In the summer of 1995 I had the opportunity to “intern” with the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) in Jerusalem, a think-tank devoted to Israeli-Palestinian peace. I put “intern” in quotes because I never actually did anything constructive, as I was much more in absorbing-mode than in doing-mode. Most of the time I just read the volumes of the material available on the Arab-Israeli conflict at IPCRI’s office, then in an old Jerusalem home a stone’s throw from the Damascus Gate, and observed the staffers go on about their work. One of those staffers was IPCRI founder Gershon Baskin, a man with a big mind and a big heart.
I thought about Gershon today upon reading Professor Ian Lustick’s eye-popping and already widely-discussed op-ed in the New York Times titled “The Two-State Illusion.” In addition to shortsighted politicians with petty interests in the U.S., Israel and the P.A., Lustick argues that the two-state solution, or “illusion” as he puts it, still enjoys official political backing because of the career needs of a cadre of “peace process” professionals, though he is careful not to mention names. Lustick writes:
Finally, the “peace process” industry – with its legions of consultants, pundits, academics and journalists – needs a steady supply of readers, listeners and funders who are either desperately worried that this latest round of talks will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, or that it will not.
Reflecting on this particular assertion, I’m so glad I once got to meet Gershon Baskin and to see him in his element: I can say I have met at least one person in the “peace process” industry who does what he does not out of a love for mere process, but for no other reason than that he simply hates human suffering, and believes all peoples are entitled to peace and freedom.
Yet there are two far more worrisome aspects to Lustick’s NYT op-ed: He is entirely rational in his larger political diagnosis of the conflict, which will give him much street cred among those in the West who are Mideast truth-seekers with no pre-existing axe to grind with Israelis or Palestinians, and yet, his political remedy amounts to a full-scale erasure of the Jewish state.
For the last three and half weeks, since August 21st, the international community has been essentially dithering after the Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen gassed to death over 1,400 people with sarin gas. Of late, the strongest superpower in the world, the United States, which supposedly has an “Israel Lobby” that “controls everything” is negotiating with the said despot’s Russian enablers to “dismantle” his chemical weapons. Under the banner of peace, the international community has left an entire people, the Syrian people, to the “mercy” of a dictator and his henchmen who have already demonstrated their willingness to execute them with poison gas.
The very notion, intrinsic to Lustick’s outlook, that the human agonies that have arisen from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict somehow nullifies the necessity of statehood for the Jewish people is incomprehensible.
Equally incomprehensible about Lustick’s prescription – an end to Israel and a birthing of a binational state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean – is that he fully recognizes how quickly geopolitical winds can change. From the rapid demise of the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia, Lustick cites previously unpredicted, dramatic turnabouts in territorial and political landscapes. Indeed, Secretary of State John Kerry said just a few weeks ago that he “could not imagine” the United States Congress not giving the president military authorization in response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.
Political winds and public sentiments, domestic and foreign, are always shifting.
Dictators who gas innocent civilians and get away with it, in real time, still exist.
Relatedly, petty moralists, religious and secular, more concerned with portraying themselves in a Jesus-Ghandi-Budda light than in doing what is necessary to stop despots from mass murder will continue to do what they do best: play church while kids get gassed and burned with napalm. Watch this below:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10275520/Syria-footage-of-napalm-incident-emerges.html
Rather than toying around with Lustick’s one-state solution, my sincere hope is that spiritual progressives will remain steadfastly committed to standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people to enjoy the fruits of peace and freedom, while simultaneously pointing to Bashar al-Assad’s recreation of hell on earth and asking every Israel rejectionist in the Muslim world, as well as every Israel rejectionist in the halls of American academe, the following question: What part of the human condition are you not getting, ladies and gentlemen?
Anyone looking at a binational state, shoud, lok not the towards Lebanon and Syria
Has Tikkun Daily been hacked? I can’t believe I just read a piece that was explicitly for the two state solution, and against one state idiocy.
Lustick’s analysis was deeply flawed. He looks to British rule over Ireland, French rule over Algeria, and the Soviet Union, as if those situations are closely analogous to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are not, for a host of reasons. With Ireland and Algeria, you had imperial powers ruling over distant colonies. But with Israel, the land they are occupying is right next door, and is disputed because of a military conflict. Indeed, when he points out that the two-state solution discussion only began in 1967, he completely glosses over the irony that for the 20 years previous, those same territories were occupied by the Palestinians’ Arab brothers. With the Soviet Union, he fails to note that Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms were completely incompatible with the repressive, totalitarian Soviet government. Israel, on the other hand, has a vibrant, liberal democracy.
