A Real "Two-State Solution" for Palestine? U.S. media have treated the recent summit between Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian President Abbas like the arrival of true peace, as tho somehow, magically, this time, of all the many, many times we have heard of peace, it will work. Alas, there is absolutely no reason to believe that this time will be any different from Camp David or Oslo or any other ceasefire or peacetalk whatsoever.
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I do not believe the Palestinians are so beaten and disheartened that they will just roll over, give up all their rights, let Israel keep what it has stolen, and simply let pass all the murder and misery inflicted upon them by worldwide Zionism, with the active connivance of the U.S. Government.
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Miserable people who see little hope for the future and are depressed about the injustices that have been imposed upon them might be willing to accept crumbs instead of a full, fair division of the pie — or return of a pie stolen from them whole — but I don't believe it. Many have demonstrated that they'd rather die.
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The "Editorial of the week" at the Jerusalem Media & Communication Center website says that Israel is tightening its grip upon Arab East Jerusalem by dispossessing Arab landowners:

East Jerusalem landowners are kept outside the illegally expanded Jerusalem municipal boundaries due to a series of Israeli measures. Those measures include: revoking or denying Palestinians Jerusalem residency permits, denying Palestinians housing permits and access to public housing in the city, continuing to demolish Palestinian homes, and cutting Palestinians off from their properties through settlement expansion, Jewish-only bypass roads and most recently the separation wall.

Israel refers to both Occupied East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem as Jerusalem. This conflicts with international law and the stated policies of the United States (US), the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU).

According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan — from which Israel draws its legitimacy as a nation-state — the areas of East and West Jerusalem were not allocated to either the Arab or Jewish states. Instead, the areas were to be internationally administered. In 1948, Israel ignored the UN resolution and occupied over 80 percent of Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Almost immediately after the occupation, Israel expanded the borders of city's eastern sector. The expansion was designed to incorporate undeveloped Palestinian land while excluding Palestinian population centers. Israel went further in 1980 by annexing East Jerusalem to Israel.

The 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 rejects the admissibility of acquisition of territory by force. Israel's occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem is therefore illegal under international law. The UN recognizes East Jerusalem as occupied territory and states that subsequent action taken by the occupying power to alter the status of Jerusalem has no legal validity.

The official US position does not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem. The 1991 US Letter of Assurances to the Palestinians states:

[We] do not recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem or the extension of its municipal boundaries, and we encourage all sides to avoid unilateral acts that would exacerbate local tensions or make negotiations more difficult or preempt their final outcome.

But the U.S. Government not only does not do anything to force Israel to revoke its illegal land grab but tacitly backs to the hilt everything Israel does. UN resolutions condemn Israeli actions? Well, surely we must enforce UN resolutions, right? That's what Bush said about Iraq. But when it comes to Israel, it doesn't matter how many resolutions the UN passes; the U.S. will give lip service to them but do nothing to enforce them.
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A U.S. State Department website sets out our ostensible intentions about one necessary step toward achieving a "two-state solution" in Palestine:

Parties [must] reach [a] final and comprehensive permanent status agreement that ends the Israel-Palestinian conflict in 2005, through a settlement negotiated between the parties based on UNSCR 242, 338, and 1397, that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and includes an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue, and a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides, and protects the religious interests of Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide, and fulfills the vision of two states, Israel and sovereign, independent, democratic and viable Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.

