FORWARD TO THE PAST: THE FALL
AND RISE OF THE 'ONE-STATE SOLUTION Jonathan
Spyer*
Deeply embedded in Palestinian
nationalism is the notion that Israeli Jewish identity is
analogous to that of communities born of European colonialism,
which are not seen as having legitimate claim to
self-determination. No reconsidering of this characterization
took place during the period of the peace process of the
1990s. Hence, the short period of acceptance of the "two-state
solution," was a departure by Palestinian nationalism from its
more natural stance, and the current trend of return to the
"one-state" option is a return to a position more in keeping
with the deep view of the conflict held throughout by this
trend.
INTRODUCTION
One of the by-products of the eclipse of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the 1990s has been the
re-emergence into public debate of older strategies for the
solution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Perhaps most noticeable among these is the rebirth of the
so-called "one-state solution." According to this idea, the
long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians can be solved
only by the replacement of the State of Israel as a Jewish
state and its combining with the West Bank and Gaza Strip to
form a single entity. This entity, according to most versions
of the idea, would be ostensibly constituted as a
non-sectarian state with no ethno-national character,[1] although given its advocates'
support for the return of Palestinian refugees of 1948 and
their dependents, the implication is that it will have a
Palestinian Arab demographic majority. A variant idea proposes
the creation of a bi-national state containing guaranteed
rights and representation for Jews and Arabs.[2] Another version, supported by
Islamist trends among the Palestinians, supports the creation
of a single state ruled by Islamic Shari'a law in the area.[3]
The one-state idea is not new. Rather,
variants of it have formed the preferred outcome of the
conflict for the Palestinian national movement throughout the
greater period of its history. The "democratic state" idea
became the official stance of the PLO after the eighth
Palestinian National Council (PNC) in 1971.[4] It replaced earlier
formulations that had hardly related to the issue of statehood
at all but that had instead concentrated on the claim of the
injustice of the creation of Israel and the proclaimed
Palestinian or Arab right to reverse its creation. The
Palestinian National Covenant, for example, makes no mention
of statehood and appears to favor the expulsion of all but a
small minority of Israeli Jews. It states that Jews "of
Palestinian origin will be considered Palestinians if they
will undertake to live loyally and peacefully in Palestine."[5] The covenant does not define
precisely what Jews of Palestinian origin are, but this is
usually understood to refer to Jews whose families were
resident in the area prior to 1917.[6] From the early 1970s,
however, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
proclaimed itself in support of the idea of a "non-sectarian"
state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.[7]
From the mid-1970s, the idea of the
"non-sectarian state" appeared to be in a long process of
decline in the mainstream Fatah organization and among some
other groupings within the PLO. It was replaced with the idea
of two states. This idea first appeared in the form of the
Palestinian desire to create a state in any area of
"liberated" territory. After the Algiers PNC of 1988, it was
promoted in terms of a peaceful two-state outcome. This
position made possible the rapid emergence of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s.
Since the abrupt demise of the Oslo process
in 2000, however, the idea of the "non sectarian state" has
been undergoing a process of revival. Due to the contemporary
familiarity of the term "two-state solution" in discussion of
the conflict, it has been renamed the "one-state solution,"
but in all particulars it resembles the earlier stance of the
movement. Recent pronunciations by senior Fatah leaders have
suggested that a version of it might become the official
policy of the movement if it despairs of the possibility of
reaching a two-state settlement in line with its aspirations.
Of course, with Palestinian politics today divided between
Fatah and Hamas, it is important to note that 40 percent of
the Palestinians resident west of the Jordan River already
live under the rule of a movement committed to the "one-state
solution." Hamas, as its founding charter makes clear, favors
a single state to be governed by Shari'a law.[8] This article provides a brief
history of the one-state solution and discusses the
implications and meaning of the revival of the idea. To
conclude, the assumptions behind the idea and the implications
of its re-emergence for hopes of a peaceful conclusion to the
conflict are considered.
