A controversial rule restricting speech about Israel was dropped after artists abandoned festival lineups in Germany’s techno mecca.
A controversial rule restricting speech about Israel was dropped after artists abandoned festival lineups in Germany’s techno mecca.
I mean to this question the answer is very simple on one side and very complicated on the other.
On the one side every human, every group of human, be it by ethnic, religious, cultural or other metric has the right to live in safety, dignity and with the ability to self develop and participate politically.
If there was a land, where any such group is settled as significant majority, they deserve to have sovereignity over their affairs, be it in a nation state or a federal state.
Founding todays Israel in the way it was founded. Without hearing the Palestinians on the matter and with the Nakba was a grave mistake. It is the root of the subsequent violence and injustice that we still see today. I believe that having a longer UN mandate, maybe taken from the British and instead given to an international coalition, would have helped in finding a diplomatic solution that could have resulted in one nation state that grants the aforementioned rights equally to the people, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity.
Given that today there is about 7 Million Palestinians and about 7 Million Israeli Jews in the area i would see a historic chance to put the area back under UN control and work towards forming a new state for everyone currently living in the area. Such a process would take decades though.
Instead of creating a nation where one group has the majority over the other, creating a state where all groups have about the same power and are forced to work together diplomatically could have been the greatest story of integration in history. I believe that it still can be, if the world decides to think in terms of working together, instead of sowing division again. However there we are back to the geopolitical goals of the global player. In so far i also see it as a great test of humanity, if we manage to solve global issues together again.
Last thought, knowing it goes beyond your question: The reason why i believe in a one state solution is, that a two state solution would on the one hand split the Palestinian state in two parts, which is pracitically impossible to govern or on the other hand deny one side access either to the sea or the Jordan. The sea is crucial for trade and development, as every landlocked country in the world can attest to. The Jordan is crucial for the water supply in this otherwise arid region. Any way to split the land between two nations will disadvantage the other on either of these key ressources.
But this is just gravely incorrect. The Palestinians were heard on the matter. They disagreed. The UN voted for a partitition regardless. Then they were invited in the committee that ‘drew the lines’. But their position was the following (quote from the first article):
“The Arab Higher Committee rejected both the majority and minority recommendations within the UNSCOP report. They “concluded from a survey of Palestine history that Zionist claims to that country had no legal or moral basis”. The Arab Higher Committee argued that only an Arab State in the whole of Palestine would be consistent with the UN Charter.”
The article mentions some colorful quotes from the Arabs regarding the two state solution:
"A few weeks after UNSCOP released its report, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, told an Egyptian newspaper “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades.”[133] (This statement from October 1947 has often been incorrectly reported as having been made much later on 15 May 1948.)[134] Azzam told Alec Kirkbride “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.” Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli told his people: “We shall eradicate Zionism.”[135]
King Farouk of Egypt told the American ambassador to Egypt that in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.[136]
Haj Amin al-Husseini said in March 1948 to an interviewer from the Jaffa daily Al Sarih that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated.”[135]
The Arab Higher Committee demanded that in a Palestinian Arab state, the majority of the Jews should not be citizens (those who had not lived in Palestine before the British Mandate).[108]"
And the day after the British left, they attacked. And when they lost, they rebuilt their armies and attacked again. And then again. The attacks by their neighbour states only stopped after Israel credibly threatened to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
So with this kind of mindsets (on both sides, I’m leaving out all the evils of zionistst here), do you believe a single state solution would have been viable? Which countries would have sourced the UN peacekeeping force you propose? Would they have been willing to fight off the Arab armies on day one? Would they be willing to stay indefinitely?
I think that the people that believed or still believe in a single state solution with equal rights are naive to the reality that there are just way too much religious extremists willing to inflict atrocities to ensure their place in heaven. On both sides.
Which is the same as your boss asking you for your opinion, only to reject it, if it doesn’t align. Moving on with this proposal, showed that from the beginning their was no equal regard for the Palestinians.
If we look at the Background part, we can already see, how the British and zionists approached the whole thing:
So of course the Arabs would not agree. Forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians was already part of this plan from the beginning. And to think of the larger context. The Arab nations were looking to free themselves from colonial rule, but as the British would slowly loose power, another European people should sweep in, right at the heart of the region?
For the context of the first Israel-Arab war you need to also put in between the fact, that with the end of the mandate Israel declared itself as a state and only then the Arab nations declared war. Imagine today China would funnel hundreds of thousands of people into say Belgium, then declare a new state there and take Brussels under control. Would the other EU countries just stand by?
I believe that a one state solution takes a much longer path, but ultimately is the only way, to really get peace in the area and move past the conflict. If you have two states, either side can give rise to power of war hawks. In this regard it would be very much like the status now. If you have two states, it can always be used to ignite tensions and destablize the region, whenever it is desired by other geopolitical players, as is the case currently too. Giving either side the full control over the area, will just lead to it trying to displace or exterminate the other. Having two seperate states, will always mean that whatever injustice is unresolved or commited in the future will be difficult to legally solve, as either side would not give proper access to courts of the other. If a two state solutions was to be enforced now, Israel would not be willing to make any concessions and unless the West would force them in a war to do so, i don’t see them currently being willing to leave a single illegal settlement. The last Israel political leader who wanted to move towards a diplomatic solution, Jitzak Rabin, was depicted as Hitler and murdered, for saying Israel needs to be able to make compromises to ever achieve peace. Since Israel is currently in a position of power, they will simply not be willing to negotiate anything towards a two state solution, and i doubt the Palestinians to accept it, as it would always be deominated by Israel.
I believe that a one state solution ultimately is the only way, because it is the only context in which everyone can be given an actually fair chance and political participation, that could form the justice necessary to achieve acceptance.
Finally about the religious extremists, I think that these will continue to be huge destabilizing factor, as the religious extremism is the vehicle of political extremism. In reestablishing a mandate it would be possible to seek out and bring everyone to justice, who has been commiting war crimes or crimes against humanity. By holding violent Israeli and Palestinian criminals accountable these dangerous elements can be removed from both societies, but more importantly it can create a symbol of justice returning to the region.