Is voiding the property ownership rights of East Jerusalem Arabs consistent or inconsistent with that Stated view?
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Since Israel's behavior from the outset has and continues to be utterly inconsistent with UN resolutions, the U.S. is honor-bound, if not actually legally bound, to end all support for such Israeli actions, at the least, and possibly also to join with other UN members to impose airtite sanctions against Israel or lead a UN military coalition to take back lands stolen from Palestinians by Israel.
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Instead, the U.S. issues righteous pronouncements of principle, then ships another billion dollars of U.S. Christian taxpayer money off to the Jews of Jerusalem, while giving Palestinians nothing. The President utters muffled, ineffective, little-girl protestations against illegal Israeli acts, all the while winking at the Zionist lobby, and then calls Palestinian actions to reverse Israel's illegal acts "terrorism", and imposes sanctions not on Israel, the thief, but on Palestine, the victim.
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All the while, the Arab world looks on, the wider Moslem world looks on and sees our Government for the bunch of hypocritical, lying scumbags they are, and holds us responsible. We're a democracy, after all, and if our politicians back every single crime committed by Israel, it has to be because we the people approve of and co-conspire in those crimes, right? So we're all legitimate targets of retribution, to be killed on sight. If they can kidnap us from homes in Arab countries that pro-Arab Americans have lived in for years, and behead us, they will do so. If they can blow up U.S. soldiers in Iraq, they will do so. If they can destroy office buildings and kill us by the thousands, they will do so.
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Instead of waking to the fact that these people have legitimate reasons for hating us, and repenting our national sins, we become INDIGNANT that these "terrorists" are "attacking" us — not COUNTERattacking, but attacking, as tho we never did anything to them!
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So blind have we become that we invaded a country over 6,000 miles from our nearest shores in a 'pre-emptive strike', an attack, not counterattack, against a country that never in its history attacked us, but pretend to have done so righteously! And we're astonished that we weren't welcomed with open arms as "liberators". We destroy their infrastructure, plunging them into electric-outage darkness for hours a day and filling their schoolyards with untreated sewage still, almost two years later, and kill literally uncounted numbers of them (tho a British study suggested at least 100,000 as of last October), but we want to be regarded as kindly benefactors! The human capacity for self-deception is astonishing.
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Well, we're in it now, deep in Middle Eastern sh*t, and there's no escaping our responsibility to undo the harm we have done, to the extent possible. We can't entirely withdraw from the region without making things worse — or so we tell ourselves. So, what do we do?
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If we're going to have to be there, we must accept that the only "two-state solutions" that might work in Palestine are (a) two states of a federal, secular union, with Jerusalem as neutral federal district à la the District of Columbia or (b) two entirely sovereign separate countries, dividing Jerusalem between them. And we will have to force either such solution by telling Israel that if it doesn't do justice to Palestinians, we will enforce UN resolutions against them, by worldwide sanctions or, if need be, by military invasion after an extended "shock and awe" campaign to destroy the entire Israeli military and every nuclear installation they have lest they attack us — which I am absolutely certain Israeli planners have provided for in their worst-case, doomsday scenario: using missiles developed in Israel's space program to launch nuclear warheads against Washington and other major American cities, possibly even including New York despite its large Jewish population: 'They didn't save us, they didn't come here to fite the Arabs— to hell with them!'
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A threat of sanctions or military action to bring Israel into line would be The Stick. The Carrot would be an offer of billions of dollars of aid, to be equitably distributed between Jews and Arabs, to create a successful two-state solution, plus U.S. or U.S.-supported UN forces to patrol the borders and provide interstate security.
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Would that work? Maybe. But if the two-state solution is two separate countries, the separation and sovereignty of both states must be as complete as those of the United States and Canada or United States and Mexico. Israel must absolutely unhand every square inch of Palestinian territory, accord Palestine absolute sovereignty, and no more reserve a "right" to intervene in Palestine militarily or create a 'buffer zone' than the U.S. reserves the right to send the army across the Canadian border or establish a 'buffer zone' in northern Mexico to stop illegal immigration. Will Israel ever accord Palestine the sovereignty the U.S. accords Canada and Mexico? I don't believe it.
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So there is, at end, only one viable solution longest-term: a ONE-state solution, in which the U.S. accepts that divided Palestine cannot be made to work and the U.S. cannot withdraw from the region so there's only one thing left: to annex Palestine as a State of the Union, with Jerusalem as its state capital; English, Arabic, and Hebrew as its co-official languages; and the U.S. Government as enforcer of all civil rights laws throughout reunited Palestine. No one gets special treatment. U.S. immigration and migration laws apply. All illegally confiscated property is returned to its rightful owner, or purchased for a fair price. The First Amendment's prohibition on establishment of religion takes effect, as well as its defense of free speech. Every one of the Bill of Rights applies and is enforced by U.S. marshals or Marines, as ever may be necessary. Palestinians and Israelis get exactly the same aid, per capita, in the same programs as their peers in the rest of the states do — not one cent more nor less. (We might even offer Lebanon inclusion in this state, to add more Christians to the mix of adherents of the three religions that hold Jerusalem dear.)
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Call it the State of Palestine, the State of the Holy Land (if that would pass constitutional muster), or something else — tho I doubt Arabs would accept the "State of Israel". But do it. Let's annex the Holy Land, end all discrimination against everyone, and make peace work in what may be the only way it can work: by reuniting Palestine as a State of the United States.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:30 PM