THE "ONE-STATE SOLUTION": A BRIEF
HISTORY
The termination of the Jewish state of Israel
and its replacement by a Palestinian Arab state was the openly
declared intention of Palestinian nationalism in its earliest
incarnations. Following the 1948 war, the former leadership of
the Arabs of Palestine expressed itself exclusively in terms
of "return," with no serious discussion of the nature of the
state to be built following the reversal of the Israeli
victory. The first major organizational expressions of an
explicitly Palestinian nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s were
also unequivocal in this regard. Thus, the Palestinian
National Covenant, authored in 1964 and amended at the fourth
PNC in July 1968, declares its ambition as the "liberation" of
Palestine in order to "destroy the Zionist and imperialist
presence."[9] This liberation is to take
place via the means of "armed struggle," and, it is implied,
will result in the departure from the country of all Jews not
resident in it before the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The
document explicitly rejects "all solutions which are
substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine."[10] It also clearly bears the
influence of the pan-Arab nationalism prominent at the time.
The Arab nation is called upon to "mobilize all its
military, human, moral, and spiritual capabilities to
participate actively with the Palestinian people in the
liberation of Palestine."[11] Jewish claims of
historical or religious attachments to the land are described
as "incompatible with the facts of history"[12] and indeed the very claims
to peoplehood of the Jews are derided and dismissed.[13]
The 1964 Covenant and the revised Palestinian
National Charter of 1968 represent the first serious attempts
to codify the aims of Palestinian nationalism. The aim
unambiguously outlined in these documents is the nullification
of Israel's sovereignty, which is seen as based on a false
premise--namely, the claim of the Jews to peoplehood. Since
Israeli-Jewish nationhood is seen as fraudulent, it follows
that the generally accepted rights of bona fide
nations--including to self-determination and sovereignty--need
not apply to Israel. Rather, the solution is for the
destruction of Zionism and the constitution of former Mandate
Palestine as an Arab state, eventually to be included, it
makes clear, within a future "Arab Unity." [14] Thus the founding documents
of modern, organized Palestinian nationalism offer a
definitive statement of the "one-state solution."
This point of view was further ratified in
the 1968-1970 period. It was during this period that the idea
recognizable today as the "one-state solution" first rose to
prominence and then dominance within the embryonic Palestinian
national movement. The notion of the Palestinian national
movement promoting the creation of a Palestinian state seems
in retrospect self-evident. It was not so at the time. Rather,
the PLO's advocacy of its "non-sectarian, democratic state"
represented an important break with the domination of the
Pan-Arab nationalist ideas which dominated Palestinian
political discussion in the preceding two decades. Pan-Arab
ideas saw the destruction of Israel as the responsibility of
the entirety of the Arab nation, and opposed the notion of a
separate Palestinian people. For this reason, the early
controversies over the issue were fought not between advocates
of the "two-state" and "one-state" solutions. There was no
constituency among Palestinian nationalists for a solution to
the conflict involving the continued existence of the State of
Israel at that time. Rather, the advocates of the
"non-sectarian, democratic" Palestinian state--most prominent
among them the Fatah movement of Yasir Arafat, but also
including the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine or PDFLP (later the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, DFLP)--debated the issue with streams
that saw the 'liberation' of Palestine and the destruction of
Israel as the task of the entirety of the Arabs, such as the
pro-Iraqi Arab Liberation Front. Nasserite tendencies also
backed this view (although the Egyptian government was
pro-Fatah at the time.) The Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP) also opposed the "democratic state" idea,
which it considered a distraction from the broader task of
fomenting a general overthrow of the existing Arab regimes--to
be followed by a conventional victory over Israel. The idea
was also opposed by the "Old Guard" leadership of the
Palestinians in the Arab Higher Committee and among the older
PLO leadership.[15]
At the sixth and seventh PNCs in 1969 and
1970, debate arose between Fatah and its opponents over the
issue of the "democratic state." The discussions took place
against the dramatic backdrop of the armed clashes between
Palestinian organizations and the Jordanian authorities and
army. At the eighth PNC in Cairo in 1971, the PFLP attempted
to argue for the "unity of the Jordanian-Palestinian theater."
This was a way for the organization to reassert its Arab
nationalist character against the more Palestine-centric
Fatah. The eighth PNC took place immediately after the events
of "Black September." The PNC endorsed the slogan of a
"democratic state". Nevertheless the statement endorsing this
strategy also expressed its support for the "unity of the
people on the two banks of the Jordan," and noted that the
call for the "democratic state" was made "in the framework of
the Arab nation's aspiration to national liberation and total
unity."[16] Thus the statement did not
represent a complete abandonment of the broader Arab
nationalist elements of the PLO's outlook.
