BearGoggles said:
sycasey said:
Question: is a two-state solution even feasible? I'm not confident such a thing would actually hold in the long run; the problem is that the Jews and the Muslims both want the same land.
If you read historical accounts, the problem is not occupancy of the same land. The division of land was largely resolved (return to 1967 borders, with trades for security and settlements) and some sort of joint authority (dual capitals) in Jerusalem.
I understand the central problem are;
1. To this point, the Palestinians have insisted upon a literal right of return which is interpreted by Israelis as a means to destroy the Jewish character of Israel. There were several attempts to bridge the gap by offering compensation or a limited symbolic right of return. Those were rejected by Abbas.
2. Fundamentally, at this point the Israelis have no basis for expecting their security concerns will be addressed by any formulation
My personal opinion is that Abbas was incapable of making peace because his entire existence was based on being the rebel fighter. His rhetoric - which largely continues to be employed by others to this day - does not prepare the Palestinian people for compromise. "From the river to the sea" is not a call for peace - it is a call for a the destruction of Israel.
Israel has made many mistakes and has contributed to/reinforced many of cycles of violence. But Israel has a large center left/left contingent that advocate for peace. Who are the people in Palestinian society that advocate for a true two state solution? There is a reason most of the Arab world is no longer willing to advocate for Palestinians.
In the early 2000s a basis for the resolution of the land questions (including settlements), security, and Jerusalem seemed within reach, at least between the negotiating teams. However 20 years of "facts on the ground" have annihilated that basis. Continued settlement expansion has already redrawn the map of the West Bank and would seriously complicate any land swap. More importantly, Israel no longer appears willing to consider a divided Jerusalem. Netanyahu has repeatedly declared Jerusalem to be the "eternal, undivided capital of Israel" and Israeli public opinion steadily turned from ambivalent on the issue to being strongly against dividing Jerusalem.
I think the understanding of the "central problem" that Bear Goggles presents is generally valid though I would not characterize Abbas or any leader as the main stumbling block so much as the deeply held opinions of the Palestinian people (insofar as I would be willing to characterize Palestinian attitudes as the stumbling block at all as opposed to Israeli attitudes).
1. Right of return
Palestinian negotiating teams in the early 2000s showed willingness to compromise on the right of return through limitations on the number of refugees who would be allowed into Israel and compensation for the remainder, but Palestinian public opinion has always emphatically rejected these compromises, leaving it unclear as to whether any mutually acceptable agreement could ever have been fulfilled.
2. Security concerns
Again, Palestinian negotiating teams in the early 2000s were willing to compromise by accepting in large measures the Israeli demands for that state to be demilitarized and for Israel to retain at least some security installations in Palestinian territory, but again Palestinian public opinion was strongly against these concessions as they would infringe upon the sovereignty of the future Palestinian state. However, this issue seems to me more tractable than the right of return.
Here's a link to a 3rd party observer summary of what some feel is the most viable negotiation ever between Israeli and Palestinian representatives at Taba in 2001. That opinion was expressed by members of both negotiating teams, with the chief Palestinian negotiator having said they needed only six more weeks to conclude the agreement, but Israel pulled out of the Taba Summit before it could be completed, citing its upcoming elections. Since Labor was kicked out of power in that election, it's likely that even if the negotiators had reached a deal, it would have been stillborn.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-200101/Bear Goggles is plainly mistaken about there being a large "center left/left" contingent" in Israeli politics. Likud has controlled the government for 17 of the last 21 years, during which time the left has been decimated. It took a center + center/left (Labor) + left (small parties) coalition to remove Likud from power between 2006-2009. Labor, once the largest Israeli party, has not received more than 6% of the vote since 2013. In the 2022 elections, the seven largest vote shares comprising 80% of the vote went to center right, right, or far right parties while Labor had been reduced to 3.7%. The electoral rise of the right wing, which originates in the late 1970s, has been accompanied by decades of neoliberal "reforms" as throughout the western world, leading as always to rising inequality and immiseration of the working class, a particularly revolutionary outcome in a state that was once politically defined by its commitment to economic social democracy.
Bear Goggles is also mistaken as to the relative levels of support for "peace" in Palestine and Israel. Support for the two state solution between Palestinians and Israeli Jews has been closely mirrored through this century. Up to 2017, polling had consistently indicated that between 45-55% of both demographics supported the two state solution but support on both sides has severely declined since then to around 30% with Palestinian opinion slightly lower than Israeli. Most tellingly, support for the two state solution by Israeli Arabs has crashed from its historical levels exceeding 80% to under 50%. Support for some form of a one state solution has grown in all groups but optimism regarding the prospects for any negotiated solution are virtually at all time lows.
Those are the facts, now for my opinion. I do not believe the people who really hold power in Israel have ever been interested in either a two state solution or a one state solution. This is also the opinion of two of the foremost experts on Israel/Palestine from the left, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (both Jewish Americans). A federative single state involves unacceptable power sharing with Palestinians. An integrated single state is incompatible with Israel as a Jewish ethnostate. Any viable Palestinian state created through a two state solution would be an eternal security threat to Israel even if Palestinians agreed at the start to Israel's security concessions.
Moreover, the status quo serves the designs of Israeli maximalists almost perfectly. Remember that just as there are Palestinians who feel their people are entitled to possession of the whole country, there are Israelis who believe the Palestinians are entitled to absolutely nothing, that Eretz Israel belongs entirely to the Jewish people and refuse to consider any concessions except as part of a design to eventually acquire the whole country. This was in fact David Ben Gurion's position with respect to proposals to partition the country, a position he explicitly details in a letter to his son in 1937.
One only needs to consult maps from 1967 and today to see how Israeli maximalists have fulfilled Ben Gurion's vision. The multi-generational process of illegal annexation of the territories conquered in 1967 has slowly but surely disintegrated the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, in addition to netting the Golan Heights and Jerusalem entirely for Israel. On each iteration of the so-called "peace process", Israel is able to confront Palestine with a new set of "facts on the ground". Israel refuses to remove the vast majority of its illegal settlements and those few settlements they are willing to remove become currency in land swaps.
In every negotiation that has ever taken place, the Palestinians are the only ones who are required to make concessions on their rights under international law and the principles of self-determination. They must give some of their unquestionable right to return to their homes lost in the wars and illegal annexations. They must give up some of the sovereignty of their prospective state to the security concerns of their conquerors or endure continued stateless existence. They must legitimize not only the illegal annexations since 1967 but the original negation of their right to political self-determination throughout the country in the creation of the Jewish ethnostate of Israel. Whenever the Palestinians balk at the degree to which they are required to unilaterally surrender rights, Israeli partisans brand them as rejectionist as though they were the ones who have been in continuous violation of international law for 56 years and haughtily refuse to rectify their illegalities.
This is the realist appraisal of the situation, the one taken with the understanding that people are fundamentally self-interested, alone or in groups, and that international relations are based on nothing more than power dynamics. If anyone still does not understand how this applies to the Israeli plan for the the Palestinians, they should consult the candid words of the forthright Israeli warmaster Moshe Dayan after Israel won the 1967 war: "Let's say 'we don't have a solution, and you will continue living like dogs, and whoever wants will go, and we'll see how this procedure will work out." Generations later this is obviously still the plan.
