself. As it stands, Arab Israeli passport holders make up about 20% of the total population, and the percentage of Israeli Jews has shrunk, by proportion, by about 1-2% each year since 1949. This means that, within one to two generations, it is possible that Jews will be the minority within the Jewish State.

Between 2020 and 2030, the population of Israeli Jews is expected to increase by less than 15%. This is compared to the Arab and non-Jewish populations which are expected to increase, in this same decade, by just over 26%. (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2010) Again, these figures pertain to "Israel proper" and would not be significantly affected by Israel ceding the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

Counterbalancing the "tipping point" with the Orthodox birthrate

The kicker is that the one plausible way for Israel to avoid this "tipping point" scenario is by relying upon the high birthrates of the ultra-Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities. Secular Zionists are, therefore, between a rock and a hard place. Over the next 20-40 years Israel will become increasingly Arab and, simultaneously, increasingly Orthodox Jewish. Therefore, even if Arabs and non-Jews do not make up 51% of the population within 50 years, it will nonetheless be the case that secular-minded Jews (traditionally the bedrock of Israeli, Jewish democracy) will find themselves to be the absolute minority far sooner than anyone has imagined. The prospects for Israel retaining its fragile "secular," "Jewish," and "democratic" identity in the long run are therefore negligible.

What must be understood is that these demographic shifts are not necessarily fatal for any given democracy; they are detrimental specifically to that chimerical creation that is a religio-ethnic democracy. A state which tries to maintain popular sovereignty, secular government, and equal representation under the law alongside a specifically determined ethnic and religious character intrinsically brings upon itself these tensions which, given the right circumstances, will tear it apart from the inside. Truly modern, secular states which disavow any predetermined ethnic identity are able to absorb diverse and even undemocratic populations, and then go on to secularize and democratize these very same groups.

"Progressive assimilation" is the order of the day.

However a country which is always staking its very existence upon certain demographic ratios necessarily cannot employ such a strategy. It will have to cast its lot with the most closed, culturally entrenched sectors of its own ruling, ethnic population. In doing so, it may for a while offset countervailing demographic pressures, but it ultimately cuts itself off from any sustainable model of secularization, growth, internal unity, and progress. In the end, it cannot even remain democratic.

That hard-liners and liberals continue to pitch mock battles with one another over the minutia and semantics of a Two State Solution is therefore the height of irresponsibility. For the very idea of "two states" is predicated, in the first place, upon the unworkable and premodern idea of "identitarian" government. In many ways the "Two State Solution" is, therefore, an oxymoron; for it solves nothing. It only conceals and maintains the basic contradictions a form of government which is, right now, propelling two peoples towards a very real and bloody conflict.

A Realist's Utopia

What is needed now is a rational assessment of the situation in light of the given facts. When this is carried through, all signs point to a One State Solution. What was once the utopian dream of Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Albert Einstein, has now become the banner of hard-nosed realists.

Just last year, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (a member of the conservative Likud party) came out against any partition of the land of Israel, and instead proposed a bi-national solution to the current crisis. Speaking on the de facto inseparability of the Palestinian people from Israel, Rivlin commented, "It is a group with a highly defined shared national identity, and which will forever be, as a collective, an important and integral part of Israeli society." (Haaretz, "Israel official: Accepting Palestinians into Israel better than two states," April 29th, 2009)

True, heads of state and diplomats rarely discuss this taboo option, at least in public. However, like all timely ideas, the One State Solution is gaining broad consensus just below the surface. A sure sign of this fact is that Israelis themselves have begun to see the inevitability of one state on both ends of the political spectrum. A recent poll showed a relatively equal level of support for a bi-national state amongst self-described "right-wing" and "left-wing" Israelis, 15% and 18% respectively. (March 2010 poll, The Israel Democracy Institute of the Guttman Center)

For an idea which is constantly derided as being the fantasy of only the most deluded, anarchic radicals, these are truly shocking numbers. They show that one-third of Israelis, broadly distributed across the political landscape, support a single, bi-national state with equal rights for all its citizens.

Today, the support for a trulysecular, bi-national state is no longer motivated by sheer idealism alone. This "utopian" solution is now the most realistic one as well. Speaking on the abovementioned poll, Dr. Ya'akov Shamir of the Israel Democracy Institute confirmed, "In Israel there is a group that believes that a bi-national state is inevitable because with Jewish and Palestinian communities so entangled in the West Bank, it will be almost impossible to divide them." (The Jerusalem Post, "Palestinians increasingly back 1-state," March 22nd, 2010) We may only add that this "indivisibility" is rapidly becoming the new reality on both sides of the 1967 line.

* Landon Frim is an instructor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and the chair of the Faith and Socialism Commission of the Socialist Party, USA

Illustration by David Klein

By George Bisharat* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Where is the Palestinian Mandela?" pundits occasionally ask. But after these latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington fail -- as they inevitably will -- the more pressing question may be: "Where is the Israeli de Klerk?" Will an Israeli leader emerge with the former South African president's moral courage and foresight to dismantle a discriminatory regime and foster democracy based on equal rights?

For decades, the international community has assumed that historic Palestine must be divided between Jews and Palestinians. Yet no satisfactory division of the land has been reached. Israel has aggravated the problem by settling roughly 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, eliminating the land base for a viable Palestinian state.

A de facto one-state reality has emerged, with Israel effectively ruling virtually all of the former Palestine. Yet only Jews enjoy full rights in this functionally unitary political system. In contrast, Palestinian citizens of Israel endure more than 35 laws that explicitly privilege Jews as well as policies that deliberately marginalize them. West Bank Palestinians cannot drive on roads built for Israeli settlers, while Palestinians in Gaza watch as their children's intellectual and physical growth are stunted by an Israeli siege that has limited educational opportunities and deepened poverty to acute levels.

Palestinian refugees have lived in exile for 62 years, their right to return to their homes denied, while Jews from anywhere can freely immigrate to Israel.

Israeli leaders Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have admitted that permanent Israeli rule over disenfranchised Palestinians would be tantamount to apartheid. Other observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have said that apartheid has already taken root in the region.

Clearly, Palestinians and Israeli Jews will continue to live together. The question is: under what terms? Palestinians will no more accept permanent subordination than would any other people.

The answer is for Israelis and Palestinians to formalize their de facto one-state reality but on principles of equal rights rather than ethnic privilege. A carefully crafted multiyear transition including mechanisms for reconciliation would be mandatory. Israel/Palestine should have a secular, bilingual government elected on the basis of one person, one vote as well as strong constitutional guarantees of equality and protection of minorities, bolstered by international guarantees. Immigration should follow nondiscriminatory criteria. Civil marriage between members of different ethnic or religious groups should be permitted. Citizens should be free to reside in any part of the country, and public symbols, education and holidays should reflect the population's diversity.

Although the one-state option is sometimes dismissed as utopian, it overcomes major obstacles bedeviling the two-state solution. Borders need not be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided and Jewish settlers could stay in the West Bank. Moreover, a single state could better accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees. A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, it would be more consistent with antidiscrimination provisions of international law. Israelis would enjoy the international acceptance that has long eluded them and the associated benefits of friendship, commerce and travel in the Arab world.

The main obstacle to a single-state solution is the belief that Israel must be a Jewish state. Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid were similarly entrenched virtually until the eves of their demise. History suggests that no version of ethnic privilege can ultimately persist in a multiethnic society.

Israeli perspectives are already beginning to shift, most intriguingly among right-wing leaders. Former defense minister Moshe Arens recently proposed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel annex the West Bank and offer its residents citizenship. Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin and Likud parliamentarian Tzipi Hotovely have also supported citizenship for West Bank Palestinians, according to the Haaretz. In July, Hotovely said of the Israeli government's policies of separation: "The result is a solution that perpetuates the conflict and turns us from occupiers into perpetrators of massacres, to put it bluntly."

Is one of these politicians the Israeli de Klerk? That remains to be seen. Gaza is pointedly excluded from the Israeli right's annexation debate. They still envision a Jewish state, simply one with a larger Palestinian minority. But their challenge to the two-state orthodoxy, which empirical experience has proven unrealistic, is healthy.

If Americans aspire to more than managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via perpetual and inconclusive negotiations, we should applaud this emerging discussion. Having overcome our own institutionalized racial discrimination, we can model the virtues of a vibrant, multicultural society based on equal rights. President Obama, moreover, would be a fitting emissary for this vital message.

* George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestinian Studies.

By Antoine Raffoul* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Until recently, we had never heard of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). After some research on the subject of the One-State vs the Two-State solution, we discovered a long Study published by the ATFP in 2009 entitled "What's Wrong With The One-State Agenda". It made for interesting reading and shed some light on the people behind the ATFP which claim "to promote an end to the conflict in the Middle East through a negotiated agreement that provides for two states - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security".

This document (the ATFP calls it a Study) was originally drafted by Dr Hussein Ibish (who is a Senior Fellow at the ATFP) at the time Israel was launching its criminal 'Operation Cast Lead' on Gaza in December 2008. That onslaught left 1400 Gazans dead and most of the Gaza Strip in ruins. One would have thought that 'Operation Cast Lead' would provide the ATFP with the clearest example yet of Zionism's consistent policy of using force to attain total colonial stranglehold in all of historic Palestine. Events of the last 62 years would also provide a clear evidence of this policy.

A good reading of ATFP's Study raised many questions some of which we put in writing to Dr Ibish, the author, via the ATFP website. An automated confirmation was received promising a reply which never came.

Overall, the Study attempts to demolish the whole basis on which the One-State solution is being promoted by its advocates including this writer.

It is surely high time that all politicians, historians, writers and academics who still believe in and support the idea of a Two-State solution to the Israel-Palestine tragedy to come forward and submit, once and for all, a clear and transparent statement outlining exactly what they really mean by the Two-State solution. They have had 62 years to advance this idea and they have failed.

This ATFP Study, whilst calling for an end to the Israeli occupation through negotiations, does not take into account the failed UN Resolutions, the endless summits and the numerous peace conferences which have dotted the Middle East political and diplomatic landscape since 1947. After 62 years, we are no closer to resolving this tragedy than we were when it started in 1948 with the Palestinian Nakba and the creation of the state of Israel. Over the years, Israel, through its huge military machine and the 'eternal' support of the United States, has managed to reinforce its illegal occupation of Palestinian land not only since 1967, but since 1947 when an illegal Partition Plan was forced upon the Palestinian people. The occupation continues unchecked, the illegal settlement construction is in full force and moves forward unabated, the destruction of Palestinian homes and farmland has become a daily occurance and the flagrant Israeli defiance of International Law is a routine phenomenon as the international community looks on.

Throughout all of historic Palestine, this picture of unrelenting colonisation by Israel is a very well documented one. It is probably the most documented conflict of modern times. The colonial picture has not changed but the Palestinian landscape has. Israel's occupation of all Palestine is pretty much complete and in line with the first Zionist declaration in 1897 which called for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine within 50 years. The Zionists finally managed it in 1948 - missing their target date by only 1 year.

