One State Solution for Palestine

Synopsis: The whole premise of the two-state solution is wrong. The only alternative is that settlers (Jews) and natives (Palestinians) should together build a new state. And that state is democratic and not against the Arab world.

Background

• Many world countries through the United Nations insist on a two-state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict.
• The support for the two-state solution is based on the following reasoning. That once the two states become a reality, Israel will stop severe violations of the Palestinian civil and human rights.
• However, it is not a “conflict” as such rather it is a settler-colonial reality that began in the late 19th century.
• Late scholar, Patrick Wolfe, states that settler colonial movements are motivated by a logic called “the elimination of the native”.
• Sometimes it may lead to genocide, as it happened in North America, sometimes it gets translated to an ongoing ethnic cleansing operation as unfolded in Palestine.
• So, the two-state solution is not going to stop the ethnic cleansing instead, talking about it provides Israel international immunity to continue it.

How Israel has worked towards eliminating the native population so far?

When world nations insisting on two-state solution to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Palestinians were afraid that the Israelis would not be content and will try to occupy as much of its territory as possible. This Prediction became true after a year.

• First, in 1948, after the UN insisted that partition was the only solution for Palestine, under the UN support, the new Jewish state took over nearly 80% of historical Palestine and ethnically cleansed almost a million Palestinians.
• Second, in 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine, and in the process expelled another 300,000 Palestinians.
• Third, apart from Incremental ethnic cleansing, Israel also employed another means to achieve the old Zionist goal to turning historical Palestine into a Jewish state. Such as
  • One, Imposing military rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to restrict people’s basic human and civil rights.
  • Two, Imposing a version of an Apartheid regime on the Palestinian minority in Israel.
  • Three, disregarding the demographic reality by refusing the 1948 refugees to return.
• Fourth, in 2018 Israel passed in 2018 a citizenship law, known as the nationality law to complete its strategy that included the partition of the West Bank, its Bantustanisation, and the siege of Gaza.
  • The law made sure that the Palestinian citizens who live in Israel proper and who are supposedly equal citizens of the Jewish state, will in essence become the “Africans” of a new Israeli Jewish apartheid state.

Way forward

• The only alternative is to decolonise historical Palestine. Further, build one single state for all its citizens all over the country.
• It should be based on three things. First, dismantlement of colonialist institutions. Second, fair redistribution of the country’s natural resources. Third, compensation of the victims of the ethnic cleansing and allowing their repatriation.
• This will be an inspiration for the rest of the region which desperately needs such models.

Source: The Hindu