Wednesday, March 25, 2015

A 1 State Solution?

I subscribe the Religion Dispatches e-letter/blog. It's often got some interesting material in it, even if it often leans so far to the left that it even makes me uncomfortable (and that, my friends, is saying something). I disagree with it often, but never moreso than when someone writes in it about Israel.

It happened again today. They posted an article which was ostensibly about the idea of a shared, side-by-side 1-State solution. But, mainly it was a blatantly biased, sometimes distorted diatribe against Israel. I was tempted to not even post about this, because it's a minor blog, and so why draw more attention to it? But, the article got under my skin, so I wrote a (much shorter than I wanted to) response.

I could have done a much more detailed take-down of the article, but I frankly don't have the time or energy right now (seders must be planned!). And, I'm hoping that my response will create some decent dialogue; rambling on and on, refuting every point probably makes that less likely to happen. We'll see.

Read the article if you like. Here's what I wrote in response:
The core idea of this article--that it's possible to create a hybrid, 1 state solution, with two people living side-by-side (mixed together, actually) with autonomous governments, sounds unrealistic to me. I'd love to learn more about it, but it's hard for me to imagine that actually working (in any situation, not just one as fraught as Israel/Palestine).
Unfortunately, the author takes an awfully long time to get to that interesting, yet controversial idea. Before that, he spends quite a bit of time unfairly putting all of the blame for the situation on Israel. It is not "alleged" that the Palestinians have long rejected Israel's right to exist. It's a pretty clear fact. And, no mention is made that the decades-old rejectionism of the Palestinian leadership is, almost without a doubt, one of the primary reasons for the rise of the right in Israel. The peacenick left was eviscerated in large part because their attempts to make peace were either undermined or cynically exploited by the Palestinians.
It's also a convenient distortion to lump Israeli-citizen Arabs in with the Arabs living in the Occupied Territories, thus coming up with the 27% voting eligibility statistic. Of course non-citizens can't vote; in what country or situation can they? And, again, isn't it important to mention that the reason for the Occupation has much to do (especially in its first few decades) with the absolute refusal of the Palestinian leadership to compromise or negotiate in any way? Ever since the '67 war, the majority of Israelis were in favor of a land-for-peace deal, at least in principle. Has there even been a parallel among the Palestinians?
You use Gaza as an example of how bad Israel is, but fail to mention that the blockade only began after Israel pulled out (uprooting settlements along the way) only to see Gazans elect Hamas (which is still openly and explicitly dedicated to destroying Israel) and turn Gaza into a launching pad for endless terrorist attacks. And so on.
I'm no fan of Bibi, and I am, at my core, still a Peacenick. I long for a day when Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace. But, pretending that Israel is the willing, evil oppressor while the Palestinians are nothing except for victims of Zionist Imperialism is not true, and it's not helpful, either.

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