With no equitable solution, no peace

Donald Trump’s short-lived suggestion the US could back the “one-state solution”, involving a bi-national Palestinian-Israeli state, instead of the internationally accepted “two-state solution”, alarmed Palestinians, Israelis and the international community.

A day later, Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley reaffirmed US’ endorsement of the “two-state solution”, based on the “land-for-peace” formula laid down in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967.

The “two-state-solution” trade off has been in fashion for decades and clarified by the 2002 Arab summit, which proposed full normalisation of relations with Israel in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967. 

The international community has, however, done nothing to halt the 140-year Zionist drive to colonise all of Palestine, or end the imposition of a hostile occupation on Palestinians.

Speaking on France24 satellite channel, Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouthi recently reminded viewers that the notion of a bi-national Palestinian state had been put forward by Palestinians.

Indeed, it had been floated in February 1969 by the Palestinian parliament-in-exile meeting in Cairo, which adopted a resolution stating that the PLO’s political aim was the establishment of a “free and democratic state in Palestine for all Palestinians whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews”.

This stand was proposed by Fateh, headed by Yasser Arafat, who became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) during that gathering.

If Israel had agreed at that point, Israelis and Palestinians might have formed a two-canton state: one in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza for Palestinians, and the other within Israel’s 1948 borders for Israeli Jews and, perhaps, Palestinian citizens of Israel.

There could have been a federation between the two cantons. The two peoples could have coexisted reasonably without being caught up in war after war after war, without colonisation.

Determined to assert its destiny as a Jewish state, Israel rejected this option and accelerated colonisation of the lands conquered in June 1967.

Since in 1969, Israeli colonisation had consumed only a small portion of the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, it would not have been difficult to form two separate cantons.

The international community, committed to Security Council Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied that summer, would have blessed the “one-state” or “bi-national” solution. 

The Arab world could, eventually, have been persuaded that this was the best option, although Palestinians would have been awarded only 22 per cent of geographic Palestine.

Israel might have been able to normalise relations with its neighbours.

It is too late for the “one-state solution”. Israel annexed East Jerusalem, maintained its rule over 60 per cent of the land of the West Bank, constructed more than 120 colonies and 100 plus squatter outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and planted 765,000 colonists in these fortified colonies and outposts, all considered illegal under international law.

There are two systems of administration and law in the West Bank.

While Israeli colonists are governed by Israeli law and protected by the Israeli armed forces and police, Palestinians live under Israel’s civil administration, which exercises ultimate power.

This body is run by the Israeli military and Shin Bet internal security.

The Palestinian Authority has limited authority. Israeli soldiers and undercover agents operate freely in all the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including in urban areas where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to be in charge.

The authority cooperates with Israel on security and suppresses domestic dissent.

There is no freedom of movement for Palestinians or, lately, for Israelis.

Palestinians are divided into three groups: Jerusalemites, West Bankers and Gazans.

West Bankers and Gazans have to obtain permission from Israel to enter Jerusalem.

While Jerusalemites have, in theory, the ability to move about the West Bank and Israel, Gaza is a problem for them and for West Bankers.

Few Gazans secure permits to travel to Jerusalem or the West Bank, or leave the besieged and blockaded coastal strip. 

Palestinians cannot use roads and highways built exclusively for Israeli colonists who are not permitted to enter Palestinian population centres.

Israel’s wall-and-fence complex snakes through the West Bank, cutting Palestinian towns and villages off from their agricultural lands.

Israeli closed military areas, and industrial and green zones consume privately owned Palestinian land.

While thousands of settler units are constructed in Jewish colonies, Palestinians are barred from building houses, factories and farm buildings or from cultivating their ancestral lands.

Homes and other buildings constructed without licences are bulldozed and Palestinians are forced to pay for the demolition.

Palestinians, Israeli peace activists, former US president Jimmy Carter and other outsiders dub the two-track system imposed by Israel on the Palestinian territories apartheid separation. But it is not really separation, because the two communities are living side-by-side under dramatically unequal conditions.

This is why a “one-state solution” for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict cannot work.

Furthermore, Israeli colonisation has become so extensive that the “two-state solution” has become obsolete.

Palestinians cannot forge a separate, independent existence because Israeli colonies have been strategically sited to prevent this from happening.

For example, Maale Adumim, a colony with 60,000 residents, is located on hilltops on the narrow waist of the West Bank, effectively cutting it in half and obstructing Palestinian movement from north to south and vice-versa.

Nevertheless, “the two-state solution” — shorn of “land-for-peace” — remains the only option for the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the international community whenever it decides to tackle the “Palestine problem”.

This option is a “mirage” flickering on a retreating horizon.

It is about time the UN and the world powers realise this and do something to provide Palestinians with a territory to, at least, provide them with the bare means of existence without which, this still stateless people will slide into poverty and radicalism.

Palestinians will resist pressure to emigrate and stick fiercely to their shrinking homeland because they are well aware that surges of refugees face a hostile world.

Having refused to halt Israeli colonisation before — it became the sole physical obstacle to the emergence of a Palestinian state — the world powers have to try to come up with an honourable, just and workable alternative to both “solutions”, without which there can be no peace in Palestine or this region.