From 1971, the proposal known today as the
"one-state solution" was entrenched as the official position
of the Fatah-led PLO. Of course, the triumph of this view did
not mean the cutting of links between the PLO and the broader
Arab world. The organization remained dependent on support
from various Arab states, and the strategy itself did not cut
off the Palestinians from broader Arab aspirations. Yet the
adoption of the "democratic state" strategy placed the
Palestinian national movement within the broader process of
the post-1967 Arab world of the growth of local loyalties and
the decline of political Pan-Arabism.
The strategy did not, however, bring the PLO
into line with the broader reality of Israeli invulnerability
to overthrow at the hands of the Palestinians, which seemed to
make the "democratic state" solution less than practical. The
method chosen to bring about the state was "armed struggle";
but so long as Israel remained superior in military
capability, it was difficult to see how this could lead to
victory. In practical terms, the goal was pursued by means of
terrorist and guerrilla operations throughout the 1970s. Yet
despite the undoubted success of such operations in bringing
the Palestinian issue to international prominence, it was
difficult to see how this could be turned into an overall
victory over Israel.
The beginnings of the current, familiar
debate in secular Palestinian nationalism between the
"two-state" and "one-state" solutions may be dated to the
period following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The idea first
surfaced prior to the war, but was very firmly rejected by
Yasir Arafat.
Scholars have noted the slow and gradual
evolution of PLO policy toward the acceptance of partition.
The twelfth PNC of 1974 has been singled out as representing
an important watershed in this process. Observation of the
program adopted at this PNC illustrates the ambiguities of the
process. The twelfth PNC included the adoption of a ten-point
program outlining a "phased" policy for Palestinian
nationalism.[17] This policy continued the
movement's rejection of Resolution 242 and its blunt
opposition to any recognition of Israel. However, the program
accepted the possibility of establishing an "independent and
fighting authority" on any part of the country "liberated from
Israel."[18] Such a gain was seen as a
way-station on the road to the final victory of the
destruction of Israel. Still, in the opinion of some
observers, it represented the first seeds of a growing
political realism in the PLO. They considered that since this
program contained within it a policy goal (even if an
"intermediate" one) that envisaged the establishing of a
Palestinian national authority alongside Israel, this
therefore marked the beginnings of a de facto Palestinian
acceptance of partition.[19]
What may be stated with confidence is that
the PLO leadership henceforth adopted a position of studied
ambiguity on this issue--with certain statements indicating
that the acceptance of independence in an area "liberated"
from Israel might eventually make possible a more long-term
arrangement, and other statements indicating that such an
authority would be intended as a way-station on the road to
the eventual "liberation" of the entire land and the demise of
Israel. In opposition to the position of ambiguity adopted by
the leadership--which placed the PLO at an imprecise point
somewhere between the "one-state" and "two-state"
solutions--the leadership was opposed by a PFLP-led opposition
within the PLO that vowed continued loyalty to the destruction
of the Zionist state of Israel and the creation of the
"non-sectarian, democratic" state in place of it.
The policy of ambiguity favored by the Fatah
and PLO leadership began to pay dividends in the late 1970s
and early 1980s. It made possible the granting of observer
status to the PLO at the UN, and PLO leader Arafat's
subsequent address to the UN General Assembly. It also made
possible the EU's 1980 Venice Declaration, which offered de
facto recognition of the PLO as the leader of the
Palestinians. The policy of constructive ambiguity permitted
contacts between leftist Israelis and PLO officials. Yet the
PLO's stated policy remained not a two-state outcome to the
conflict, but rather the acceptance of the creation of a
"Palestinian national authority" (or later a "Palestinian
national state") on any part of land "liberated" from
Israel.
The peace process of the 1990s became a
possibility with the PLO's adoption of the November 15, 1988
Algiers Declaration. The declaration took place at the height
of the intifada and was part of the PLO's attempt to secure
the leadership of the uprising and to capitalize on the
renewed international focus on Palestinian aspirations. The
declaration was based on Resolution 181, the 1947 partition
resolution, and consisted in effect of a unilateral
declaration of statehood by the Palestinians. The UN General
Assembly subsequently recognized the right of the Palestinians
to declare a state according to resolution 181 (which at the
time had been rejected by the Palestinian leadership), and 89
UN member states recognized the state of "Palestine" in
subsequent weeks.
