On 2012-12-05, at 2:38 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> This used to be the position of the Israeli left, no?
Unfortunately not. Left-wing Zionist parties like Mapam and the Israeli Communist Party supported the partition of Palestine into two states and creation of Israel in 1948 and have held that position ever since. The logic of Jewish settler colonialism inexorably led to the idea of a separate Jewish state rather than a "homeland" for Jews in a Palestinian state based on the two peoples, which is what the Balfour Declaration envisaged and which the Zionist left had largely accepted prior to World War II.
Only the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Fatah favoured a unitary, secular, democratic Palestinian state where Hebrew-speaking minority rights would be protected, but it pursued this objective by guerrilla warfare after 1967 rather than by civil disobedience. The tiny Trotskyist left in Israel uniquely supported the PLO's armed struggle.
In 1988, however, the PLO adopted a two-state solution when it became evident that it could not defeat Israel militarily. The the idea of a single state - this time to be won by non-violent struggle - has been revived by a growing number of intellectuals on the West Bank and in the Palestinian Diaspora who believe the Israelis will never agree to the creation of a viable and genuinely independent Palestinian state. Makdisi's article cited by Joe Catron expresses this viewpoint.
Hamas' position is that it will accept the will of the majority of Palestinians should there be a settlement resulting in a separate Palestinian state. Despite its rhetoric about liberating all of Palestine, its readiness to enter into a long-term truce with Israel is de facto acknowledgement that the Zionist state is not about to be dislodged.
> On Dec 5, 2012 12:48 PM, "Joseph Catron" <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Once the fiction of a separate Palestinian state is revealed to have no
>>> more substance than the Wizard of Oz — which the E1 plan will all but
>>> guarantee — those Palestinians who have not already done so will commit
>>> themselves to the only viable alternative: a one-state solution, in which
>>> the idea of an exclusively Jewish state and an exclusively Palestinian
>> one
>>> will yield to what was really all along the preferable alternative, a
>>> single democratic and secular state in all of historical Palestine that
>>> both peoples will have to share as equal citizens.
>>>
>>> A campaign for rights and equality in a single state is a project toward
>>> which the Palestinians will now be able to turn with the formidable
>>> international support they have already developed at both the diplomatic
>>> and the grassroots levels, including a global boycott and sanctions
>>> movement whose bite Israel has already felt.
>>>
>>> For Palestinians, in any case, one state is infinitely preferable to two,
>>> for the simple reason that no version of the two-state solution that has
>>> ever been proposed has meaningfully sought to address the rights of more
>>> than the minority of Palestinians who actually live in the territory on
>>> which that state is supposed to exist.
>>>
>>> The majority of Palestinians live either in the exile to which they were
>>> driven from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948, or as
>>> second-class citizens of Israel, where they face formidable obstacles as
>>> non-Jews in a state that reserves a full spectrum of rights only for
>> Jews.
>>>
>>> For Palestinians, the right to return home and the right to live in
>>> dignity and equality in their own land are not any less important than
>> the
>>> right to live free of military occupation. A separate state addressed
>> only
>>> the latter, but there can never be a just and lasting peace that does not
>>> address all those rights ...
>>
>>
>> http://nyti.ms/VDtm3C
>>
>> --
>> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
>> lytlað."
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