A bi-national state in Israel/Palestine

One of the recent developments in the seemingly protracted and endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the movement of the concept of a bi-national state in Israel/Palestine from the realm of intellectuals, like the late Edward Said, and fringe groups, like The Association for One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, to the political mainstream. Two years ago, when I first started to write about my view that facts on the ground had made the idea of a two state solution impossible, I felt the need to title the articles “A completely absurd idea”. (For more than you wanted to know about the issue, click here, here and here.)

At that time those of us proposing a single democratic state in Israel/Palestine were generally attacked as “anti-Semitic” and advocating a second Jewish Holocaust. Today the discussion is becoming a mainstream dialogue.

Leading Palestinian Authority negotiators Saeb Erekat and Ahmed Qurei have said that the PA is considering changing their negotiating position from insisting on a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital to a single democratic state for all its citizens. This was the original PLO position prior to the Oslo agreements.

An in depth article appeared this week in the NY Times (The article is here.) describing the debate going on among Palestinians about how to deal with the fact that expanding Israeli settlements, construction of bypass roads and construction of the separation barrier have made as agreement on a separate viable Palestinian state nearly impossible.

Even the Israeli media has weighed in. The chief US correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote an article entitled “One state solution? Let the debate begin” (This article is here.) The major points of debate will be “Should there be a single state?” and “What will be the nature of that state?” Unfortunately most of those commenting on this article advocated for a single state for Jews only and ethnically cleansed of Arab Palestinians. Some would say that this has already started. (See this article in The Guardian: “Ethnic cleansing by stealth”.) Human rights groups will have their work cut out for them.