The force of this near total occupation can only be maintained via a huge military machine and through an outdated Apartheid political system which will surely fail. The network of physical obstructions built throughout the Palestinian landscape offer us a clear system of control unseen since WWII: from exclusive roads for Jews only, to the massive number of illegal settlements, to the prison Wall wrapping around Palestinian villages along and out of the Green Line, to the checkpoints and watch towers reminiscent of a Nazi regime and finally, to a judicial and political racist system which favours the occupier and dehumanises the occupied. This is a picture of a solid iron grip over a whole indigenous people. Not just in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, but also a grip over the 1.5 million Palestinians inside Israel, otherwise called 'the others'.

It is through this window that a One-State vs a Two-State debate must take place. The writer advocated a One-State solution back in 1968 as the dust settled on the 1967 war between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It was another wake-up call to focus on that Zionist declaration of 1897. Total occupation of historic Palestine was set in motion after the six-day war ended. If that was not enough to convince the world that Israel was determined to continue the course set for it 70 years earlier, then it must take a second look over the last 62 years since the Nakba of 1948. It would be nothing short of ignorance to bury one's head in the sand and cast a blind eye to all that Israel is doing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. What is happening there is nothing short of total occupation: physically, militarily, ethnically, and politically.

Which brings us to the ATFP Study: "What's Wrong With The One-State Agenda".

It is truly farcical, despite the above facts, that anyone should be calling for a Two-State Solution. It begs the question of what has been learnt by the American Task Force on Palestine (or any other Task Force or Think Tank for that matter), from the last 62 years which have seen millions of Palestinian refugees linger in their miserable camps and millions more suffocate under the longest and most cruel occupation in modern times.

In true fashion, the ATFP Study goes on the attack from the word go, against the authors of such publications as "The One-State Solution
" by Professor Virginia Tilley, "One Country" by the founder of the Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah, and against the authors of the "One State Declaration" issued in London and Madrid in 2007 on the 60th anniversary of UN Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan).

The ATFP believes that because Israel 'withdrew' from Gaza (my italics) and from some small illegal outposts in the north of the West Bank, the logical conclusion would be that the Zionist leadership would not be adverse to the transfer of "sovereignty over a sufficient number of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements to accommodate a viable and acceptable Palestinian state...". The key word here is, crucially, 'accommodate'. Israel accommodates and a Palestinian state becomes magically viable. The ATFP author, Dr Ibish, must be blind to all the facts on the ground and fails to explain Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's statements about the 'natural growth' of his illegal settlements. If anything, 'natural growth' is what we call an illegal and one-sided 'accommodation'.

The Study goes on to tackle the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, which is a main demand by those advocating a One-State solution. The Study submits that "some form of limited 'return' to the new Palestinian state would be an integral part of conflict agreement". Another key statement here is: 'some form of limited return'. In other words, no one should expect the 'sovereign state of Israel', to "open its borders to large numbers of Palestinian refugees to return to live in Israel under any conceivable circumstances". What are we to understand by 'limited return' and from which miserable camp will the refugees be 'returning'. Does any one of the millions of Palestinian refugees have any say in this? The ATFP does not volunteer an answer.

One of the most sensitive issues this Study tackles is ethnic and national identities of the Palestinians and 'Israeli Jews'. It states that "one of the greatest strengths of the Two-State solution is that it does not require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile their national [and ethnic] narratives" when each people have a state of their own. But the reality on the ground shows that only one narrative is allowed to develop to the detriment of the other narrative, and that is the Jewish/Zionist narrative. The erasure of memory, the uprooting of the foundations of the Palestinian society, and the ethnic cleansing of a whole nation and its people, are daily occurrences in the OPT today. They remain solid proof of how one narrative claims sole right over the other under occupation. By promoting a Two-State solution (if at all possible now) on the basis that two peoples have had a bitter history of conflict, bloodshed and distrust, Dr Ibish conveniently forgets the lessons history teaches us. The most recent of these are Northern Ireland and South Africa, where truth and reconciliation forged the basis of a miracle of unity. Palestinians, throughout their history had no conflict with the indigenous Jewish and other ethnic groups in Palestine. Various communities, including recent arrivals after WWI, contributed to a colourful array of lifestyles and customs based on a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect. Many examples of that harmony can be heard in oral testimonies of living descendants of villages like, for example, Lifta west of Jerusalem (where Abunima's family lived). Surely, the aim of a political solution cannot be the segregation of ethnic groups, as suggested by the ATFP Study, simply because they had a history of conflict, but rather to integrate and unite them in a single democratic, multi cultural, free state for all its inhabitants. Israel, as it stands today, cannot claim to hold that honour.

In Part III of the Study, Dr Ibish argues that "the creation of a single Palestinian-Israeli state is not possible given the existing international and regional power equations". He writes that "Israel is not going to agree to dismantle itself simply because it has lost a moral argument or an academic debate". That is probably true.

But, an examination of Zionism, shows that it was precisely its power of persuasion and the tireless efforts of its leaders in convincing the powers of the time, albeit backed by a lot of financial clout, that swayed opinions and shifted positions in an alliance which finally bore fruit in the notorious Balfour Declaration. Lobbying and arm-twisting were never far behind in this process to assist Zionism in realising their dream first declared in that onerous year of 1897. The core issue here is that the Palestinian struggle, though helped by academic debates, moral arguments and international boycotts, is fundamentally about self-determination, justice and freedom from occupation. It is not simply about scoring points in academic debates. Dr Ibish continues to argue that advocates of the One-State solution cannot ask an entire people [the Israelis] to simply abandon their national goals and strategies, even though the aim of these national goals and strategies is to ethnically cleanse and colonise an entire people. The call to abandon such goals and strategies must not only come from advocates of the One-State solution, but also from the ATFP and the international community at large.

In a desperate attempt to give credence to its Two-State logic, the author of this ATFP Study tries to have his cake and eat it. He concurs that there is no international support for Israel's settlement activities or its illegal occupation. Major powers, including the United States, have called on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This has made Israel's legal position untenable in the eyes of the international community. But the Study uses this fact to forward a naive argument which is that the One-State agenda effectively "lets Israel off the hook" because the settlements, the occupation, the Wall and all resulting injustices become, in the one state, matters to be resolved "through the political and legal processes of that state, rather than [being considered] abuses committed by an occupying power...bound by the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international instruments". This argument defies logic as it falsely assumes that a crime by a state within its borders is unlikely to be punished under International Law because such a crime would be considered, according to Dr Ibish, "one of civil rights within a given country...[and] the rights and interests of the international community in cases of domestic discrimination are not equivalent to those attached to territories considered by the UN Security Council to be under foreign military occupation".

So, we are to conclude that the rule of the jungle within a state is to be tolerated because it is inherently a civic matter within that state and not answerable under International Law. Have we forgotten the Nuremberg Trials? Shall we dismantle the International Criminal Court? Have we forgotten Ruwanda? Or better yet: shall we tear up the Fourth Geneva Convention?

It is a fundamental error of judgment for this Study and its author to assume that the state envisaged by advocates of the One-State solution remains the same as the Zionist Apartheid State called Israel.

* Antoine Raffoul is a Palestinian architect living and practising in London. He was born in Nazareth and was expelled with his family from Haifa in April 1948. He is the Founder and Co-ordinator of 1948: Lest.We.Forget. a campaign group for truth about Palestine. He can be reached at info@1948.org.uk.

Two-State Solution Dead

Professor John J. Mearsheimer* delivered the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture at the Palestine Center yesterday. Undoubtedly the most extensive talk on this issue ever made by the renowned scholar and bestselling author (The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy), Mearsheimer discusses the inevitability of full-fledged apartheid in Israel-Palestine.

A brief excerpt from the sobering and thought provoking speech appears below:

"Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a Greater Israel,which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream."

Following video is his full lecture:

Following is the entire transcript of Mearsheimer lecture:

The Palestine Center
Washington, D.C.
29 April 2010

Professor John Mearsheimer:

It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out to hear me speak this afternoon.

My topic is the future of Palestine, and by that I mean the future of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or what was long ago called Mandatory Palestine. As you all know, that land is now broken into two parts: Israel proper or what is sometime called "Green Line" Israel and the Occupied Territories, which include the West Bank and Gaza. In essence, my talk is about the future relationship between Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Of course, I am not just talking about the fate of those lands; I am also talking about the future of the people who live there. I am talking about the future of the Jews and the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, as well as the Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories.

The story I will tell is straightforward. Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a "Greater Israel," which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.

Let me explain how I reached these conclusions.

Given present circumstances there are four possible futures for Palestine.

The outcome that gets the most attention these days is the two-state solution, which was described in broad outline by President Clinton in late December 2000. It would obviously involve creating a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. To be viable, that Palestine state would have to control 95 percent or more of the West Bank and all of Gaza. There would also have to be territorial swaps to compensate the Palestinians for those small pieces of West Bank territory that Israel got to keep in the final agreement. East Jerusalem would be the capital of the new Palestinian state. The Clinton Parameters envisioned certain restrictions on the new state's military capabilities, but it would control the water beneath it, the air space above it, and its own borders – to include the Jordan River Valley.

There are three possible alternatives to a two-state solution, all of which involve creating a Greater Israel – an Israel that effectively controls the West Bank and Gaza.

In the first scenario, Greater Israel would become a democratic bi-national state in which Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal political rights. This solution has been suggested by a handful of Jews and a growing number of Palestinians. However, it would mean abandoning the original Zionist vision of a Jewish state, since the Palestinians would eventually outnumber the Jews in Greater Israel.

Second, Israel could expel most of the Palestinians from Greater Israel, thereby preserving its Jewish character through an overt act of ethnic cleansing. This is what happened in 1948 when the Zionists drove roughly 700,000 Palestinians out of the territory that became the new state of Israel, and then prevented them from returning to their homes. Following the Six Day War in 1967, Israel expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. The scale of the expulsion, however, would have to be even greater this time, because there are about 5.5 million Palestinians living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The final alternative to a two-state solution is some form of apartheid, whereby Israel increases its control over the Occupied Territories, but allows the Palestinians to exercise limited autonomy in a set of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves.

It seems clear to me that the two-state solution is the best of these alternative futures. This is not to say that it is an ideal solution, because it is not; but it is by far the best outcome for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as the United States. That is why the Obama administration is intensely committed to pushing it.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state anytime soon. They are instead going to end up living in an apartheid state dominated by Israeli Jews.

The main reason that a two-state solution is no longer a serious option is that most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is little reason to expect them to have an epiphany on this issue. For starters, there are now about 480,000 settlers in the Occupied Territories and a huge infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention settlements. Much of that infrastructure and large numbers of those settlers would have to be removed to create a Palestinian state. Many of those settlers however, would fiercely resist any attempt to rollback the settlement enterprise. Earlier this month, Ha'aretz reported that a Hebrew University poll found that 21 percent of the settlers believe that "all means must be employed to resist the evacuation of most West Bank settlements, including the use of arms." In addition, the study found that 54 percent of those 480,000 settlers "do not recognize the government's authority to evacuate settlements"; and even if there was a referendum sanctioning a withdrawal, 36 percent of the settlers said they would not accept it.

Those settlers, however, do not have to worry about the present government trying to remove them. Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to expanding the settlements in East Jerusalem and indeed throughout the West Bank. Of course, he and virtually everyone in his cabinet are opposed to giving the Palestinians a viable state of their own. Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, succinctly summed up Netanyahu's thinking about these matters in a recent column: "For him to divide the land, to divide Jerusalem, to give up Hebron, to send 100,000 settlers packing – that would be treason in his eyes. That would be moral suicide. His heart isn't in it; everything in him rebels at the idea. Our prime minister is constitutionally incapable of leading the nation out of the Palestinians' midst, of fighting the settlers and the Right in a virtual or literal civil war, of persuading Israelis to admit that on the crucial endeavor of their national life for the past 43 years, they were wrong and the world was right."