The Algiers Declaration opened the
possibility of dialogue between the United States and the PLO
for the first time. However, the United States made it clear
that only if the PLO explicitly recognized Israel and
renounced terrorism would dialogue become possible. Arafat
then made a statement in Geneva publicly recognizing
Resolutions 181, 242, and 338, and renouncing terrorism. This
statement appeared to settle officially the argument between
the "two-state" and "one-state" formulas in the
PLO--decisively in favor of the former.
The apparent adoption by the PLO of the
two-state solution made possible the rapid emergence of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the early 1990s. This
acceptance (partial and grudging, as many in Israel argued it
was) of partition meant that within five years the PLO was in
negotiations with Israel, and within six it had achieved the
creation and leadership of a sizeable Palestinian Authority
(PA) encompassing all of the Gaza Strip and a considerable
part of the West Bank. This authority stood on the threshold
of sovereignty alongside Israel by the end of the 1990s.
Thus, the abandonment of the "one-state
solution" and the apparent acceptance of partition brought
rapid diplomatic gains for the PLO and may have saved it from
eclipse in the period following the collapse of the USSR and
Yasir Arafat's ill-judged embrace of Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein. Disputes remained as to the extent of the partition,
and the Oslo peace process of the 1990s of course ended in
failure.
Two points are notable regarding the PLO's
embrace of the two-state solution. The first, as we have seen,
is its relatively recent vintage. An overt acceptance of
Resolution 242 took place only in 1988. The second point is
that acceptance of Resolution 242 did not lead to a major
rethink in terms of the Palestinian national movement's
understanding of the nature of the conflict--which remained
Manichean, seeing it as between an entirely illegitimate
colonialism (Zionism) and an anti-colonialist Arab resistance
movement.
Emblematic of the absence of a real
revolution in thinking in the PLO was the failure throughout
the greater part of the 1990s to abrogate the clauses in the
PLO's founding documents--the Palestine National Covenant and
Charter--which called for Israel's destruction. Despite
entreaties from both Israel and the United States, this was
not undertaken in any form until 1996.
Following U.S. and Israeli pressure, the
Palestine National Council met in the first week of May 1996
and declared that "The Palestinian National Charter is hereby
amended by cancelling the articles that are contrary to the
letters exchanged between the P.L.O and the Government of
Israel 9-10 September 1993." In addition the PNC's legal
committee was assigned "the task of redrafting the Palestinian
National Charter in order to present it to the first session
of the Palestinian central council." The statement did not
mention which articles had been amended. On May 5, 1996, then
Head of the Legal Committee Faysal Husayni announced that
within three months, a new, revised covenant would be
submitted. No new covenant was ever submitted, and Husayni
himself later clarified that "There has been a decision to
change the covenant. The change has not yet been carried out."
To deflect pressure, PLO Chairman Arafat sent a letter to then
President Clinton reaffirming the commitment to amend the
charter and to remove the offending articles.
During Clinton's visit to Gaza in December
1998, the PNC was assembled and voted to approve Arafat's
letter to Clinton. This was hailed by the world media at the
time as constituting the final amendment of those elements of
the Palestine National Covenant that called for Israel's
destruction and the expulsion of the Jews. It was not. This is
made clear by reference to the following fact: The Covenant
itself, in article 33, outlined the only means by which it may
legally be amended, namely "This Charter shall not be amended
save by [vote of] a majority of two-thirds of the total
membership of the National Congress of the Palestine
Liberation Organization [taken] at a special session convened
for that purpose." No such vote ever took place. Rather, vague
commitments to the eventual holding of such a vote were put on
paper and voted on.[20]
Today, the PLO is a fragmented, nearly
irrelevant body. The Palestinian Authority too has fragmented
into two, with the Gaza Strip now under control of Hamas. The
PA remains officially committed to the Oslo process and a
two-state outcome to the conflict. Within Fatah, however, one
may identify many open supporters of the one state idea,
including very prominent individuals such as Faruk Kaddumi.
Senior PA officials have made the argument that unless Israel
is willing to accede to the PA's demands on borders for the
Palestinian state and Jerusalem, the two-state solution cannot
be made a reality.[21] At a certain point,
therefore, the Palestinians may decide to abandon the search
for a two-state solution and adopt the one-state idea.
THE RETURN OF THE ONE STATE
IDEA
In the period since the collapse of the peace
process in late 2000, the "one-state solution" has begun to
re-emerge to prominence in Palestinian nationalist
thinking.
