On 2012-12-06, at 7:37 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Far cry from the likes of Rosa Luxemburg, no? It's a shame what a claim to
> a piece of real estate does to the collective consciousness of a people.
> BTW I can swear that someone I know who is familiar with the Israeli
> politics said that one state solution was the position of the radical left.
Perhaps that is the position of a few individual Israeli leftists like the historian Ilan Pappe, but other, probably most, radicals like Uri Avnery, while courageously opposed to successive Israeli governments, have not pronounced themselves in favour of a single state. The only two parties on the left with Knesset representation are the Hadash, which occupies the political space of the old CP, and the social democratic Meretz, whose antecedents can be traced to Mapam. Meretz is a Zionist party. Hadash calls for an end to the occupation, the right of return, and full human rights for the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, on which it is based, but, like the BDS movement internationally and Avnery's supporters, it doesn't call for a single state, although its program clearly points to Israel ceasing to favour one ethnic group over another. Among Hadash's supporters, there is also some concern that if Israel were to accede to some form of Palestinian state, the areas where Israel's Arabs are concentrated would be transferred into the less economically developed Palestinian entity as part of a land swap. Given the increasing racist sentiment for ethnic cleansing within the Israeli Jewish population, their fears are not wholly without foundation.
Your friend may be harkening back to pre-Israel liberal anti-Zionist Jews like Judah Magnes, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Buber who were opposed to a Jewish "state", counterposing to it a "homeland" in Palestine for Jews fleeing anti-semitic persecution in Europe - effectively, a "right of return". Their program was predicated on the notion of "Arab-Jewish" unity, which was shared by self-described Marxist kibbutzniks prior to the state's creation. The concept of Arab-Jewish unity was derided as utopian by Vladimir Jabotinsky and other right-wing Zionists, who more clearly understood that no indigenous population seeks common cause with settlers who are purchasing their land from absentee landlords and dispossessing them. Eventually, the social democratic Labor Zionists under Ben-Gurion came to understand this also, and prepared for a Jewish state and inevitable war against the Arabs inside and outside of it.
>>
>> 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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