One might argue that there are prominent Israelis like former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who openly disagree with Netanyahu and advocate a two-state solution. While this is true, it is by no means clear that either of them would be willing or able to make the concessions that would be necessary to create a legitimate Palestinian state. Certainly Olmert did not do so when he was prime minister.

But even if they were, it is unlikely that either of those leaders, or anyone else for that matter, could get enough of their fellow citizens to back an effective two-state solution. The political center of gravity in Israel has shifted sharply to the right over the past decade and there is no sizable pro-peace political party or movement that they could turn to for help. Probably the best single indicator of how far to the right Israel has moved in recent years is the shocking fact that Avigdor Lieberman is employed as its foreign minister. Even Martin Peretz of the New Republic, who is well known for his unyielding support for Israel, describes Lieberman as "a neo-fascist," and equates him with the late Austrian fascist Jorg Haider. And there are other individuals in Netanyahu's cabinet who share many of Lieberman's views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; they just happen to be less outspoken than the foreign minister.

But even if someone like Livni or Olmert was able to cobble together a coalition of interest groups and political parties that favored giving the Palestinians a real state of their own, they would still face fierce resistance from the sizeable forces that stand behind Netanyahu today. It is even possible, which is not to say likely, that Israel would be engulfed by civil war if some future leader made a serious attempt to implement a two-state solution. An individual with the stature of David Ben-Gurion or Ariel Sharon – or even Yitzhak Rabin – might be able to stand up to those naysayers and push forward a two-state solution, but there is nobody with that kind of standing in Israeli politics today.

In addition to these practical political obstacles to creating a Palestinian state, there is an important ideological barrier. From the start, Zionism envisioned an Israeli state that controlled all of Mandatory Palestine. There was no place for a Palestinian state in the original Zionist vision of Israel. Even Yitzhak Rabin, who was determined to make the Oslo peace process work, never spoke about creating a Palestinian state. He was merely interested in granting the Palestinians some form of limited autonomy, what he called "an entity which is less than a state." Plus, he insisted that Israel should maintain control over the Jordan River Valley and that a united Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. Also remember that in the spring of 1998 when Hillary Clinton was First Lady, she was sharply criticized for saying that "it would be in the long-term interests of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine, a functioning modern state on the same footing as other states."

It was not until after Ehud Barak became prime minister in 1999 that Israeli leaders began to speak openly about the possibility of a Palestinian state. But even then, not all of them thought it was a good idea and hardly any of them were enthusiastic about it. Even Barak, who seriously flirted with the idea of creating a Palestinian state at Camp David in July 2000, initially opposed the Oslo Accords. Furthermore, he has been willing to serve as Netanyahu's defense minister, knowing full well that the prime minister and his allies are opposed to creating an independent Palestine. All of this is to say that Zionism's core beliefs are deeply hostile to the very notion of a Palestinian state, and this makes it difficult for many Israelis to embrace the two-state solution.

In short, it is difficult to imagine any Israeli government having the political will, much less the ability, to dismantle a substantial portion of its vast settlement enterprise and create a Palestinian state in virtually all of the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem.

Many advocates of a two-state solution recognize this problem, but think that there is a way to solve it: the Obama administration can put significant pressure on Israel to allow the Palestinians to have their own state. The United States, after all, is the most powerful country in the world and it should have great leverage over Israel because it gives the Jewish state so much diplomatic and material support. Furthermore, President Obama and all of his principal foreign policy advisors are dedicated to establishing a viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.

But this is not going to happen, because no American president can put meaningful pressure on Israel to force it to change its policies toward the Palestinians. The main reason is the Israel lobby, a remarkably powerful interest group that has a profound influence on U.S. Middle East policy. Alan Dershowitz was spot on when he said, "My generation of Jews ... became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy." That lobby, of course, makes it impossible for any president to play hardball with Israel, especially on the issue of settlements.

Let's look at the historical record. Every American president since 1967 has opposed settlement building in the Occupied Territories. Yet no president has been able to put serious pressure on Israel to stop building settlements, much less dismantle them. Perhaps the best evidence of America's impotence is what happened in the 1990s during the Oslo peace process. Between 1993 and 2000, Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land, constructed 250 miles of connector and bypass roads, doubled the number of settlers, and built 30 new settlements. President Clinton did hardly anything to halt this expansion. Indeed, the United States continued to give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid each year and to protect it at every turn on the diplomatic front.

One might think that Obama is different from his predecessors, but there is little evidence to support that belief. Consider that during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama responded to charges that he was "soft" on Israel by pandering to the lobby and repeatedly praising the special relationship. In the month before he took office, he was silent during the Gaza massacre – when Israel was being criticized around the world for its brutal assault on that densely populated enclave.

After taking office in January 2009, President Obama and his principal foreign policy advisors began demanding that Israel stop all settlement building in the Occupied Territories, to include East Jerusalem, so that serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians could begin. After calling for "two states for two peoples" in his Cairo speech in June 2009, President Obama declared, "it is time for these settlements to stop." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made the same point one month earlier when she said, "We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity. That is what the President has called for." George Mitchell, the president's special envoy for the Middle East, conveyed this straightforward message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his lieutenants on numerous occasions.

In response, Netanyahu made it equally clear that Israel intended to continue building settlements and that he and almost everyone in his ruling coalition opposed a two-state solution. He made but a single reference to "two states" in his own speech at Bar Ilan University in June 2009, and the conditions he attached to it made it clear that he was talking about giving the Palestinians a handful of disconnected, apartheid-style Bantustans, not a fully sovereign state.
Netanyahu, of course, won this fight. The Israeli prime minister not only refused to stop building the 2500 housing units that were under construction in the West Bank, but just to make it clear to Obama who was boss, in late June 2009, he authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank. Netanyahu refused to even countenance any limits on settlement building in East Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the capital of a Palestinian state. By the end of September 2009, Obama publicly conceded that Netanyahu had beaten him in their fight over the settlements. The president falsely denied that freezing settlement construction had ever been a precondition for resuming the peace process, and instead he meekly asked Israel to please exercise restraint while it continued colonizing the West Bank. Fully aware of his triumph, Netanyahu said on September 23, "I am pleased that President Obama has accepted my approach that there should be no preconditions."

Indeed, his victory was so complete that the Israeli media was full of stories describing how their prime minister had bested Obama and greatly improved his shaky political position at home. For example, Gideon Samet wrote in Ma'ariv: "In the past weeks, it has become clear with what ease an Israeli prime minister can succeed in thwarting an American initiative."

Perhaps the best American response to Netanyahu's victory came from the widely read author and blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who wrote that this sad episode should "remind Obama of a cardinal rule of American politics: no pressure on Israel ever. Just keep giving them money and they will give the US the finger in return. The only permitted position is to say you oppose settlements in the West Bank, while doing everything you can to keep them growing and advancing."

The Obama administration was engaged in a second round of fighting over settlements last month, when the Netanyahu government embarrassed Vice President Biden during his visit to Israel by announcing plans to build 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. While that crisis was important because it clearly revealed that Israel's brutal policies toward the Palestinians are seriously damaging American interests in the Middle East, Netanyahu rejected President Obama's request to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem. "As far as we are concerned," he said on March 21, "building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv. Our policy on Jerusalem is like the policy in the past 42 years." One day later at the annual AIPAC Conference he said: "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement; it's our capital." And just last week, he said "there will be no freeze in Jerusalem," although it does appear that Israel is not building in East Jerusalem for the moment. Meanwhile, back in the United States, AIPAC got 333 congressmen and 76 senators to sign letters to Secretary of State Clinton reaffirming their unyielding support for Israel and urging the administration to keep future disagreements behind closed doors.

In short President Obama is no match for the lobby. The best he can hope for is to re-start the so-called peace process, but most people understand that these negotiations are a charade. The two sides engage in endless talks while Israel continues to colonize Palestinian lands. Henry Siegman got it right when he called these fruitless talks "The Greater Middle East Peace Process Scam."

There are two other reasons why there is not going to be a two-state solution. The Palestinians are badly divided among themselves and not in a good position to make a deal with Israel and then stick to it. That problem is fixable with time and help from Israel and the United States. But time has run out and neither Jerusalem nor Washington is likely to provide a helping hand. Then there are the Christian Zionists, who are a powerful political force in the United States, especially on Capitol Hill. They are adamantly opposed to a two-state solution because they want Israel to control every square millimeter of Palestine, a situation they believe heralds the "Second Coming" of Christ.

What this all means is that there is going to be a Greater Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. In fact, I would argue that it already exists. But who will live there and what kind of political system will it have?

It is not going to be a democratic bi-national state, at least in the near future. An overwhelming majority of Israel's Jews have no interest in living in a state that would be dominated by the Palestinians. And that includes young Israeli Jews, many of whom hold clearly racist views toward the Palestinians in their midst. Furthermore, few of Israel's supporters in the United States are interested in this outcome, at least at this point in time. Most Palestinians, of course, would accept a democratic bi-national state without hesitation if it could be achieved quickly. But that is not going to happen, although as I will argue shortly, it is likely to come to pass down the road.

Then there is ethnic cleansing, which would certainly mean that Greater Israel would have a Jewish majority. But that murderous strategy seems unlikely, because it would do enormous damage to Israel's moral fabric, its relationship with Jews in the Diaspora, and to its international standing. Israel and its supporters would be treated harshly by history, and it would poison relations with Israel's neighbors for years to come. No genuine friend of Israel could support this policy, which would clearly be a crime against humanity. It also seems unlikely, because most of the 5.5 million Palestinians living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean would put up fierce resistance if Israel tried to expel them from their homes.

Nevertheless, there is reason to worry that Israelis might adopt this solution as the demographic balance shifts against them and they fear for the survival of the Jewish state. Given the right circumstances – say a war involving Israel that is accompanied by serious Palestinian unrest – Israeli leaders might conclude that they can expel massive numbers of Palestinians from Greater Israel and depend on the lobby to protect them from international criticism and especially from sanctions.

We should not underestimate Israel's willingness to employ such a horrific strategy if the opportunity presents itself. It is apparent from public opinion surveys and everyday discourse that many Israelis hold racist views of Palestinians and the Gaza massacre makes clear that they have few qualms about killing Palestinian civilians. It is difficult to disagree with Jimmy Carter's comment earlier this year that "the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings." A century of conflict and four decades of occupation will do that to a people.

Furthermore, a substantial number of Israeli Jews – some 40 percent or more – believe that the Arab citizens of Israel should be "encouraged" to leave by the government. Indeed, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni has said that if there is a two-state solution, she expected Israel's Palestinian citizens to leave and settle in the new Palestinian state. And then there is the recent military order issued by the IDF that is aimed at "preventing infiltration" into the West Bank. In fact, it enables Israel to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank should it choose to do so. And, of course, the Israelis engaged in a massive cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and again in 1967. Still, I do not believe Israel will resort to this horrible course of action.

