On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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> >>
> >>
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