The one state idea did not disappear during
the peace process years of the 1990s. During that period,
organizations committed to various versions of it (Hamas, the
PFLP, and others) were instrumental in attempts to undermine
moves toward a two-state "solution." It also remained the
solution of choice among large sections of Fatah.[22] In its earlier incarnation,
however, the one-state solution had found little echo in the
West. To some degree this changed in the post-2000 period,
with the one state idea becoming the preferred outcome of a
section of intellectuals in Western Europe and to a lesser
extent in North America.[23] The more recent advocacy of
the one-state idea appears to differ from earlier examples in
a number of other important ways.
In the past, the idea was presented as
representing a just outcome, regardless of the difficulty in
achieving it, because of what its advocates regarded as the
inherently unjust and illegitimate nature of Israeli
nationhood. The more recent advocacy on behalf of the
"one-state solution," however, has characterized it as a
reluctant response to reality rather than an ideal position.
According to this view, which is repeated frequently in
literature promoting this option, the Palestinian national
movement is being forced to abandon a sincere and long-held
commitment to a two-state outcome to the conflict because of
Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza (or the
West Bank alone after 2005). The idea promoted is that
Israel's desire to retain settlements in the West Bank, or the
cost--financial and political--of removing them renders any
realistic possibility of Israeli withdrawal unfeasible.[24]
The advocates of the one-state solution then
maintain that since Israel has chosen to sabotage the
possibility of partition, there is no longer any possibility
for the realization of this, and since Israeli settlement
activity has de facto created a single entity west of the
Jordan River, the appropriate--or perhaps sole
possible--response of the Palestinian national movement is to
accept this fait accompli and to begin a campaign for
integration of the entire population of this area into a
single state framework. This case has been made in myriad
publications in a variety of languages over the previous half
decade.[25] It is hard to find mention
of the fact that this position was in fact the PLO's official
stance until 1988. Rather, the impression given is that after
a long period of commitment to partition, the Palestinians and
the international community must now abandon this position,
because Israel's actions have made it an impossibility.
ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND THE ONE-STATE
SOLUTION
The one-state solution, as has been shown, is
a return to the policy advocated by the PLO from the late
1960s, once it moved beyond openly politicidal ambitions
regarding the Israeli Jews. As with the original idea of the
"non-sectarian, democratic" state, there is a certain, rather
obvious discrepancy between the slogan and the very probable
reality that its realization would usher in. That is, while
the slogan may appear to be advocating the creation of a state
such as the United States or post-apartheid South Africa, this
advocacy is being made on behalf of an Arab nationalist
movement, steeped in a specifically Arab and Muslim cultural
context,[26] in an area in which the
creation of democratic, non-ethnic, and non-religious state
has not been the norm.
In order to answer in advance the claim that
the foundation of such a single state framework would surely
usher in disaster for the remaining Israeli Jewish minority,
advocates of the "one-state solution" have been concerned to
restate the older Palestinian and broader Arab claims as to
why Israel should not be included in the normal category of
nations and states deserving of existence. In this regard,
arguments have been raised regarding the supposedly unique
(and uniquely harmful) nature of the state of Israel and of
Israeli nationhood. Thus, Virginia Tilley, an advocate of the
"one-state solution," writes that the existence of Israel has
been "flawed from the start, resting on the discredited idea,
on which political Zionism stakes all its moral authority,
that any ethnic group can legitimately claim permanent formal
dominion over a territorial state."[27]
This argument requires the listener to accept
that there is a single state in the world that is based on the
idea of the nation state as the realization of the national
rights of a particular ethnic national group, and that state
is Israel, and such a unique anomaly can therefore not claim
the normal, unambiguous right to survival that is usually
afforded states.[28] The claim, however, that
Israel is an anomaly in this regard is unsustainable. Both
Egypt and Syria describe themselves as "Arab republics". The
Egyptian Constitution stipulates in Article 2, Chapter 1 that
"Islam is the State religion, Arabic is the official language
and the principles of Islamic Shari'a is the principal source
of legislation."[29] Both Egypt and Syria
require that their president be a Muslim. The Syrian
Constitution of 1973 also cites Islamic jurisprudence as the
main source of legislation.[30] Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
base their entire legitimacy and identity on their Muslim
nature. The Palestinian Authority also in its constitution
describes the Palestinian people in ethnic and religious terms
as "part of the Arab and Islamic nations," declares Islam as
the official religion of the Palestinian state, and cites
Islamic Shari'a law as a "major source for legislation."[31] The world is filled with
states that derive their legitimacy and identity from the idea
of themselves as the expression of the tradition and national
rights of the group that makes up the majority of the
population. This type of argument, therefore, cannot
coherently explain why "one-state" advocates believe that the
disappearance of Israel and the nullification of the right of
Israelis to self-determination are acceptable and even
preferable outcomes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
THE "ONE-STATE" IDEA AND THE NOTION
OF THE ARTIFICIALITY OF ISRAELI AND JEWISH
NATIONHOOD
If the conflict between Israeli Jews and
their Palestinian/Arab enemies is seen as a clash between two
authentic, historically and culturally rooted national groups,
then it is intuitive that a solution to it must rest on the
partial realization of the claims of each side, and subsequent
coexistence between them. There are two reasons for this: The
first reason is because it is a general axiom that the
destruction of the sovereignty of a legitimate national entity
would be an event of tragic proportions that ought to be
prevented. The second, more pragmatic reason is because
historic evidence suggests that when a multiplicity of
historically hostile national entities are forced to live
together in a single state framework, the almost inevitable
result will be strife.