The most likely outcome in the absence of a two-state solution is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state. As anyone who has spent time in the Occupied Territories knows, it is already an incipient apartheid state with separate laws, separate roads, and separate housing for Israelis and Palestinians, who are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves that they can leave and enter only with great difficulty.

Israelis and their American supporters invariably bristle at the comparison to white rule in South Africa, but that is their future if they create a Greater Israel while denying full political rights to an Arab population that will soon outnumber the Jewish population in the entirety of the land. Indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers have made this very point. Ehud Olmert, who was Netanyahu's predecessor, said in late November 2007 that if "the two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a South-African-style struggle." He went so far as to argue that, "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished." Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is now Israel's defense minister, said in early February of this year that, "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that if Israel does not pull out of the Occupied Territories it will become an apartheid state like white-ruled South Africa. But if I am right, the occupation is not going to end and there will not be a two-state solution. That means Israel will complete its transformation into a full-blown apartheid state over the next decade.

In the long run, however, Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. Like racist South Africa, it will eventually evolve into a democratic bi-national state whose politics will be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians. Of course, this means that Israel faces a bleak future as a Jewish state. Let me explain why.

For starters, the discrimination and repression that is the essence of apartheid will be increasingly visible to people all around the world. Israel and its supporters have been able to do a good job of keeping the mainstream media in the United States from telling the truth about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. But the Internet is a game changer. It not only makes it easy for the opponents of apartheid to get the real story out to the world, but it also allows Americans to learn the story that the New York Times and the Washington Post have been hiding from them. Over time, this situation may even force these two media institutions to cover the story more accurately themselves.

The growing visibility of this issue is not just a function of the Internet. It is also due to the fact that the plight of the Palestinians matters greatly to people all across the Arab and Islamic world, and they constantly raise the issue with Westerners. It also matters very much to the influential human rights community, which is naturally going to be critical of Israel's harsh treatment of the Palestinians. It is not surprising that hardline Israelis and their American supporters are now waging a vicious smear campaign against those human rights organizations that criticize Israel.

The main problem that Israel's defenders face, however, is that it is impossible to defend apartheid, because it is antithetical to core Western values. How does one make a moral case for apartheid, especially in the United States, where democracy is venerated and segregation and racism are routinely condemned? It is hard to imagine the United States having a special relationship with an apartheid state. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the United States having much sympathy for one. It is much easier to imagine the United States strongly opposing that racist state's political system and working hard to change it. Of course, many other countries around the globe would follow suit. This is surely why former Prime Minister Olmert said that going down the apartheid road would be suicidal for Israel.

Apartheid is not only morally reprehensible, but it also guarantees that Israel will remain a strategic liability for the United States. The recent comments of President Obama, Vice President Biden and General David Petraeus make clear that Israel's colonization of the Occupied Territories is doing serious damage to American interests in the Middle East and surrounding areas. As Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March, "This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace." This situation will only get worse as Israel becomes a full-fledged apartheid state. And as that becomes clear to more and more Americans, there is likely to be a serious erosion of support for the Jewish state on strategic grounds alone.

Hardline Israelis and their American supporters are aware of these problems, but they are betting that the lobby will defend Israel no matter what, and that its support will be sufficient to allow apartheid Israel to survive. It might seem like a safe bet, since the lobby has played a key role in shielding Israel from American pressure up to now. In fact, one could argue that Israel could not have gotten as far down the apartheid road as it has without the help of organizations like AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League. But that strategy is not likely to work over the long run.

The problem with depending on the lobby for protection is that most American Jews will not back Israel if it becomes a full-fledged apartheid state. Indeed, many of them are likely to criticize Israel and support calls for making Greater Israel a legitimate democracy. That is obviously not the case now, but there are good reasons to think that a marked shift in the American Jewish community's thinking about Israel is in the offing. This is not to deny that there will be some diehards who defend apartheid Israel; but their ranks will be thin and it will be widely apparent that they are out of step with core American values.

Let me elaborate.

American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories. The first two are what I call "righteous Jews" and the "new Afrikaners," which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways. The third and largest group is comprised of those Jews who care a lot about Israel, but do not have clear-cut views on how to think about Greater Israel and apartheid. Let us call this group the "great ambivalent middle."

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

On the other side we have the new Afrikaners, who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state. These are individuals who will back Israel no matter what it does, because they have blind loyalty to the Jewish state. This is not to say that the new Afrikaners think that apartheid is an attractive or desirable political system, because I am sure that many of them do not. Surely some of them favor a two-state solution and some of them probably have a serious commitment to liberal values. The key point, however, is that they have an even deeper commitment to supporting Israel unreservedly. The new Afrikaners will of course try to come up with clever arguments to convince themselves and others that Israel is really not an apartheid state, and that those who say it is are anti-Semites. We are all familiar with this strategy.

I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby's major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.

The key to determining whether the lobby can protect apartheid Israel over the long run is whether the great ambivalent middle sides with the new Afrikaners or the righteous Jews. The new Afrikaners have to win that fight decisively for Greater Israel to survive as a racist state.

There is no question that the present balance of power favors the new Afrikaners. When push comes to shove on issues relating to Israel, the hardliners invariably get most of those American Jews who care a lot about Israel to side with them. The righteous Jews, on the other hand, hold considerably less sway with the great ambivalent middle, at least at this point in time. This situation is due in good part to the fact that most American Jews – especially the elders in the community – have little understanding of how far down the apartheid road Israel has travelled and where it is ultimately headed. They think that the two-state solution is still a viable option and that Israel remains committed to allowing the Palestinians to have their own state. These false beliefs allow them to act as if there is little danger of Israel becoming South Africa, which makes it easy for them to side with the new Afrikaners.

This situation, however, is unsustainable over time. Once it is widely recognized that the two-state solution is dead and Greater Israel is a reality, the righteous Jews will have two choices: support apartheid or work to help create a democratic bi-national state. I believe that almost all of them will opt for the latter option, in large part because of their deep-seated commitment to liberal values, which renders any apartheid state abhorrent to them. Of course, the new Afrikaners will fiercely defend apartheid Israel, because their commitment to Israel is so unconditional that it overrides any commitment they might have to liberal values.

The critical question, however, is: what will happen to those Jews who comprise the great ambivalent middle once it is clear to them that Israel is a full-fledged apartheid state and that facts on the ground have made a two state solution impossible? Will they side with the new Afrikaners and defend apartheid Israel, or will they ally with the righteous Jews and call for making Greater Israel a true democracy? Or will they sit silently on the sidelines?

I believe that most of the Jews in the great ambivalent middle will not defend apartheid Israel but will either keep quiet or side with the righteous Jews against the new Afrikaners, who will become increasingly marginalized over time. And once that happens, the lobby will be unable to provide cover for Israel's racist policies toward the Palestinians in the way it has in the past.

There are a number of reasons why there is not likely to be much support for Israel inside the American Jewish community as it looks more and more like white-ruled South Africa. For starters, apartheid is a despicable political system and it is fundamentally at odds with basic American values as well as core Jewish values. This is why the new Afrikaners will defend Israel on the grounds that it is not an apartheid state, and that security concerns explain why Israel has to discriminate against and oppress the Palestinians. But again, we are rapidly reaching the point where it will be hard to miss the fact that Greater Israel is becoming a full-fledged apartheid state and that those who claim otherwise are either delusional or disingenuous. Simply put, not many American Jews are likely to be fooled by the new Afrikaners' arguments.

Furthermore, survey data shows that younger American Jews feel less attachment to Israel than their elders. This is surely due to the fact that the younger generations were born after the Holocaust and after anti-Semitism had largely been eliminated from American life. Also, Jews have been seamlessly integrated into the American mainstream, to the point where many community leaders worry that rampant inter-marriage will lead to the disappearance of American Jewry over time. Not surprisingly, younger Jews are less disposed to see Israel as a safe haven should the goyim go on another anti-Semitic rampage, because they recognize that this is simply not going to happen here in the United States. That perspective makes them less inclined than their elders to defend Israel no matter what it does.

There is another reason why American Jews are likely to feel less connected to Israel in the years ahead. Important changes are taking place in the demographic make-up of Israel that will make it more difficult for many of them to identify closely with the Jewish state. When Israel was created in 1948, few ultra-orthodox Jews lived there. In fact, ultra-orthodox Jews were deeply hostile to Zionism, which they viewed as an affront to Judaism. Secular Jews dominated Israeli life at its founding and they still do, but their influence has been waning and is likely to decline much more in the decades ahead. The main reason is that the ultra-orthodox are a rapidly growing percentage of the population, because of their stunningly high birthrates. It is estimated that the average ultra-orthodox woman has 7.8 babies. As many of you know, the Jewish areas of Jerusalem are increasingly dominated by the ultra-orthodox. In fact, in the 2008 mayoral election in Jerusalem, an ultra-orthodox candidate boasted, "In another 15 years there will not be a secular mayor in any city in Israel." Of course, he was exaggerating, but his boast is indicative of the growing power of the ultra-orthodox in Israel. One final piece of data: about one half of Israeli school children in first grade this year are either Palestinian or ultra-orthodox. Given the high birthrates of the ultra-orthodox and the Palestinians, their percentage of the first-graders – and ultimately the population at large – will grow steadily with time.

Varying birthrates among Israel's different communities are not the only factor that is changing the makeup of Israeli society. There is another dynamic at play: large numbers of Israelis have left the country to live abroad and most of them are not expected to return home. Several recent estimates suggest that between 750,000 and one million Israelis reside in other countries, and most of them are secular. On top of that, public opinion surveys indicate that many Israelis would like to move to another country. This situation is likely to get worse over time, because many secular Jews will not want to live in an apartheid state whose politics and daily life are increasingly shaped by the ultra-orthodox.

All of this is to say that Israel's secular Jewish identity – which has been so powerful from the start – is slowly eroding and promises to continue eroding over time as the ultra-orthodox grow in number and influence. That important development will make it more difficult in the years ahead for secular American Jews – who make up the bulk of the Jewish community here in the United States – to identify closely with Israel and be willing to defend it when it becomes a full-blown apartheid state. Of course, that reluctance to back Israel will be further strengthened by the fact that American Jews are among the staunchest defenders of traditional liberal values.

The bottom line is that Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state over the long term, because it will not be able to depend on the American Jewish community to defend its loathsome policies toward the Palestinians. And without that protection, Israel is doomed, because public opinion in the West will turn decisively against Israel, as it turns itself into a full-fledged apartheid state.

Thus, I believe that Greater Israel will eventually become a democratic bi-national state, and the Palestinians will dominate its politics, because they will outnumber the Jews in the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

What is truly remarkable about this situation is that the Israel lobby is effectively helping Israel commit national suicide. Israel, after all, is turning itself into an apartheid state, which, as Ehud Olmert has pointed out, is not sustainable in the modern era. What makes this situation even more astonishing is that there is an alternative outcome which would be relatively easy to achieve and is clearly in Israel's best interests: the two-state solution. It is hard to understand why Israel and its American supporters are not working overtime to create a viable Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories and why instead they are moving full-speed ahead to build Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state. It makes no sense from either a moral or a strategic perspective. Indeed, it is an exceptionally foolish policy.

