Preparing for a post-road map struggle against apartheid (one state )

[Karmadillo]

This is a long article, but well worth reading. Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, argues the two state solution is becoming increasingly impossible. Drawing on the fight against apartheid in South Africa, he presents the outlines of a campaign for a one state solution based on "One person, one vote."

http://www.amin.org/eng/jeff_halper/2003/sept14.html

September 14, 2003
PREPARING FOR A POST-ROAD MAP STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID
By: Jeff Halper*

(Paper given at the United Nations International Conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People New York, September 5, 2003)

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If The Road Map Fails: Permanent Apartheid

Looked at from the ground up, from the perspective of Israel's completion of its three-decade campaign to create irreversible "facts on the ground," the road map represents the last gasp of the two-state solution. This is the crunch. As anyone who has spent even a few hours in the Occupied Territories readily understands, Israel has entered in the last phase of fully and finally incorporating the West Bank into Israeli proper, of transforming a temporary occupation into a permanent state of apartheid. Sharon's implementation of Jabotinsky's doctrine of the "Iron Wall" establishing such massive "facts on the ground" that the Palestinians will despair of ever having a viable state of their own has reached its critical mass. The Israeli settlement blocs are so extensive, their incorporation into Israel proper by a massive system of highways and "by-pass roads" so complete and the Separation Wall physically confining the Palestinians to tiny cantons so advanced as to render any genuine two-state solution impossible and ridiculous. Given the unwillingness of the international community to force Israel's withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and in particular the American Congress's refusal to countenance any meaningful pressure on Israel, we may say that Israel is on the brink of emerging as the world's next apartheid state. Only the road map, the last dying breath of the two-state solution, stands between the hope of Palestinian self-determination in their own viable and truly sovereign (if tiny) state and the de facto creation of one state controlled by Israel. Rather than merely another failed initiative on the way to yet others, we must view the road map as a watershed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its final failure will alter fundamentally the entire nature of struggle for a just and sustainable solution to the Palestinian issue.

The problem has less to do with vision, content and process than with implementation. As a document, the road map has a number of commendable elements. It is the first international document approved by the US that calls for "an end to the Occupation." Indeed, it is the first that uses the term "occupation" at all, defying Israel's longstanding denial that it even has an occupation. It is also the first initiative that sets as a goal the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, putting it far beyond the vague and open-ended negotiations of the Oslo Accords. The mere use of the term "viable" raised hopes that the international community had finally gotten wise to Israel's strategy of creating "facts on the ground" that prejudice any negotiations and render a genuine Palestinian state impossible. The fact that the time-line was short and finite an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel by the year 2005 stood the road map in good stead. So, too, did the performance-based, mutual nature of the process, monitored by the Quartet rather than by the Americans exclusively, and the fact that the terms of reference included UN resolutions, agreements previously reached by the parties and the Saudi initiative. Both in its content and structure the road map is a well-conceptualized, do-able and potentially just attempt at achieving "a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

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The Impending Struggle for a Single State

The looming failure of the road map to prevent de facto apartheid in Palestine-Israel will fundamentally alter the entire nature of the conflict. Israel by its own hand has rendered a viable two-state solution impossible. The only Palestinian "state" that could emerge from Israel's matrix of control is a Palestinian bantustan. Assuming this is not an acceptable "solution," only one other possibility exists: the creation of a single state in Palestine-Israel. (I have suggested in previous writings that given the permanence of Israeli control a truncated Palestinian state might be acceptable as a part of a "two-stage" solution involving the establishment of a wider Middle East Union in which residency is disconnected from citizenship. This, however, is so unlikely at this stage, and the need to end the Occupation so acute, that it cannot serve as a plan of action for the immediate future.)

The stage is thus set for the next phase of the struggle for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: an international campaign for a single state. Since the Palestinian and Jewish populations are so intermingled (a million Palestinians live throughout Israel while some 400,000 Jews live throughout the Occupied Territories), the feasibility of a bi-national state, with the two peoples living in a kind of federation, seems unworkable. The permanency of Israel's presence makes it imperative to incorporate it into any workable political arrangement (though neutralizing it as an agency of control). Given this "reality" on the ground, the most practical solution seems to be a unitary democratic state offering equal citizenship for all. If that is the case, our slogan in the post-road map period will be that of the South Africans' struggle against apartheid: One Person, One Vote.

more...

