"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. . . .
VIDEO: "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid . . . Jimmy Carter in His Own Words,"
democracynow.org, November 30, 2006
[Gush Shalom, under the leadership of Mr. Avnery, is foursquare behind the
so-called Two State Solution, along with some strange bedfellows, such as the hard line
Zionist government and military, the American neo-cons, the Republicrats, the puppet
Palestinian "government, " the "Christian" Zionists--Roger Tucker, "Letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky and
Jimmy Carter," israelshamir.net, 2007]
[Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in
the Middle East on behalf of "greater
Israel."--Paul Craig Roberts, "What the Iraq War
Is About," antiwar.com, April 23, 2008]
[Leaving aside the fairy story of God's promise, (which even if true would have no bearing on the matter because the Jews who "returned" in answer to Zionism's call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews), the Zionist state's assertion of legitimacy rests on the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the UN General Assembly's partition plan resolution of 1947.
The only real relevance of the Balfour Declaration is in the fact that it was an expression of both the willingness of a British government to use Jews for imperial purposes and the willingness of Zionist Jews to be used.--Alan Hart, "Israel Is
Illegitimate," countercurrents.org, April 5, 2010]
[In Oslo, it should be recalled, Abbas, as the chief Palestinian negotiator,
played Neville Chamberlain for Tel Aviv, agreeing to surrender occupied
Palestinian land with a view toward putting a permanent end to Palestinian
resistance and, immediately, to the first Intifada.--Jeffrey Blankfort, "Mahmoud Abbas:
Double Agent," CounterPunch, August 31, 2010]
[ . . . the Strategic Foresight Group in India . . . calculates that
conflict in the area over the last 20 years has cost the nations and people
of the region 12 trillion U.S. dollars. . . .
"One conclusion is that individuals in most countries are half as rich as
they would have been if peace had taken off in 1991.
"Incomes per head in Israel next year would be $44,241 with peace against a
likely $23,304. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip they would be $2,427 instead
of $1,220.
"For Iraq, income per head next year is projected at $2,375, one quarter of
the $9,681 that would have been possible without the conflicts of the past
two decades."--Rick Rozoff, "Middle East
loses Trillions as U.S. strikes record Arms Deals,"
mediamonitors.net, September 3, 2010]
[Brazil became the first of several South American countries in recent
weeks to recognize a Palestine state along pre-1967 borders.
Since then Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador have done the same.
Chile, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are reported to be considering
recognition.--"Brazil hosts first Palestine embassy in
Americas," Reuters, December 31, 2010]
[To break the logjam it will be necessary to dismantle the reigning illusion
that the U.S. is an "honest broker" desperately seeking to reconcile
recalcitrant adversaries, and to recognize that serious negotiations would
be between the U.S.-Israel and the rest of the world.--Noam Chomsky, "Breaking
the Israel-Palestine Deadlock," usatoday.com, January 3, 2011]
[A declaration signed by dozens of prominent Israeli academics, writers and
artists welcoming a Palestinian state on the basis of Israel's 1967 borders
was presented Thursday at the site of Israel's 1948 proclamation of
independence.--Joel Greenberg, "Israeli intellectuals
back Palestinian state," washingtonpost.com, April 21, 2011]
[NO, THE two-state solution is not dead. It cannot die, because it is the
only solution there is.--Uri Avnery, "The
Donkey of the Messiah," gush-shalom.org, May 11, 2013]
[Its central argument holds that the Jews of Europe, the Ashkenazim, are largely
descendants of peoples who converted to Judaism in the distant past and that the claim
that all Jews descend from ancient Israelites is false. Therefore the contention
that European Jews are reclaiming ancient rights to their homeland in what is now Israel
is a false claim. Moreover, the peoples now known as "Palestinians" are in all
likelihood much more closely descended genetically from the ancient Israelites but who
in the course of history converted for one reason or another either to Christianity or
to Islam, and who therefore have a just claim to the land. Nevertheless, Sand strongly
endorses Israel's right to exist but he favors a bi-national state in which Jews and
"Arabs" share equal rights.--Paul Atwood, "Whatever