What about the Palestinians? I believe that the two-state solution is the best outcome for them as well as the Israelis. However, the Palestinians have little say in whether there will be two states living side-by-side, because they are presently at the mercy of the Israelis, who are the lords of the land. This means that the Palestinians are going to end up living in Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state. Again, one might even argue that they have already reached that point. Regardless, the Palestinians will obviously have a vested interest in moving away from apartheid and toward democracy as quickly and painlessly as possible. Of course, that will not be easy, but there are better and worse ways to achieve that end.

Let me conclude with a few words of advice to the Palestinians about how they should go about turning Greater Israel into a democratic bi-national state.

First, it is essential to recognize that the Palestinians and the Israelis are engaged in a war of ideas. To be more specific, this is a war about two competing visions of the Middle East: a Greater Israel that is an apartheid state and one that is a democracy. There is no question that the Palestinians have the easier case to make, as it is impossible to sell apartheid in the modern world.

Second, to win this war the Palestinians will have to adopt the South Africa strategy, which is to say that they will have to get world opinion on their side and use it to put enormous pressure on Israel to abandon apartheid and adopt democracy. This task will not be easy because the new Afrikaners will re-double their efforts to defend Israel's heinous policies. Fortunately, their ability to do this is likely to diminish over time.

Third, the Palestinians most formidable weapon in this war of ideas will be the Internet, which will make it easy for them to document what Israel is doing and to get their message out to the wider world.

Fourth, the Palestinians will need to build a stable of articulate spokespersons who can connect with Western audiences and make a compelling case against apartheid. In other words, they will need more Mustafa Barghoutis. The Palestinians will also need allies, and not only from the Arab and Islamic world, but from countries in the West as well. Many of the Palestinians best allies will surely be righteous Jews, who will play a key role in the fight against apartheid in Israel as they did in South Africa.

Fifth, it is essential that the Palestinians make clear that they do not intend to seek revenge against the Israeli Jews for their past crimes, but instead are deeply committed to creating a bi-national democracy in which Jews and Palestinians can live together peacefully. The Palestinians do not want to treat the Jews the way the Jews have treated them.

Finally, the Palestinians should definitely not employ violence to defeat apartheid. They should resist mightily for sure, but their strategy should privilege non-violent resistance. The appropriate model is Gandhi not Mao. Violence is counter-productive because if it gets intense enough, the Israelis might think that they can expel large numbers of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians must never underestimate the danger of mass expulsion. Furthermore, a violent new Intifada would undermine support for the Palestinian cause in the West, which is essential for winning the war of ideas, which is ultimately the battleground on which Palestine's future will be determined.

In sum, there are great dangers ahead for the Palestinians, who will continue to suffer terribly at the hands of the Israelis for some years to come. But it does look like the Palestinians will eventually get their own state, mainly because Israel seems bent on self-destruction. Thank you.

* Professor John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.

This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Among those involved in the Middle East peace process industry there is much talk about "time running out" for a two-state solution.

Recently, the same sentiments were echoed by the US state department, reflecting a shift in the way the Obama administration is publicly talking about the conflict.

On more than one occasion, the state department and other Obama administration figures have said that "the status quo is unsustainable". Notice again the element of time.

Time has been running out for a two-state solution since the beginning of Israel's colonial enterprise in occupied Palestinian territory in 1967. Yet despite this reality, analyses of the situation continue to repeat this now-meaningless cliche year after year, decade after decade. It seems that, to many, time in the Middle East can be magically be suspended. Gravity, in this war-torn region, ceases to affect the inverted hourglass.

The idea that time is running out presupposes some actual threshold beyond which time will actually have run out a midnight hour when the Cinderella-style fantasy of a two-state solution wakes up to the embarrassing reality of facts on the ground.

However, we never hear analysts specify where the threshold lies - at what point Israeli actions of settlement construction and expansion are considered to have finally tipped it over the edge. Without this, the two-state solution becomes the consummate zombie, very much alive in the policy discussion despite being long dead in reality.

The reluctance to draw a line is founded in fears that the line may have already been crossed. Recognition that it has been crossed would, in fact, render the two-state discussion dead and force the policy discussion into an arena that is very much taboo in Washington. This is a discussion that involves three outcomes for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: continued apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or a bi-national state. The first two are unconscionable; the last is not palatable in a staunchly pro-Israel city like Washington.

However, the consequences of not drawing a line at all are far more severe. They result in a climate where Israel feels that its continued colonisation of the West Bank will not have consequences, and the facade of a two-state discussion can continue ad infinitum.

Some argue that facts on the ground do not jeopardise a two-state solution, and that all that is needed to keep the zombie walking is to have enough people on both sides - especially the Palestinian side - who believe in it. As long as there exists a Palestinian partner who will carry the two-state mantra, this argument assumes, it doesn't matter how small or disconnected the territory left for the Palestinian state will be.

Sadly, this also does little to curtail Israel's colonial ambitions and only encourages the Israelis to constantly leverage their bargaining position, since the minimum Palestinian demands can continue to shrink as long as there is a belief among some Palestinians that the two-state possibility lives.

Recent polling of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza indicates that this belief is quickly dwindling. More than ever before, Palestinians in the occupied territories are embracing the one-state outcome. Certainly, other Palestinian communities who are stakeholders in the outcome of the resolution of conflict, like those residing in Israel and those in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, would likely be more amenable a one-state outcome as well.

Regardless of one's belief about what the preferred outcome is, there is no denying that time does march forward, even in the Middle East. With every tick of the clock, every new settlement home, wall and segregated road, we've marched towards the threshold - or past it.

A line must be drawn. The political dynamics are such that policymakers in Washington fear issuing an ultimatum to the Israelis, and would rather rewrite the fairytale so that Cinderella never has to go home and the clock will never strike midnight.

It falls, then, on the Palestinians to draw the line. While the US and Israel perpetuate the two-state dream talk, it is the Palestinians that live in the apartheid nightmare. As long as the Palestinian Authority (PA) is willing to participate in the two-state discussion while little American pressure is put on Israel to comply with international law, the mystical perception of the Middle East as a land without time will continue.

However, the PA could declare a date by which the Israeli occupation had to end and settlements be dismantled. If this deadline is not met, the PA should dissolve the authority and convert the disjointed national movement into a broad civil rights movement seeking equal rights in a bi-national state. They would surely make many in Washington and Tel Aviv take notice.

Of course, the PA's entrenched interests and intuitions may make it incapable of doing this, but the Palestinian public is moving in this direction anyway.

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center.

By Robert Wright* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Are you anti-Israel? If you fear that, deep down, you might be, I have important news. The recent tension between Israel and the United States led various commentators to identify hallmarks of anti-Israelism, and these may be of diagnostic value.

As you'll see, my own view is that they aren't of much value, but I'll leave it for you to judge.

Symptom no. 1: Believing that Israel shouldn't build more settlements in East Jerusalem. President Obama holds this belief, and that seems to be the reason that Gary Bauer, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, deems Obama's administration "the most anti-Israel administration in U.S. history." Bauer notes that the East Jerusalem settlements are "entirely within the city of Jerusalem" and that Jerusalem is "the capital of Israel."

That's artful wording, but it doesn't change the fact that East Jerusalem, far from being part of "the capital of Israel," isn't even part of Israel. East Jerusalem lies beyond Israel's internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. And the common assertion that Israel "annexed" East Jerusalem has roughly the same legal significance as my announcing that I've annexed my neighbor's backyard. In 1980 the United Nations explicitly rejected Israel's claim to possess East Jerusalem. And the United States, which normally vetoes U.N. resolutions that Israel finds threatening, chose not to do so in this case.

In short, accepting Gary Bauer's idea of what it means to be anti-Israel seems to involve being anti-truth. So I don't accept it. (And if you're tempted to accept the common claim that Israel is building only in "traditionally Jewish" parts of East Jerusalem, a good antidote is this piece by Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann, published on Foreign Policy Magazine's excellent new Middle East Channel.)

Symptom no. 2: Thinking that some of Israel's policies, and America's perceived support of them, might endanger American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (by, for example, giving Jihadist recruiters rhetorical ammunition). This concern was reportedly expressed last week by Vice President Joe Biden to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And General David Petraeus is said to worry about the threat posed to American troops - and to America's whole strategic situation - by the perception of American favoritism toward Israel.

Identifying threats to American troops is part of a general's job, and it seems to me Petraeus could honestly conclude - without help from dark "anti-Israel" impulses - that some of those threats are heightened by the Israel-Palestine conflict and America's relationship to it. But Max Boot, writing on Commentary's Web site, seems to disagree; if Petraeus indeed holds such opinions, that's a sign of "anti-Israel sentiment," in Boot's view.

Now, for a lionized American general to even hint that America's stance toward Israel might threaten American troops is a serious public relations problem for Boot's ideology. That, presumably, is why Boot tries to show that this "anti-Israel" view, though attributed to Petraeus, is not in fact Petraeus's view. Specifically, Boot aims to discredit journalists who attributed this quotation to Petraeus: "The [Israel-Palestine] conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel ... . Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support."

Boot assures us that this passage, far from being a good guide to Petraeus's thinking, was just "pulled from the 56-page Central Command 'Posture Statement' filed by his staff with the Senate Armed Services Committee." Well, I don't know who did the filing, but the document itself is titled "Statement of General David H. Petraeus ... Before the Senate Armed Services Committee." So I'm guessing it's a fair guide to his views - in which case, by Boot's lights, Petraeus is anti-Israel, right? And in which case I'll reject Boot's criterion for anti-Israelism.

Boot has an ally in Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman said the perspective attributed to Biden and Petraeus "smacks of blaming Jews for everything."

Foxman's claim may seem hyperbolic, but look at it this way: If he can convince us that blaming any Israeli policy for anything is akin to blaming Jews in general for everything, then anyone who criticizes an Israeli policy will be deemed anti-Semitic - and fear of that label will keep everyone from criticizing Israel. And by virtue of never criticizing Israel, we'll all be "pro-Israel." And that's a good thing, right?

Actually, it seems to me that if we were all "pro-Israel" in this sense, that would be bad for Israel.

If Israel's increasingly powerful right wing has its way, without constraint from American criticism and pressure, then Israel will keep building settlements. And the more settlements get built - especially in East Jerusalem - the harder it will be to find a two-state deal that leaves Palestinians with much of their dignity intact. And the less dignity intact, the less stable any two-state deal will be.

As more and more people are realizing, the only long-run alternatives to a two-state solution are: a) a one-state solution in which an Arab majority spells the end of Israel's Jewish identity; b) Israel's remaining a Jewish state by denying the vote to Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, a condition that would be increasingly reminiscent of apartheid; c) the apocalypse. Or, as Hillary Clinton put it in addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday: "A two-state solution is the only viable path for Israel to remain both a democracy and a Jewish state."

So, by my lights, being "pro-Israel" in the sense embraced by Bauer, Boot and Foxman - backing Israel's current policies, including its settlement policies - is actually anti-Israel. It's also anti-America (in the sense of 'bad for American security'), because Biden and Petraeus are right: America's perceived support of - or at least acquiescence in - Israel's more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad. In the long run, it will also endanger American civilians at home, funneling more terrorism in their direction.

The flip side of this coin is that policies that would be truly good for Israel (e.g., no more settlements) would be good for America. In that sense, there's good news for Bauer and Boot and Foxman: one of their common refrains - that Israel's and America's interests are essentially aligned - is true, if for reasons they don't appreciate.