[Jim Sagle]

1. Yadda.

[StandWatie]

2. ideologically..

I think one bi-racial state is optimal, but the last time that was tried it ended in civil war and I think things have only gotten worse since then.

Of course if it's a choice between civil war and apartheid I'd pick war but I don't know what the outcome would be.

[papau]

3. Palestinian bantustan was not the Clinton Taba proposal - seems

folks want reasons to end the Jewish State of Israel - either right of return, or the single state solution.

I wonder what frightens so many about a Jewish State of Israel. Are Jews that much more talented, smarter, than the rest that giving them State power means the end of the world as we'd like to know it?

crazy

[StandWatie]

4. I'll bite..

if it's not could you explain to me how even Taba would have differed from Transkei?

[papau]

7. bantustan means not connected Taba in January was to have a

bridged road that connected Gaza and the West Bank.

The details of what was on the table is an interesting read. They were down to time tables for Garbage pickup in Jerusalem - and then Arafat demanded total right of return and refused Clinton's suggested compromize (total right of return to west bank plus token few thousand per year for 10 years to return to Israel).

The rejection of that deal - which was more than most Israeli's wanted to give up - has caused the Israeli side - while hating the violence of Sharon - to support Sharon totally - there is no peace movement anymore - and all they see for the future is a bit of police work as the violence continues (ceasefires are laughed at given the last one) - and make a few evil folks pay - as the violence continues until Arafat is replaced with someone who wants peace.

[StandWatie]

10. That isn't an answer

I don't care what Israelis want or don't want or Arafat either for that matter. I want to know how this "peace solution" differs in any respect from the "autonomy" of Transkei under the South African government.

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. What is so frightening about the rule of law? Right of return is the law

Maybe I just have a higher opinion of Israeli people than some, but I don't think that Israel is such a weak concept that it would be destroyed because of the ethnicity of some of its citizens.

A homeland based on the Jewish values of peace and tolerance will not be less of a homeland because of the percentage of its residents who are Jewish.

[papau]

8. Population transfer was the "law" in the mideast if you were lucky

from 1800 to 1950 (Greek and Turk being the most well known).

If you were unlucky - as in Armenian - you had a 1.5 million killed and another million who survived the attack and then the "long walk" sold into slavery in Arab homes in Lebanon and Syria and other Arab countries.

Germans who had grandfathers in Poland were kicked out after WW2 and told to walk home (read about the WW2 displaced person concept) and the EU just ruled they and there children had no "right of return" (I wonder if the fact that a lot were Jews had any effect on the ruling :-) nah - the duration is just too long ago)

Only with Israel is the UN concept (a reasonable concept if done immediately after a war) taken seriously for claims over 50 years old.

[DuctapeFatwa]

12. Good point. Israel has a chance to do better than the Greeks and Turks

Would that be so bad? Israel taking a higher moral road, being a light unto nations?

[bemildred]

5. Very interesting piece, thnx.

I like this paragraph:

As cultural Zionists like Ahad Ha-am, Martin Buber and Judah
Magnes argued, Jewish national identity does not require a state of
its own, only a cultural space where it may develop and flourish.
For all its shortcomings, the state of Israel provided that cultural
space. The vitality of Israeli culture, society, polity and economy
is no longer dependent upon a state structure, a kind of political
"greenhouse." "Israeliness" has reached a stage of maturity that it
no longer needs the protection of a state and, indeed, is being held
back by it, since the conflicts that state generates prevents healthy
social and cultural development. A true homecoming in which Israeli
"natives" engage with their neighbors in a peaceful and prosperous
Middle East marks, if you will, the ultimate triumph of Zionism
("triumph" in its own terms, not over anyone else).

[papau]

9. I pray for the day that is true.

:-)

[bemildred]

11. I think it has always been true.

I find the notion ridiculous that a culture that has survived and
prospered and made great contributions, all over the World,
for thousands of years, somehow needs to go hide in its own
little self-constructed ghetto all of a sudden because of WWII
and the Holocaust.

[newyorican]

13. Every word of your post...

gets a :thumbsup: