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by Peter A. Belmont / 2013-09-23
© 2013 Peter Belmont
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The problem in all these “two-states are dead” announcements is that they have confounded the GOAL (the PROPOSED OUTCOME) with the MEANS TO GET THERE. And they never get around to examining the requirements on a MEANS sufficient to bring about ANY outcome which differs significantly from the status quo.
What is needed to rescue Israel and Palestine from their 65-year (since 1948) or 46-year (since 1967) stalemate is intervention from outside. By its enormous political, economic, and military powers, and especially its veto in the UNSC, the USA has long prevented the international community from realizing its desires for an effective international law, for human rights, etc., as these desires affect the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Thus, international intervention has long been seen as unlikely, a purely imaginary of conjectural “deus ex machina” which is not, in any near future, going to have any impact on the conflict.
There are signs that this is changing, as the BDS movement and recent sanctions-like (or sanctions-lite) efforts from the EU suggest.
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Many people are now saying that the two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict is “dead”. The fashion is one of speech (or writing), not arising from a wide-ranging analysis of likely (or possible) futures. For the most part, the writers and speakers do not try to imagine the mechanisms which could alter the status quo.
My own take is that there are no mechanisms active today and only the mere hint of a mechanism likely to become active soon that can change the status quo. All “deus ex machina” mechanisms are purely conjectural, of course, but the EU’s recent delicate dipping of its toe into the waters of sanctions[1] against Israel’s businesses conducted within the occupied territories is a harbinger of possibilities of international pressure toward a lawful occupation and, perhaps, toward peace. I do not rely on it to produce results quickly, but it is the only hope visible today. Put another way, people who live near dragons should not entirely ignore those dragons.
The American mainstream analysis acknowledges that Israel and Palestine, by themselves, cannot make peace when it says the 2SS is “dead” but fails to acknowledge this when it nevertheless suggests that other possibilities are “alive”—i.e., a single democratic non-discriminatory state for both peoples. Left to themselves, Israel and Palestine are locked in an apartheid-style present and future. If only Israel and Palestine are considered, the future is what we see today, only worse, and the fantasies of 1SS and 2SS are just that, fantasies.
How do mainstream writers and speakers analyze the I/P future? They analyze the future according to their own “takes” on the desires and phobias and political realities solely among Israelis and Palestinians, but they omit entirely the desires, phobias, and political realities among all other nations. And there is nothing solely within the hermetic world of the people and politics of Israel-Palestine which can change the status quo.
However, when pressures and influences from outside Israel and Palestine are considered, the two-state solution is no more dead today than is a single non-discriminatory state in all of Mandatory Palestine (the other commonly mentioned alternative, after two states, to the present status quo, that is to say, the present single state apartheid-style undemocratic Israel in the entire territory of Mandatory Palestine.
What’s dead, then, is at most WIDESPREAD BELIEF (IN THE WEST) IN A TWO-STATE SOLUTION, but the death of a belief is quite different from the death of a possibility.
This is not to say that the work to effect a separation for 2SS would not be monumental for Israel, now that Israel has integrated the infrastructure of the settlements so thoroughly into pre-67 Israel. It is simply to say that effecting 2SS is still as possible as ever, just harder for Israel today than in, say, 1980, and thus demanding an even greater “push” from somewhere in order for it to happen.
The problem in all these “two-states are dead” announcements is that they have confounded the GOAL (the PROPOSED OUTCOME) with the MEANS TO GET THERE. And they never get around to examining the requirements on a MEANS sufficient to bring about ANY outcome which differs significantly from the status quo.
I contend that there are, today, NO mechanisms likely to spring into action to alter Israel’s old friend, STATUS QUO, which I call an “apartheid-style undemocratic single state in all of Mandatory Palestine”. So, considered from the viewpoint of there-are-no-ready-to-march-troops-for-change, ALL alternatives are “dead” including 2SS, 1SS (democratic non-discriminatory-version), and any other.
HOWEVER, if one cares to imagine (to “posit”) a mechanism for bringing about change—for example, a sea-change in USA policy, UNSC action (requires a changed USA), or major INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS against Israel until some slice of Israeli reality be changed—then one sees (in the clarity of one’s imagination) that Israel is not all-powerful (and Israel itself will have to see the same thing, of course, if all this is to work), and then, assuming such imagined international sanctions did indeed come to pass, some change becomes possible.
My “druthers” as to the purpose of sanctions is for EU sanctions (with hopes that most other nations would soon join in) whose purpose and goal are to require Israel to comply with international law to the extent of removal of all settlers and destruction (“dismantlement”) of all settlement buildings and the wall. THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY GOALS OF BDS, which also wants a non-discriminatory Israel and return for Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967.
These are, however, goals solidly in line with international law and it is easy for the sanctioning states to know whether or not the goal has been met—so that the sanctions can be lifted. (It is also easy for Israel to know when the sanctions could be lifted because the required change in Israeli occupation practices are well-defined and, unlike the present Israeli-implemented occupation, the sanctions here proposed are not endless.)
Wouldn’t it be a hell of a thing if it were tried? It might even work. Shake things up anyhow (“intifada”).
The alternative to any international force brought to bear on Israel is to wait—with the status quo firmly in place and growing worse day by day—until some internal pressure for beneficial change builds up within Israel for reasons unrelated to the outside world, and I have no reason to think such pressure is [a] likely to occur at all, or [b] likely to make things better for Palestinians.
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[1] ”EU official says U.S. quietly supporting settlement sanctions
All EU member states supported new settlement sanctions, Israeli ambassador was told during meeting on crisis between EU, Israel.
A senior European Union official told an Israeli diplomat last week that the United States is quietly supporting new EU sanctions against the settlements.”
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