Sadly, the Bauer-Boot-Foxman definition of "pro-Israel" - supporting Israel's increasingly hard-line and self-destructive policies - is the official definition. All major American newspapers, so far as I can see, use the term this way. AIPAC is described as "pro-Israel," but the left-of-AIPAC J Street isn't, even though its members, like AIPAC's, favor policies they consider good for Israel.

No doubt this twisted use of "pro-Israel," and the implied definition of "anti-Israel," keeps many critics of Israeli policies from speaking out - Jewish critics for fear of seeming disloyal, and non-Jewish critics for fear of seeming anti-Semitic.

So, if I'm right, and more speaking out - more criticism of Israel's current policies - would actually be good for Israel, then the newspapers and other media outlets that sustain the prevailing usage of "pro-Israel" are, in fact, anti-Israel. I won't mention any names.

Postscript: It has been reported that, notwithstanding accounts in Israel's media, Biden did not, in fact, complain to Netanyahu in private about the threat of Israel's policies to American troops. Perhaps predictably, the journalist who first reported this is the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been described by one New York Times columnist as Netanyahu's "faithful stenographer." I don't doubt that Goldberg found an administration source who downplayed Biden's remarks to Netanyahu; obviously, once tensions started to subside, and the goal of both America and Israel was to smooth relations, it wasn't going to be hard to find an administration official who would do that, regardless of the truth about what Biden said. So I attach little significance to the administration's revisionist account of what transpired between Biden and Netanyahu - especially given the heat the administration no doubt took over the original account of what transpired.

Update: A response from Gary Bauer, whose views I critique in this column, and my subsequent reply, can be read here.

Bauer says that Ramat Shlomo - the part of East Jerusalem where Israel's controversial 1,600 housing units are scheduled for construction - is "not a settlement" and "not in a Palestinian neighborhood" and "not a neighborhood that the Palestinians have ever had any intention of taking control of" until Obama turned it into an issue. A useful supplement to Bauer's perspective is this paragraph from the piece by Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann that I cite (and link to) above: "In 1993, when the peace process was taking off, the settlement of Ramat Shlomo - which last week caused such a headache for Vice President Biden - didn't exist. The site was an empty hill in East Jerusalem (not "no man's land," as some have asserted), home only to dirt, trees and grazing goats. It was empty because Israel expropriated the land in 1973 from the Palestinian village of Shuafat and made it off-limits to development. Only later, with the onset of the peace process era, was the land zoned for construction and a brand-new settlement called Rehkes Shuafat (later renamed Ramat Shlomo) built."

And here is a relevant paragraph from a Jan 26, 1994 Washington Post article (not available online) by David Hoffman titled "Israel Constructing a Jewish Cordon Around Jerusalem": "The Jerusalem municipal boundary was enlarged after the '67 war to include Arab East Jerusalem... . For a quarter-century, Palestinian building has been sharply restricted, while Jewish building has expanded. Recently, the Jewish population in the annexed portion of the city surpassed the Arab population for the first time, boosted by construction of new Jewish neighborhoods there."

* Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads.tv and The Progressive Realist. He is the author of The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and, most recently, The New York Times best-seller The Evolution of God. He has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Time, Slate, and many other magazines and has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at the University of Pennsylvania.

Source: NYT

The Middle East 'peace process' is seriously deadlocked. Israel is determined to press ahead with the expansion of settlements. Palestinians refuse to accept anything less than their total freeze, but they are divided on the best way forward - diplomacy or resistance. The diplomatic vacuum leads to more unilateral policies and radicalisation. So how can the international community help? Is a two-state solution still possible, or one state or no state?

Marwan Bishara (Al Jazeera's senior political analyst) interview with Avi Shlaim (Oxford Universaty), Ian Black (Middle East Editor, The Guardian) and Avraham Burg (former head of the Knesset, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former chairman of the World Zionist Organization)

Part1/2:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25yTZ3r6Gs8

Part2/2:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O227HSfkCk

A one-state solution in the area is not as farfetched as it might seem.

By Jonathan Kuttab* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

For a while, it seemed that a two-state solution might actually be achievable and that a sovereign Palestinian state would be created in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Jews and Palestinians at last to go their separate ways. But these days, that looks less and less likely.

With Israel in total control of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and unwilling to relinquish a significant part of the land, it's time to consider the possibility that the current situation -- one state, in effect -- will continue. And although Jewish Israelis may control it now, birthrates suggest that, sooner or later, Jews will again be a minority in the territory.

What happens at that point is unclear, but unless continued military occupation and all-out apartheid is the desired path, now may be the time for Israelis to start putting in place the kinds of legal and constitutional safeguards that will protect all minorities, now and in the future, in a single democratic state of Israel-Palestine. This is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.

In recent years the idea of a one-state solution has been anathema to Israelis and their supporters worldwide. This has been fueled by the fear of the "demographic threat" posed by the high Palestinian birthrate. Indeed, many Israeli supporters of a two-state solution came to that position out of fear of this demographic threat rather than sympathy with Palestinian national aspirations.

At the root of their fear was the belief that despite Israel's best efforts to push Palestinians from land and property and to import Jewish settlers in their stead, the Arab population would keep climbing. And that, when the Arabs reached the 51% mark, the state of Israel would collapse, its Jewish character would disappear and its population would dwindle into obscurity.

Yet that scenario is not necessarily the inevitable result of either demography or democracy. Religious and ethnic minorities have successfully thrived in many countries and managed to retain their distinctive culture and identity, and succeeded in being effective and sometimes even dominant influences in those countries. Those who believe in coexistence must begin to seriously think of the legal and constitutional mechanisms needed to safeguard the rights of a Jewish minority in Israel-Palestine.

It is true that the experience of Israel with its Palestinian minority does not offer a comforting prospect. The behavior of the Jewish majority toward the Palestinian citizens of Israel has not been magnanimous or tolerant. Where ethnic cleansing was insufficient, military rule, land confiscation and systemic discrimination have all been employed. The relationship was not helped by the actions of Palestinians outside Israel who resented losing their homeland or by the behavior of some Arab countries, neither of which accepted the imposed Jewish character of Israel.

Yet it is possible, especially during this period when Jews are still the majority in power in Israel, to begin to envision the type of guarantees they may require in the future. Other countries have wrestled with this problem, and while each situation is different, the problem is by no means unprecedented.

Zionism will ultimately need to redefine its goals and aspirations, this time without ignoring or seeking to dispossess the indigenous Palestinian population. Palestinians will also have to deal with this reality, and accept -- even enthusiastically endorse -- the elements required to make Jews truly feel at peace in the single new state that will be the home of both people.

Strong, institutionalized mechanisms will be needed to prevent the "tyranny of 51%." A bicameral legislature, for example, should be installed, in which the lower house is elected by proportional representation but the upper house has a composition that safeguards both peoples equally, regardless of their numbers in the population. A rotating presidency may be preferable to designating certain positions for each minority (as in Lebanon). And constitutional provisions that safeguard the rights of minorities should be enshrined in a constitution that can only be amended or altered by both houses of parliament with a large (80%) majority.

Both Hebrew and Arabic will be designated as official languages, and governmental offices will be closed for Jewish, Muslim and Christian holidays. New laws will be enacted that strengthen the secular civil courts in personal status matters, while leaving some leeway for all religious communities to have a say in lawmaking, including Reform and Conservative Jews who currently chafe under the Orthodox monopoly over Jewish personal status matters in Israel. Educational systems that honor and cater to the different communities will give each a measure of control over the education of its children within a national system that maintains professional standards for all publicly-funded schools. Strong constitutional provisions will be enacted to prohibit discrimination in all spheres of life, while independent courts will be enabled to enforce such provisions.

Many on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian, will reject this line of thinking, and in all cases, it is clear that a lot of goodwill and much careful thinking is necessary. But as the options keep narrowing for all participants, we need to start thinking of how we can live together, rather than insist on dying apart.

* Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian attorney and human rights activist. He is a co-founder of Al Haq and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners.

Source: LA TIMES

An 1890 map of Palestine. Click for full resolution‎ (824 × 1,064 pixels)

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Two States Solution (Israeli and Palestinian states) to the Zionist/Arab conflict has been, lately, revived as the only practical solution to the conflict. This solution, with all its embedded dangers, had been unjustly and illegally imposed by the UN in 1948 giving the Zionists a starting foot hold in the Arab World. It was, then, welcomed by the Zionists but rejected by the Arabs. Ironically, after 61 years and due to the changing balance of power, reviving this solution, now-a-days, is welcomed and sought for by the Arabs, but is rejected by the Zionist Israel.

The 1993 Oslo Accords were supposed to be the solution of the conflict between the two parties. The Accords provided for the creation of a Palestinian Authority as a first step towards statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip side by side with Israeli state. A Palestinian state, in one form or another, would have been achieved in 1996, after which permanent agreements would have been negotiated leading to the Israeli withdrawal from the 1967 occupied territories. But Israeli intransigence, land confiscations, and colonial expansions had sabotaged all negotiations.

The Two State Solution has been used by late American administrations (Bush and Obama) as a sedative and a future-to-look-for reward to neutralize any Arab opposition to the American military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and future possibility in Syria and in Iran. Israel, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to expand its colonies on Palestinian expense.

Finally after 18 years of fruitless peace negotiations the Palestinian Authority recognized and officially declared the fact which every Palestinian knew, namely that the so-called peace negotiations were only meant for Israel, the stronger party, to impose its own solutions on the weaker Palestinian party while at the same time expanding its illegal colonies. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of Palestinian Authority, whose presidency had expired last January, has petitioned the UN to recognize the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders the same way it recognized the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. Abbas and his entourage were seen visiting important countries trying to garner political support for the declaration of a Palestinian state.

The definition of a state includes, among others, a contiguous piece of land with internationally recognized borders, a free people, who can exercise their own will within an organized social, political and economical structures, with a free government that exercises total control over its natural resources, its borders, its air, and its sea, and can secure inner peace and protect, through arms when necessary, the security of its citizens from any invading party, and most importantly a thriving economy that can sustain such a state. Does this definition apply to the would-be Palestinian state?
Israel exercises total control over all aspects of Palestinian life; land, air, sea, water, and economy. Israel controls the movement of virtually every Palestinian and specifically the Palestinian Authority. To put it bluntly Palestinian officials cannot even fart without Israeli permission. One wonders, then, what form would a Palestinian state take. Would it be viable or decaying? Sovereign or subservient? Free or besieged? Emancipated or dependent? And above all would the establishment of a Palestinian state, at this time, solve or exacerbate the conflict?

Palestine in British map 1924. The map now in the National Library of Scotland. Click for full resolution‎ (2,604 × 2,738 pixels)

Palestinian Authority envisions a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders (West Bank and Gaza Strip) with east Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital, and a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugees' problem. This is a huge change in the goals of the Fatah's liberation program. Fatah's present leadership, headed by the rigged elected Abbas, had degraded its honorable goals from liberating the whole Palestine down to accepting the establishment of a teratogenic state on less than 18% of Palestine proper, for Israel had annexed 80% of Palestine, had taken all of Jerusalem, and the separation wall is taking 42% of the rest of the land. Leaders of Palestinian Authority are still hoping to keep on serving their Western employers by playing the role of policing, subjugating, and containing Palestinians within their major cities. It seems that they have forgotten that Palestinians are struggling not only for a mere dwarfed state, but also for justice, for freedom, for equality, for return to their homeland, and for independent sovereignty.