Advocates of the "one-state solution" in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, assume that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is or ought to be exempt from
these considerations. They assume that Israeli Jews either
will not, or ought not, resist attempts to strip them of
statehood. Why is this assumption made when it seems to
contradict both available historical evidence and
international norms?
Long embedded in Arab and Palestinian
nationalism has been the notion that Zionist and Israeli
Jewish identity is analogous not to that of other "legitimate"
nations--such as Palestinian Arabs, British, French, and so
on--but rather to illegitimate communities born of European
colonialism, who have not in the post-1945 period generally
been seen as laying legitimate claim to the self-determination
to be afforded to genuine "nations." Examples of this kind of
community would be the British settlers of "Rhodesia" in
southern Africa, and the French settlers (known as "pieds
noirs") in Algeria. In both these cases, the settlers, once
faced down by the reality of local, indigenous resistance,
made a rational accounting of their own interests and either
acquiesced to rule by the indigenous people or departed whence
they came. Palestinian nationalism has long viewed Israeli
Jews as analogous to these communities. No reconsidering of
this characterization took place during the period of the
peace process of the 1990s. Due to the geographical proximity,
the example of the Algerian "pieds noirs" has been that most
commonly cited.[32] The "pieds noirs" have been
of particular interest to Palestinian nationalists because of
their large number and more or less complete departure from
Algeria back to France following the granting of independence
to Algeria.
The view of Israeli Jews as analogous to the
"pieds noirs" and others like them--i.e., the view of Zionism
as merely a movement of European colonialism--has never
undergone revision among Palestinian nationalists. It is a
view shared by the most moderate and the most radical circles
within this trend.[33] Certain adherents to this
view decided on pragmatic grounds in the 1990s that the
one-state solution should be abandoned because of prevailing
political realities. The essential rightness and justice of
the one-state idea, however, was never questioned. The short
period of acceptance of the "two-state solution," therefore,
can to a certain extent be seen as a departure by Palestinian
nationalism from its more natural stance, and the current
trend of return to the "one-state" option is a return to a
position more in keeping with the deep view of the conflict
held by this trend.
The problem with this outlook is that Israeli
Jews have refused to play the role allotted them. One of the
notable characteristics of both Palestinian nationalism and
broader Arab analysis of Israel has been the tendency to
engage in gloomy predictions for Zionism and Israel. Ever
since the 1960s, prophecies suggesting that the divide between
Sephardim and Ashkenazim, or the "artificiality" of Israeli
culture, or the religious-secular divide, or fear induced in
"settlers" by Palestinian "resistance" would soon lead to the
collapse of Zionism have abounded. Israel, in the meantime,
has absorbed immigrants and developed--not without problems,
to be sure, but generally successfully.