Happened to Shlomo Sand? Missing in Action After the Storm Over 'The Invention
of the Jewish People'," counterpunch.org, February 14, 2014]
Miko Peled, "Israel and Gaza: Six Decades of Oppression and Resistance," August 22, 2014
[ . . . numerous Jewish and Palestinian scholars have mutually accentuated the one and
only solution to the crisis. As Edward Said puts it, Oslo "set the stage for
separation," yet permanent peace can happen only with a binational Israeli-Palestinian
state.--Ibrahim Halawi, "In memory of Edward Said: the one-state solution,"
middleeasteye.net, October 16, 2014]
Alison Weir, "Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel," May 8, 2015
[in Israel's eyes, the two state solution was never a serious consideration--Franklin Spinney, "How Israel
Killed the 'Two-State Solution'," counterpunch.org, April 19, 2016]
[Honest observers on both sides of the conflict have long acknowledged that the
prospects for a two-state solution are virtually non-existent: another way of saying
that Israel's status as a permanent apartheid regime is inevitable.--Glenn
Greenwald, "U.S. Admits Israel Is Building
Permanent Apartheid Regime -- Weeks After Giving It $38 Billion,"
theintercept.com, October 6, 2016]
[Hamas has presented a new political document that accepts the formation of a
Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, without recognising the statehood of Israel,
and states that the conflict in Palestine is not a religious one. . . . Hamas does not
relinquish its goal of "liberating all of Palestine".--"Hamas accepts Palestinian state with 1967 borders,"
aljazeera.com, May 1, 2017]
[First, freedom for the residents of the occupied territories; second, equality for the
Palestinian citizens of Israel; and third, justice for Palestinian refugees in the
diaspora - the largest group - including the right to return to their homes--Nathan
Thrall, "BDS: how a controversial non-violent
movement has transformed the Israeli-Palestinian debate," theguardian.com,
August 14, 2018]
[The one-state solution envisaged by the Likud government of Israel is a permanent
Israel sovereignty over the 5 million occupied Palestinians that does not envisage their
being granted citizenship or the franchise. And even the 2 million Palestinian-Israelis
are gradually being redefined as even more second-class citizens than before--Juan Cole, "Trump's Recent Remark on Israel Ignores How Apartheid
Works," truthdig.com, August 22, 2018]
[Glossing over the fact that Zionism was ultimately meant to lead to
Jewish control of Palestine, Herzl deployed a justification that has been a touchstone
for colonialists and that would become a staple argument of the Zionist movement: Jewish
immigration would benefit Palestine's Indigenous inhabitants.--Rashid Khalidi, "The Erasure of Palestinians From Trump's
Mideast "Peace Plan" Has A Hundred-Year History," The Intercept, February 1, 2020]
[it's Beinart's refusal to show deference to the usual narrative of Jewish victimhood
that raises ire.--Yakov Hirsch, "The
cultural importance of Peter Beinart," mondoweiss.net, July 26, 2020]
Ramzy Baroud, "Moving Past Apartheid:
One-State Is Not Ideal Justice, but It Is Just and Possible,"
antiwar.com, December 2, 2020
Peter Beinart: Why I no longer believe in a Jewish state, Middle East Eye, June 23, 2021
Differences Between Sephardic & Ashkenazi Jews, Unpacked, November 16, 2022
[Israeli ambassador condemns the UN move, while Palestinian representative tells UN
the world is facing 'end of the road' for two-state solution--"UN approves resolution to commemorate 75th Nakba
anniversary," middleeasteye.net, December 1, 2022]
'Liar!' Norm Finkelstein DISMANTLES Hillary Israel Spin, Breaking Points, November 23, 2023
John Mearsheimer: There is no two-state solution, UnHerd, December 15, 2023
Professor Jeffrey Sachs: 'US is complicit in Israeli genocide', Al Jazeera, March 17, 2024
Is a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine possible? Al Jazeera, March 26, 2024
Nathan Thrall received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in
the Life of Abed Salama. He is also the author of The Only Language They Understand:
Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine. His writing has appeared in the New York
Times Magazine, the Guardian, London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books
and been translated into more than twenty languages. He spent a decade at the
International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has
taught at Bard College. He lives in Jerusalem.-- Nathan Thrall, "A Day in the
Life of Abed Salama," amazon.com, August 13, 2024
Why The Two-State Solution Never Worked, AJ+, August 29, 2024