It behooves Abbas and his gang, and the rest of the Arab leaders who abandoned Palestinians, to remember that Palestinian Cause does not belong only to Palestinians, but also to all Arabs. Legitimizing the right of existence of an expansionist colonial foreign entity in the heart of the Arab World is not a decision to be taken by few puppet leaders. Every Arab citizen has a stake in this decision.

Israeli leaders, on the other hand, although pretending to accept the Two State Solution, are introducing all kinds of unattainable conditions in order to sabotage the solution. They want to keep the unbalanced negotiations to milk as much would be internationally recognized political concession as they could from the weak Palestinian representatives. They are adhering to the main policy of their Zionist founders which states that "Jewish state is unthinkable without the compulsory transfer of Palestinians to other Arab states". The Zionist project of establishing Jewish-only Greater Israel is based, initially, on the expulsion of Palestinians out of Palestine into the neighboring Arab countries in order to implant Jews in the land. Then, while expanding Israel into the Greater Israel dream, drive the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs, living within the area between the Nile and Euphrates, into far away countries. Zionists are taking the American model as their road map, where the so-called "American pioneers and forefathers" had annihilated the native American Indians to establish the good old USA.

Netanyahu expressed this policy eloquently when he stated: "Israel is not a bi-national state. It is the homeland of ANY JEW. And there is a broad consensus in Israel that the Palestinian refugee problem should be resolved outside Israel's borders. Jews will come here and Palestinians will go there. That is the bases of a solution. Palestinians should have to make a final peace deal with The Jewish State of Israel."

Zionists will never accept east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. They want Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of Israel. In their final scheme Jerusalem is planned to become the Zionist capital of the whole world after the destruction of the Islamic al-Aqsa Mosque and the building of the Jewish temple in its place. This plan was hinted to in Ben Gurion's statement: "There is no meaning to Israel without Jerusalem, and there is no meaning to Jerusalem without the temple."

The Two State Solution is a dangerous and an unjust solution. It gives legitimacy to the law of the jungle; might is right. It takes the land and the homes of the Palestinians and gives them for free to the armed-to-the-teeth Zionist terrorists. It vindicates the Zionists' war crimes, crimes against humanity, their grave massacres of civilians, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as their war crimes against Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. It denies those victims any right to pursue justice, their right of return to their homes, and their right for full compensations. It recognizes and legalizes the rogue state of Israel as a racist Jewish only state. It wipes all the history and cultures of the land before the times of Abraham, and recognizes only the short Jewish history and their so-called religious right to the land.

The proponents of the Two State Solution claim that it is the only practical and logical solution due to the present balance of power and due to the facts on the ground. Balance of power is represented in WMD Israel possesses and had used against Palestinians, and in the American blind unconditional political, financial and military support to Israel. The facts on the ground are represented by the Israeli illegal occupation of the whole Palestine, and the illegally scattered Israeli militarized colonies (settlement) in the West Bank. It is claimed that it is impractical to uproot already colonized Zionist residents (settlers) of the colonies, and to dismantle the illegal colonies.

It is worth mentioning that history had proven that balance of power has never been fixed and is always changing. Today belongs to you, tomorrow belongs to your brother. As for facts on the ground, they are in daily changes. In 1947 facts on the ground showed Palestinian existence all over the land and no Zionist colonies at all. No one knows what facts on the ground will manifest in the future.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Dr. Alan Sabrosky speaks to Hesham Tillawi of Current Issues TV regarding the Israeli- Palestinian problem.

Video link: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5190923/13719467

Is it finally a "moment of truth"?!

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat warned Israel in that continued illegal settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories may mean a two-state solution is no longer an option.

The issue of settlements has become particularly heated since US secretary of state Hillary Clinton praised Israel for making what she called "unprecedented" concessions on the issue, even though Binyamin Netanyahu the prime minister, brushed off US and Palestinian demands for a construction freeze.

Clinton has since been trying to reassure Arab leaders.

Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh reports from Ramallah.

By Alan Sabrosky *

Ben Heine © Cartoons

The Dynamics

There are three futures for Israeli-Palestinian relations. These are: (1) the status quo, a mix of Israeli apartheid and repression coupled with Palestinian attempts at retaliation or at least survival; (2) a two-state solution, with a weak Palestinian state infested by Jewish settlements, periodically ravaged by the IDF; or (3) a one-state solution, either a secular, non-Jewish state or a Jewish state "ethnically cleansed" of Palestinians.

None of these is a joy. If all parties within and outside of the region agree on anything, it is that the status quo is too unstable to endure much longer. Jews inside and outside of Israel hate it, often for different reasons. Palestinians loathe it. Countries nearby wonder when conflict there will embroil them. Outside powers, especially the US and the European Union, desperately want something to emerge that lets them get off the political (and sometimes military) firing line.

It is this desperation more than good judgment that drives support for a two-state solution. Otherwise intelligent and, occasionally, well-meaning people advocate it, either as a political pablum to soothe anxieties or like someone drowning clutching a sinking lifeboat, knowing it isn't much but hoping that it will at least buy some time for something else to happen. Even with the best will in the world, a Palestinian state in two parts, separated by Israeli territory and with no common border or viable economy, would be a basket case, although possibly a supportable one with enough external aid. Add in Jewish settlers, Palestinian refugees, and East Jerusalem, and its prospects would be somewhere between dismal and abysmal. Whatever Palestinian state might emerge would make old-time Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe seem positively free.

Which leads to the one-state solution. A single, unified secular state might have worked once, but no longer. It is one thing to dismiss rhetorically the past and point to the future, but that requires someone outside of the region to make it happen, and then to enforce it. Neither the UN nor the EU can do it without a demonstrated US determination to bring Israel to heel. But Obama before Cairo and especially Mitchell afterwards have made it abundantly clear the US today simply will not do that. The US says it wants something to happen, Israel either ignores the US or openly flouts it, and the US then reaffirms its support for Israel. No sanctions, no reduction in aid, just words - ours, theirs, and occasionally those of others, within or outside of a negotiating context. But with or without US approval, Israel will do what Israel wants to do, the consequences be damned, and trust its puppets in the US Congress - both houses, both parties - to allow it.

Towards the Future

This is controlling. If the settlements stay in place in "Judea and Samaria" (i.e., the West Bank), any Palestinian state is simply a temporary "holding company" awaiting dissolution by Netanyahu, Lieberman and their merry band. Objectively, the US could force Israel to remove the settlements, and give Israel the pleasure of their relocation inside of Israel proper. Absent US financial support, military aid and diplomatic protection, Israel as a state withers on the vine or discards its "chosen people" visage and joins the global community. With US support, aid and protection, it has no need whatsoever to change the way it does its business, and therefore no need to give anything but lip service to the grandiose ideas being tossed around about a Palestinian state and a new beginning.

What is going to happen is an old story retold - "ethnic cleansing" that succeeds. And from the perspective of people like Netanyahu and Lieberman, it has its logic. The present is an untenable mess; a separate Palestinian state only postpones a solution and might see the US change its own policy as more and more Americans become aware of what is happening there; a secular state that ends the dream of a Jewish state is a more existential threat than anything posed by Iran; and all that remains is a single Jewish state without the Palestinians, and probably without the current Arab citizens of Israel as well. Of course it will be a crime against humanity, but with the US shielding them, they'll not end up in the dock or on the gallows where they belong.

It isn't even hard to anticipate how that will happen. At some point in the coming months, Israel will strike Iran, an illusionary "existential threat" contrived by Israel principally to incite fear and encourage support from the Jews of the Diaspora (especially in the US). However the strike goes, large numbers of people and many governments in the region will blame the US, either for helping or at least for not hindering Israel. There is a good chance much of the region will convulse, and during that convulsion with attention directed everywhere else, the IDF (actively aided by settlers in the West Bank) will expel the Palestinians there across the Jordan River and those in Gaza into the Sinai. It doesn't take a seer to anticipate their fate.

It also isn't hard to see how this might be averted. Much depends on what the US chooses to do, and so much of that depends on what the American people know and how they make that knowledge felt. There is much more criticism of Israel, and of US support for it, within the US today than existed even five years ago, and another five years could well produce a diplomatic revolution. It wouldn't be easy, but it could happen, and even sooner than that, depending on how much rage, pain or fear the US public experienced due to events in the region. Israel knows this, and I do not doubt for a moment what it will do - unless Obama forgets the Wailing Wall and remembers his dream.

* Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

At the end of my conversation with Sari Nusseibeh at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, the highly respected president of Al-Quds University - and cosignatory of "The People's Choice," a peace plan that he formulated with former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon - told me he wouldn't be surprised if one of the Palestinian residents of the city ran for mayor in the municipal elections in November. The candidate would not run as a representative of Jerusalem per se, Nusseibeh stressed. Rather, he would be running on behalf of all Palestinians in the occupied territories.

"Why don't you do it?" I blurt out. The 59-year-old son of Anwar Nusseibeh, a Jordanian government minister, does not smile. "It's possible," says the professor of Islamic philosophy, who briefly replaced Faisal Husseini a few years ago as the top Palestinian official in East Jerusalem. "Anything is possible," he adds without batting an eyelid.

Nusseibeh's previous contention that the Oslo "house of cards" had begun to collapse was further confirmed by this week's report in Haaretz regarding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's latest peace offering (Israel would annex 7 percent of the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians with territory in the Negev, which would be equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank land; an agreement on the future of Jerusalem would be postponed to a later date; there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel; and the entire plan would be implemented after Hamas is removed from power in the Gaza Strip).

Nusseibeh says he knows full well what happens during negotiations - or, to be more specific, what does not happen. For over 20 years the Palestinian leadership has been trying to persuade their people to agree to a state along the June 4, 1967, lines, while Israel has been destroying that option, Nusseibeh explains, adding: "You cannot negotiate anything about final status if you don't talk about Jerusalem. Final status consists primarily, I believe, of Jerusalem and refugees. If you want to postpone Jerusalem, you postpone refugees. Really, you are not dealing with the problem. You have to discuss these issues, and that is exactly where the trade-off has to be made."

Is Sari Nusseibeh, the secular Palestinian, the symbol of moderation, Ayalon's guy, burying the two-state solution?

"I still favor a two-state solution and will continue to do so, but to the extent that you discover it's not practical anymore or that it's not going to happen, you start to think about what the alternatives are. I think that the feeling is there are two courses taking place that are opposed to one another. On one hand, there is what people are saying and thinking, on both sides. There is the sense that we are running out of time, that if we want a two-state solution, we need to implement it quickly.

"But on the other hand, if we are looking at what is happening on the ground, in Israel and the occupied territories, you see things happening in the opposite direction, as if they are not connected to reality. Thought is running in one direction, reality in the other."

Nusseibeh says the struggle for a one-state solution could take a form similar to some of the nonviolent struggles waged by oppressed ethnic groups in other places.

"We can fight for equal rights, rights of existence, return and equality, and we could take it slowly over the years and there could be a peaceful movement - like in South Africa," he notes. "I think one should maybe begin on the Palestinian side, to begin a debate, to reengage in the idea of one state."

