Israel Policy Forum has very kindly asked me to contribute a blog posting about my new book, published by the American Task Force on Palestine, "What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal." It is now available for free download or hardcopy purchase from the ATFP website. The book is essentially a study of the emerging discourse among a growing minority of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, especially on American and British college campuses, which passionately rejects the idea of ending the occupation and securing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state to live alongside Israel in peace and security, instead proposing a single, democratic state for everyone in Israel and the occupied territories, and all Palestinian refugees as well. One of the reasons that this rhetoric has been gaining ground on college campuses in recent years is that the case for the traditional Palestinian national goal of ending the occupation and statehood hasn't been vigorously defended against the critiques leveled by one-state proponents.
Until now, in pro-Palestinian circles, the one-state agenda has enjoyed an open field in which proponents of ending the occupation have largely ignored one-state rhetoric, wrongly thinking that it is too marginal and utopian to have much of an impact. However, decades of disappointment with the peace process and despair that diplomacy can ever produce an end to the occupation has led to a growing number of younger activists to reject what is, after all, the only plausible and viable path to peace. It was high time for someone with a well-established track record and a long history of working on the Palestinian cause take up these arguments and explain to people calmly, rationally and systematically what's wrong with the one-state agenda.
Even though my book is a defense of a well-established national strategy and a set of ideas that had formed a virtually unanimous Palestinian consensus for several decades (now challenged by Islamist and one-state minority perspectives), many of the arguments I outline are, in fact, new. I go through the arguments generally presented in favor of a one-state agenda, pointing out their flaws, mistaken assumptions or logical fallacies, as well as arguments in favor of an agenda to end the occupation and secure an end-of-conflict agreement with Israel, in both cases point by point. I also examine the distinction between the diasporic discourse promoting a single state that passionately and categorically rejects Palestinian independence as both unachievable and insufficient, as opposed to the misguided tactical deployment of one-state rhetoric as a diplomatic "threat" to induce greater Israeli seriousness about peace negotiations that has emerged among some noteworthy Palestinians in the occupied territories. I have avoided any detailed evaluation of the one-state discourse among the tiny minority of Jewish Israelis who espouse this viewpoint, as my focus is the role of this discourse in Palestinian and pro-Palestinian political circles.
My aim was to keep the arguments as simple and brief as possible, without sacrificing any essential point, and I think it's a quick read that avoids unnecessary tangents or repetition. Originally I had intended this to be an issue paper and guessed that it would be about 17 pages long. However, in the drafting process it became clear that a systematic and thorough-going evaluation was actually required, giving rise to a much longer study that is now presented in this book.
I have no illusions that I will be able to change the minds of large numbers of people who advocate a one-state agenda. In my view, much of this rhetoric, especially in Palestinian communities in the West, is largely driven by emotion rather than a clearheaded and intellectually honest evaluation of what Palestinians can actually achieve in order to advance their national interests. It is noteworthy and symptomatic that the two instances of negative feedback I have received so far (the overwhelming response thus far having been positive) have come from individuals who have not read the book and were angered simply by the title and the identity of the author, without consideration of the merits of the argument. However, I do believe that the substance of the book, insofar as people, including one-state advocates, take the time to consider its arguments, ought to at least make even the most ardent advocate think twice.
Essentially, the book is an effort to turn what until now has been a monologue, and a rather shrill one at that, into a dialogue. One-state rhetoric makes exceptionally bold and sweeping claims, such as the idea that Palestinian independence is impossible and/or undesirable, that while Israel cannot be compelled or convinced to surrender control of 22% of the territory it presently holds it nonetheless can be compelled or convinced to surrender or share control of 100% of it, and that a single state for Israel and the Palestinians that is peaceful, equitable and democratic is simply an inevitability because of the intersection between Palestinian demographics and Israeli settlement policies. Categorical assertions and claims of this kind needs to be unflinchingly interrogated by anyone who wishes to promote the best interests of the Palestinian people and national movement.
Similarly, it was high time that someone strongly sympathetic to and supportive of Palestinian national rights and interests challenged the idea that since there are striking parallels between apartheid in South Africa and Israel's occupation, therefore a South Africa-like solution presents itself as a serious option between Israel and the Palestinians. Simply put, there is a glaringly obvious set of massive problems with the one-state agenda as it has emerged over the past decade or so in pro-Palestinian circles in the West, and it was time to begin to point out what those are.
I think IPF's constituency can learn a great deal from the arguments I outline in the book. It's true that the one-state agenda has absolutely no relevance to the policy debate in Washington and that nobody with any foreign policy credibility espouses this point of view. However, insofar as it is becoming a widespread perspective on university campuses and among grassroots activists, it's a discourse that needs to be understood, engaged and refuted. It is particularly telling and unfortunate that these ideas are gaining ground precisely at a time when ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state has become not only a US foreign policy goal, but a national security priority.
I am not an optimist who thinks it will be easy or inevitable to end the occupation and secure peace between Israel and Palestine, and I have no illusions about the difficulties and the considerable prospects for failure. However, I also have no illusions about the alternative, which is not a single, democratic state for all the Arabs and Jews between the river and the sea, or, for that matter, a nonviolent, Gandhian campaign of civil disobedience. The practical alternative is continued conflict, violence and occupation in an increasingly religious context that intensifies the process of turning a conflict that is difficult to resolve into one that is completely impervious to any solution. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis, nor their friends in the United States and around the world, can afford to believe that the other side is going to be vanquished, capitulate or simply abandon its national agenda and interests.
I hope that my new book will help people think clearly and critically about the really existing options facing Israel and the Palestinians, and not be driven by raw emotions, extravagant illusions and dangerous fantasies.
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