Aside from basing his analysis on imperfect premises, his pieces neglects to spell out his alternative to the two-state resolution. This may be the result of mediocre writing on his part, although we would expect more from a university professor. Conversely, it may be the result of something that is all too common amongst anti-Zionists and one-staters — cowardice to explicitly state their goals. If he wants Israel as a Jewish state to cease to exist, he should have the courage to say so. Instead, he tries to be too coy by half. He doesn’t fool anyone with knowledge of the issues, however. Since he can’t come out and say it, I’ll say it for him: Lustick desires the end of the Jewish state of Israel, presumably in favor of some kumbayah brotherhood of Jews and Palestinians that would come together in some far distant future, after decades of violent conflict. There are two obvious flaws in this nonsense solution of his. The first is that there is no reason to expect any such happy union to occur, especially given the bloody enmity that has taken place over the past 100 years.
The second flaw, and this one is fatal to Lustick’s argument, is that neither Israelis nor Palestinians want a one-state that incorporates the other. The Israelis haven’t spent the past 60-plus years building a successful nation, only to give it up. And the Palestinians, at least as represented by the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, don’t want Jews living in their country. He’s said so on several occasions.
Ireland was not a distant colony, it was land right next door, occupied and starved by England. During the 20 years preceding 1967, Palestinians were stateless refugees, more or less like they are now.
Well I guess the Palestinians shod have accepted partition rather than try and eliminate the Jewish state. They have been stateless since 1947 when the squandered the opportunity to have a star. The Jordanians ANNEXED the West Bank in1952 rather than turn it over to the Palestinians. .
Paul. well said.
If the subject of of Israel becoming a one-state nation incorporating both Jews and Arabs has become a legitimate subject of debate in the last few years, it is not because of cowardly anti-Zionists and one-staters who want “Israel as a Jewish state to cease to exist….”
The real reason is the great and continuous expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank which has engulfed so much Palestinian land that it has become increasingly difficult to understand where and how a separate, but viable, Palestinian nation could reasonably exist. As of this moment, Israel negotiators are starting from a demand of “temporary” borders constituting about 40% of the West Bank.
If Israeli holds on to these territories (which include all of the Jordan Valley, all of Greater Jerusalem, all of the big settlement blocks) or even somewhat reduced parts of
them, it would certainly seem unrealistic to expect any kind of Palestinian state to be functional and to survive. No Palestinian would ever agree to that kind of reduction in territory.
Israel faces the dilemma of
(1) keeping all or most of this territory and thus destroying any possibility of creating a viable neighbor, thus perpetuating the call for a one-state solution,
(2) giving up most or all of this territory in a peace treaty that would create a real functional state as a neighbor, thus supporting a two-state solution.
I read Prof. Lustick’s article and it seemed to me that he was not so much advocating a one state solution as acknowledging that it is already here. His point, I thought, is that no one involved takes the idea of a separate Palestinian state seriously. As Lustick points out, such a state would be divided into tiny pieces by Jewish settlements and restricted roadways. How could it every be independent if it couldn’t even control its highways?
But notice how no one, on any side, ever advocates a simple return to the pre-1967 status quo, with Egypt getting Gaza and Jordan getting the West Bank. Of course, those states don’t want the Palestinians and never did. So, if a separate state is impossible and Israel can’t just give them back, the reality is that Israel is already a binational state. The only question is whether everybody will be given equal rights when it comes to law, property and voting.
The majority of Jordan’s population is Palestinian. A federated Jordanian-West Bank-gaza state would be the best solution.
Mahmoud Abbas actually didn’t say what Paul wrote: “And the Palestinians, at least as represented by the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, don’t want Jews living in their country.”
What he said was: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands…”
Let’s assume the following to be true:
(a) Not all Jews are Israelis,
(b) Not all Israelis are Jews.
It then follows that Abbas was talking about not allowing Israeli nationals (i.e. citizens of Israel) to live in a Palestinian state while keeping their Israeli citizenship rather than becoming Palestinian nationals. He did not mean not letting Jews live in a future Palestine state.
I can’t decide if your comment is a parody of naivite or a parody of the contortions certain people go through to excuse Arab and Muslim antisemitism. Either way, it must be a parody of something.
fizziks:
An ad hominem is an argument made personally against an opponent instead of against their argument. Ad hominem reasoning is normally described as an informal fallacy, more precisely an irrelevance.
The Arab world has been Jew free since the 1950’s.