'Jerusalem is out'

"We have failed in the last 15 years," Nusseibeh continues, "to create the world we wanted to create. We were supposed to be very clever; we convinced ourselves that we were going to be very democratic and clean, a model for the rest of the Arab world. And Jerusalem was supposed to be our capital. That's what we believed. But then it turned out that all of this was total rubbish. Jerusalem is out, all we have is Ramallah. And we lost Gaza. There is corruption and inefficiency. This is not what we vouched for when we sat back in the early 1980s and ideologized the two-state solution.

"It so happens that Fatah, in particular, the mainstream party and the only viable alternative to extremes on the left or on the right, now needs a strategy, an ideology. Because the ideology that Fatah has adopted over the last 15 years - a two-state solution - seems to be faltering, and with it, Fatah is faltering. So it is time maybe to rethink, to bring Fatah around to a new idea, the old-new idea, of one state. "

The recent "bulldozer terrorism" in Jerusalem did not highlight the difficulties inherent in a binational state model?

"These are isolated incidents, but they do reflect a major sickness in our Jerusalem Arab society. A sickness that has resulted in pressure, schizophrenia, the fact that these people speak Hebrew, and listen to Hebrew songs, go out with Israeli girlfriends while at the same time they live in Arab neighborhoods and under the influence of Muslim culture. There are contradictory forces pulling at them.

"What is the driving force behind a two-state solution? The fact that it seems more acceptable to a majority of people on both sides and therefore more applicable. The primary motivation is to minimize human suffering. This is what we should all be looking at. If there will be a one-state solution, it will not come today or tomorrow. It's a long, protracted thing, not the ideal solution. Unless, in an ideal world, people really want to be together, then it is the ideal solution. The best solution, the one that causes the least pain and that can actually be instrumental to a one-state solution, is to have peace now, and acceptance of one another on the basis of two states."

Is this an ultimatum?

"That's an ultimatum. Unless a major breakthrough happens by the end of this year, in my opinion we should start trying to strive for equality. Back in the 1980s, before the first intifada, I was saying there was schizophrenia in the body politic of the Palestinian people. It was like the head was going in one direction, which was the direction of seeking independence, national identity - but the body was slowly immersed in the Israeli system, and I said it can't last because it looks like it will snap. Either the body will join the head so that there will be a civil disobedience campaign, or the head will have to join the body, so that there will be a civil rights campaign, to become part of the Israeli system.

"Fifty, 100, 200 years down the road there will be some kind of conclusion. Sometime in the future - however far away this future is - I believe we'll be living at peace with one another, in some way or another. I am not sure how, whether in one state or two states, or in a confederation of states, but people finally will come to live at peace. In the meantime, we will simply cause pain to one another. It's tragic. It is very tragic, because we know we can do it now. That today it is possible with some guts, leadership, vision, we can make it happen today, we can reach a peaceful solution today. [The Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002] is a fantastic chance. The Palestinians have adopted it, they'll go with it all the way. It is a perfect chance. It doesn't even mention right of return. It is even better than the Ayalon- Nusseibeh plan, but I am willing to accept it."

'Dead money'

Asked why he - who realizes so well how complicated it will be to reach a fair and logical solution regarding Jerusalem - is opposed to Olmert's idea of postponing discussion on that issue, Nusseibeh says he hopes that the prime minister is not repeating the same mistake made by Ehud Barak at Camp David, and that the idea of postponement was broached strictly for public relations purposes.

"Because for Israel, however important Jerusalem may be, the primary factor is the Jewish character [of the state]. And however important the refugees might be, what is more important for the Palestinians and Muslims is Jerusalem. It is the issue over which the most extremist of refugees will be willing to make a sacrifice. Let's hope this is not where [Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] are disagreeing. If that is what they're disagreeing about, then there's no hope. We have to do everything now, we have to put everything on the table.

"The facts on the ground are making [the situation] irreversible," Nusseibeh warns. "Take the Clinton parameters - Palestinian neighborhoods are Palestinian sovereignty, Jewish neighborhoods are Jewish sovereignty. They are acceptable in principle, but with realities on the ground, like the expulsion of Arab families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the inhabitation of those areas by Jewish settlers, it's going to be unacceptable on a practical level. That's why we don't have time."

You ruffled some feathers among the Palestinian leadership when you recently asked the Europeans to halt financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Someone even wondered whether you would be willing to give up the aid provided for Al-Quds University.

"Ramallah's reaction was a bit worried. They called me a few times, a bit worried."

Nusseibeh adds that the PA is still dogged by corruption - different from the corruption of which Olmert is accused - whereby donor states subsidize thousands of salaried employees at nonprofit organizations. This creates what he sees as an unhealthy dependency on foreign entities.

"We have a terrible situation. Our political bible, our platform, our moral values - we need to be brought together again. If not for creating a state, then for our own sanity and for own values as a people. Apart from in Ramallah, everybody is living under very bad conditions. The occupation is terrible. The siege is everywhere. Pressure. As it is, the Europeans are financing the occupation. And the Europeans are happy, because they feel they're doing something, it cleans their conscience. And the Israelis are happy because they're not paying for it. And the Palestinians are happy because they are getting their wages paid. It keeps the economy going, and people are getting complacent about it. It's dead money [going] after dead money."

Nusseibeh mentions the recent meeting he had with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the British consulate in Jerusalem, together with four other Palestinians, during which the premier stated he would like to assume a role in the peace process more central than that of a cash register. "I said, I want to tell you what you can do to transform yourself from a payer into a player: Make your money payments conditional on tangible progress in the peace process."

Not long ago, the professor continues, "I was in Brussels. I gave a talk and I said to the Europeans: If you want to pass on money, do it only on the condition we build a state, in which case it makes sense for you to spend money to build us an international airport. But if in the end there isn't going to be an independent Palestinian state, why waste your money? Waste your money, if you need to, on integrating us into Israeli society. Makes more sense. Pay the money for us to become part of Israel, to have equal rights. Raise our level of education, bring our standards of living up. But to have the PA taking all this money, creating all this debt, makes no sense. Maybe the Europeans should link the aid they are giving us to real progress in peace talks, so that both the Israelis and the Palestinians will be shocked out of their complacency, or lack of commitment."

What do you make of the growing support among Palestinians for the dismantlement of the PA?

"The PA has no use. If we fail to reach a peace agreement by the end of this year, I believe it would be best to go back to the period when we were living happily under occupation. We had a small civil administration, they were paying back some $20 million a year to the Israeli treasury, so they were making money off us. Today, we are creating, year after year, bigger deficits. We are spending billions, we have 160,000 employees, half of them are security personnel, who give us no security whatsoever, we are spending masses of money on guns, which we only use against each other and which provide us no security. The whole thing is a mess."

Nusseibeh says that to this day, the Palestinians have opposed taking part in the Jerusalem municipal elections because they feared doing so would sever the link between Jerusalem's Arabs and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, given the diminishing likelihood of a two-state solution, perhaps it is time for the Palestinians to reconsider.

"People in Jerusalem - why should they attach themselves to the Muqata, to Ramallah? There is no reason. There's nothing. The municipal election in Jerusalem [could serve as a launching point for seeking equal rights in a binational state]. We begin with Jerusalem, not as a separate part, but as a spearhead of the entire Palestinian body. Why not? Why not turn the weakness into a strength?

Are you disappointed by the Israeli peace camp? Did your partner, Ami Ayalon, who joined the same government you now accuse of distancing itself from your proposal, betray you?

"I respect Ami Ayalon. He is a very honest person, that is something that has always attracted me to him. It is not a betrayal of me personally. I look upon it as the ultimate submission by the individual to the wheels of history. You reach the point where you feel no longer able to do what you want, to steer the wheels in the direction you want them to go. And you submit, and become a part of the machine. So it's not really a betrayal. It's rather an expression of weakness. I am sad more than surprised. I recognize it as part of human weakness.

"I was still hoping because, before he went to the Labor Party, he came and spoke to me. I like this about him. I knew what he was doing. People were pushing him for a long time, trying to get him into the system, and he resisted. But then at one stage, I think he made up his mind: 'Maybe I can lead the Labor Party, and then this is the best place for me to be.' I said, fine, do it. I was unhappy that ... he became marginalized as minister without portfolio."

Nusseibeh says he lost touch with Ayalon since the latter became a minister.

Asked if Abbas would be able to muster Palestinian support for an agreement like "The People's Choice," Nusseibeh says both the Palestinian president and Olmert need to courageously take on their respective opposition camps. For instance, if Abbas "would come to the Palestinian people and say, 'I initialed such a document. I want to dissolve the legislative council and run for election and this is going to be my political platform. Not only for me as a president, but also as leader of Fatah.' Let us assume that he does this and then he creates a debate in our society. It will be a very far-reaching, democratic debate, in which he will be looked upon as presenting his project. [This would] mark the beginning of a process, of a struggle.

"I believe that on Israeli side, Olmert could do the same. We don't know whether both leaders will be reelected, but it's worth doing, even if they're not, because at least we know we've given this peace agreement a chance."

Ami Ayalon says, in response: "I agree with Sari Nusseibeh that time is running out for the two-state solution. He voices the frustration and desperation of the Palestinians, and we have to consider that. If a man like him, a son of a Palestinian refugee who relinquished his right of return and was bodily attacked because of it, comes to the conclusion that the two-state solution is no longer an option, it means that the whole pragmatic Palestinian approach is crumbling.

"I share his view that Olmert missed a chance to get an agreement due to efforts to insure his own political survival. The Labor Party will not succeed in getting back in power by attacking the other parties, but only by raising the common banner of security and political agreements."

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011859.html

I didn't think America was a place where bookstores barred people for their viewpoints, until it happened to me, right here in Washington, D.C., the city of my birth.

I was scheduled to speak at Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse last month about my latest book, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation." My appearance was canceled when the bookstore owners realized that my book concludes by questioning the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead it proposes a single democratic, secular and multicultural state in which Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully as citizens with equal rights.

"I do not believe that your book will further constructive debate in the United States," one of the owners wrote to me in an e-mail. "A single state is not a solution." I was dismayed that my invitation was rescinded because I express a different point of view from the one sanctioned by a supposedly independent bookstore. Yet the cancellation seems to fit into a larger pattern of nationwide censorship about this issue.

Stanford professor Joel Beinin had been invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at a Silicon Valley school last year; his appearance was canceled when the school was criticized for booking the event. Tony Judt of New York University was invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at the Polish Consulate in New York last fall; his talk was canceled after the consulate came under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

The fact that senior scholars are prevented from speaking in well-known forums because they do not toe an official line suggests that the civic culture on which our country was founded has broken down, at least when it comes to Palestine and Israel.

Yet citizens can object to the muzzling of ideas. After receiving letters of protest and eloquent entreaties by bloggers, Politics and Prose decided last week to reissue my invitation. This reversal is an important step forward but questions still linger. Can we afford not to hear each other out as we evaluate our Middle East policies? Should Palestinians not be allowed to speak unless their erstwhile audience gets to tell them what to say? What, then, is the point of a conversation? What is the alternative to conversation?

What is so unspeakably wrong with saying that justice, secularism, tolerance and equality of citizens -- rather than privileges granted on the basis of religion -- should be among the values of a state?

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English literature at UCLA.