I am not yet leaving what Israeli political analyst Ilan Pappe calls “the Peace Orthodoxy,” to which his co-author of their recent book “On Palestine,” American intellectual Noam Chomsky, partly belongs, too. In this context, “partly” means that professor Chomsky still utters the formula as “the peace process” and defends the “two-state solution” in his lectures and interviews.
On the other hand, professor Pappe has stopped discussing the “two-state solution,” he is not advocating the old peace process narrative; instead, he proposes a new narration and activity.
I will try to summarize what I understand from the “old and new conversations” of these two esteemed scholars, both Jewish and proud anti-Zionists, who have written extensively on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I have known Noam Chomsky, the “anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist,” from his opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism. His 1967 anti-war essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” was the Bible for those against the Vietnam War. (Imitating the U.S. students’ chant, “One, two, three, four! We don't want your ----- war!” we had our own in Ankara and Istanbul: “Bir iki üç! Daha Fazla Vietnam/1-2-3 More Vietnams.") Even then, he was considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the U.S. Later, Chomsky’s propaganda model of media criticism, articulated in “Manufacturing Consent” and Media Control” became my handbooks in my studies in political communications. Pappé has also been an icon in my studies on postmodernism and critical media analysis.
These two scientists have become role models for the younger generations as their principled opposition to Zionism continued despite their religious affiliation to Judaism. They consider Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than the South African style apartheid and criticize U.S. support for Israel. Chomsky visited Türkiye to attend the trial of a publisher who had been accused of treason for printing Chomsky's book, “Interventions” in Turkish ("Amerikan Müdahaleciliği") in 2001. Chomsky insisted on being a co-defendant; the State Security Court, a relic of a previous military intervention in the country, dropped the charge.
Chomsky’s and Pappe’s collective books, “Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians” in 2010 and “On Palestine” in 2015, are composed of articles and interviews conducted by their editor, Frank Barat. In the first book, the articles are reflections of two authors on the Israeli war in Gaza, the causes and the consequences of this war, its place within the Israeli American policy toward the peace process with the Palestinians, and the implications of this war concerning the future of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.
In that book, Pappe and Chomsky agreed on the main points: The Palestinians are the victims of ethnic cleansing and violations of their human rights; Israel had been making life impossible for Palestinian people to drive them out from their homes; there had been a shift in the Western public opinion towards the condemnation of Israel and its practices toward Palestinians.
However, the two authors disagreed on the degree of international reaction toward Israel; Pappé thought the American public was still unfriendly toward Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. While Chomsky saw no possibility of change in U.S. policy on the peace process unless the U.S. itself is transformed into democracy, Pappe thought the U.S. policy would change to support a peaceful settlement. Above all, Chomsky supported a two-state solution to the degree it was possible to end the conflict. Pappe believed that a one-state was the only viable solution as long as Israel’s racism would be ended and refugees granted their right of return.
In 2010, it seemed politically incorrect for almost all the leaders of the Palestinian struggle to defend anything other than a “two-state solution.” From 1969 until he died in 2004, Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, religiously defended the idea of a “two-state solution.” Not only the Palestinian Authority but almost all militant Palestinian groups like Hamas and 45 other groups still today support the two-state solution as a viable approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seeks to create two states on the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. It is often contrasted with the one-state solution, which is establishing a single state in former Mandatory Palestine with equal rights for all its inhabitants. The two-state solution has been supported by many countries and the Palestinian Authority. However, Israel currently does not support the idea, though it has in the past.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza for 471 days, several governments, Türkiye among them, reiterated their support for the two-state solution. On Sept. 26, 2024, the U.N. representatives of 90 countries, in a meeting held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, agreed to launch a global alliance to strive for a two-state solution.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in G-20, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League meetings, as well as in his talks with the president and prime ministers of several countries, called on nations to take an initiative in realizing a two-state solution to resolve the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. “The tragedy unfolding in the occupied Palestinian lands, especially in Gaza, has exceeded the limits of humanity's tolerance,” he said. Erdoğan reiterated Türkiye’s support for all international and regional efforts to find a just, lasting and comprehensive resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict based on the two-state vision. “None of what is happening in Gaza can be explained with the right to self-defense. War crimes are crimes against humanity and they are clearly being committed there," Erdoğan added.
In short, the “two-states solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict and Israel’s genocidal policies toward the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are very much alive but not kicking as it was 20 years ago. Why? Despite the fact that it continues to exist, why is it not full of energy? To find answers for this question, we need to turn to Chomsky and Pappe’s second joint book, “On Palestine” and their subsequent articles.
The whole world, or at least the sane part of it, knows that if the Israel-Palestine conflict is not resolved, a regional peace settlement is highly unlikely. However, the most-shared solution formula has not been working since 1949, and the region has not seen a light at the end of the tunnel or caught its breath. As Pappe says, Palestine’s blood never dried. The U.S., the sole supporter of Israel and accomplice to its massacres since 1949 and now its genocides, is increasingly becoming politically split; Israel gets further and further away from nationhood. The Israel Lobby in the U.S. has been practically running the majority of domestic and international policies, which have been geared to follow Israel’s interests, not the American people's.
Meantime, if you follow professor Pappe’s arguments, developed as a historian in “On Palestine” and his other articles and interviews, you’ll remember that the origins of the Israel lobby, as an advocacy group for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine by Christian Zionists, started to push the U.S. to help the Jews to leave Europe as far back as the 19th century. That group developed its action plan based on the ethnic cleansing of the Mandate Palestine and the colonial subjugation of the Indigenous people. In other words, Zionism was an ideology for settler colonialism.
“Settler colonialism differs from classical colonialism. The settlers are not expatriates sent by an empire to build colonies that exploit new countries and their peoples for the benefit of the mother country. The members of settler colonial movements are not sent by anyone. In many historical cases, they were, in fact, outcasts of Europe, people persecuted because of their faith, origins, or actions, and forced to seek – or believing themselves forced to seek – a place in which to build a new Europe where they would be safe.”
It was defined by the scholar Patrick Wolfe, an Australian historian and scholar credited for establishing the field of settler colonial studies, as “the logic of the elimination of the native.” He has shown that almost all the settler colonial projects of Europeans in the Americas and Australasia ended in the genocide of the Indigenous people.
Following this rule, Zionist colonial settlers started with the ethnic cleansing of the local population and they are not going to stop before completing it. According to Wolfe’s definition of settler colonialism not as an event but as a structure, the Zionist settler colonial project will continue its ethnic cleansing and genocide until Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian customs, dress and food, are assimilated and Israelized.
President Trump and the majority of the U.S. Congress have long forgotten the idea of the Palestinians having their own state. The Israeli Lobby has long convinced American Evangelists and several other Christian churches that there is only one state in Palestine, that is Israel.
Now, following Ilan Pappe’s logic, the best Palestinians could save from the throngs of Israel-American settler colonialism is 10 or 15 “Bantustans,” a partially self-governing area set aside as they did during the period of apartheid in South Africa. This term was a derogatory noun for the homelands Indigenous African people created. Pappe and several other scholars and political analysts see that turning Israel into something like modern South Africa, which replaced the apartheid South Africa with a democracy and took the apartheid Israel to the International Criminal Court, is much more likely than fighting the uphill battle to create a Palestinian state in Israel.
As I expressed, I personally am not defending giving up the “two-state solution,” but I began seeing the possibility of creating a democratic and modern Palestine/Israel where Palestinian blood finally dries.