This, however, has not led to a fundamental
rethink of the nature of the adversary. The intellectual tools
surely exist for such a rethink, and engaging in it need not
necessarily imply sympathy or agreement with Zionism or the
Jewish national project. Were Palestinian nationalism, for
example, to factor into its understanding of Zionism not only
those aspects involving settlement and colonization but also
such elements as the presence of Jewish sovereignty in the
area in antiquity, the unbroken link via Jewish tradition felt
by Jews with that ancient sovereignty, the many--sometimes
successful--attempts in pre-modernity of Jews to re-establish
communities in the area in question, the terrible suffering of
Jews in the Diaspora and the notion in Jewish tradition of the
"return to Zion" and the centrality of Jerusalem, this might
make possible a better understanding of the durability and
nature of Jewish and Israeli nationhood. This, in turn, might
make the deepening of a more pragmatic outlook more feasible.
As yet, however, there are no signs of this happening.
Rather, the conceptualization among secular
Palestinian nationalists of Zionism as a colonization movement
par excellence and nothing else continues to hold sway. The
return to the idea of the "one-state solution" reflects the
continued strength of this characterization. The growth
alongside Palestinian nationalism of a newer, Islamist
competitor whose very different outlook leads it also to a
similar strategy of negation of the opposing side is perhaps
the most important development in Palestinian politics over
the last two decades. In the current situation, legitimacy in
Palestinian politics continues to be judged according to
fealty to an idea of the complete defeat of the enemy, and the
most potent growing political force is a religious movement
committed to this ideal. Against this backdrop, secular
Palestinian nationalism appears to be retreating back down the
road it traveled in the 1990s, to the point at which its
journey began in the late 1960s. The growing resonance of the
old-new idea of the "one-state solution" is the most notable
evidence of this process.
*Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research
fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center, Herzliya, Israel.
NOTES
[1] See Michael Terazi, "Why Not Two Peoples,
One State?," New York Times, October 25,
2004.
[2] Tony Judt, "Israel: The Alternative,"
New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 16,
(October 23, 2003).
[4] Alain Gresh, The PLO: The Struggle
Within (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1988), p.
49.
[7] See Gresh, The PLO, pp. 49-50, for
a discussion of the common but mistaken use of the word
"secular" in describing the kind of state sought at this time
by the PLO. Arafat himself denied that this term was ever used
by the Palestinians.
[8] Hamas Charter, Article 11.
[10] Palestinian National Charter, 1968,
Article 21.
[11] Palestinian National Charter, 1968,
Article 15.
[12] Palestinian National Charter, 1968,
Article 20.
[14] Palestinian National Charter, 1968,
Article 12.
[15] See Gresh, The PLO, pp. 34-51
for details on the debate in the PLO in the early 1970s before
the adoption of the "Democratic state" formula.
[18] Gresh, The PLO, p.
168.
[19] See Avnery, "The Struggle for Land," for
an exposition of this point of view.
[20] "Kaddumi Reports That PLO Charter Never
Recognized Israel," Bicom Weekend Brief, April 26,
2004.
[24] See, for example, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, "A
One State Solution: A Unitary Arab-Jewish Homeland Could Bring
Lasting Peace to the Middle East," The Guardian,
September 29, 2003.
[26] See Palestinian National Charter for
evidence of the specifically Arab ethno-national nature of the
Palestinian nationalist ideology.
[27] Virginia Tilley, The One State
Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian
Deadlock (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005),
p. 132.
[28] In many examples, Israel is not
considered unique, but is classed with a very small group of
other aberrant states, such as Nazi Germany, imperial Japan,
and apartheid South Africa. See interview with British
journalist Jonathan Cook for an example of these comparisons,
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/07/saker-interviews-jonathan-cook-from.html.
Virginia Tilley herself considers Israel an example of "ethnic
nationalism," which she considers also once pertained in South
Africa and Northern Ireland but has since been defeated. Her
criteria for defining what this ideology consists of are
unfortunately never clarified.
[29] Nabil Malek, Reviewing the Promotion
and Practical Realization of the Declaration on the Rights of
Persons Belonging to Minorities at the National Level: A
Country Situation: The Coptic Minority of Egypt,
Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Promotion and
Protection of Human Rights, Fifty-seventh session, Working
Group on Minorities, Eleventh session, May 30-June 3,
2005.
[32] See for example, PLO Leader Yasir
Arafat's speech to the UN General Assembly in 1974, which he
opened by recalling UN support for the Algerian struggle for
independence before going on to cite Zionism as an example of
Western colonialism. Speech of Yasir Arafat before the UN
General Assembly, November 13, 1974, http://www.mideastweb.org/arafat_at_un.htm.
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