Thousands of academics, officials, international rights activists and everyday people are horrified by Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Yet at least hundreds of Palestinians are being reported killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza every day since Israel’s war on Gaza restarted. Despite Israeli spies among the Palestinians, Israel has managed to kill mostly women and children, attacking shelters for the displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. In addition, the U.N. estimates about 280,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since Israel broke the cease-fire on March 18.
As we all did for 417 days prior to March 18, we are watching (and condemning) the Israeli massacres. Meanwhile, the chief architect of Israel’s genocide in Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an outlaw fugitive wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), visits Hungary, of all places!
We can see that the ICC arrest orders are being rendered useless by the conspicuous absence of major powers, the United States, Russia and China from the International Criminal Court (ICC); also the notable absences of Israel, Qatar, Iraq and Libya cast a shadow over the ideals of international justice. Member countries of the ICC, like Poland, for example, are required to detain suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil, but the Polish government adopted a resolution ensuring free and safe participation of the highest representatives of Israel – including Netanyahu – who chose to attend commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The U.S., on the other hand, furthers its help for the Israeli plan to displace Palestinians in Gaza. Last month, the Arab Group at the U.N., along with a group of U.N. ambassadors, strongly rejected any such plans, deeming them a violation of international law. The ambassadors referred to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, perhaps for the 49th time! The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) joined them yet again, only God knows how many times before, and how many more times they are going to.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk fired off scalding attacks on 500 million strong Europe’s "cowardice" as they seek 300 million Americans’ protection against 150 million Russians! Mr. Tusk does not mince his words; he also said that 2 billion Muslims seek the world’s help against a 10 million-strong Israel.
All those friendly or hostile ridiculers, all of the Gazan babies ascending toward the face of God, all the efforts of honest people, like the Jewish students who chained themselves to Columbia gates to protest Trump’s jailing Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts students who keep watch and ward at the immigration offices for the detained Rümeysa Öztürk – seemingly, to no avail. Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, keeps canceling student visas around the clock! Pro-Israel groups keep pushing the administration to deport students and faculty members participating in pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses. Such groups give the U.S. a list of protesters to deport.
While the ominous dark clouds are gathering once again over Palestine and pro-Palestine peace activists, one question keeps blowing my mind: Why, oh why, have all those peace activities not worked one iota since 1947? Why do Palestinians keep losing their homes, farms, towns, municipalities, country and highway roads, and more importantly, their babies, their future generations, to the Zionist settler-colonialism?
Last month, I tried to search for answers to these and similar questions. Professor Ilan Pappe’s theory is that the stereotyped, formulaic cliche of the two-state solution should be cast aside and that the one-state solution, establishing a single state in former Mandatory Palestine with equal rights for all its inhabitants, should be demanded.
Many countries and the Palestinian Authority have supported the two-state solution. Israel supported the “one-state solution” in the past, but seeing that it was not compatible with the idea of Zionism, it too started “defending” the right of Palestinians to have their state.
The only problem is that the Zionist settler-colonialists never intended to share the Mandatory Palestine when they moved into Palestine. The settler-colonialism differs from traditional colonialism in having settlers permanently form a society and force out the indigenous peoples. The Zionists' first action in Mandatory Palestine in 1948 was the Nakba (the catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights and national aspirations.
Pappe, a leading Israeli historian, author and professor who has spent much of his life fighting for Palestinian rights, sees no hope for a near-term resolution to the world’s most intractable conflict. Israel, rejecting the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their own lands, and continuously expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank (and now occupying many towns and villages in the Gaza Strip), has made the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state literally impossible.
Consequently, Pappe and several other scholars, activists and Palestinian politicians have shifted their attention away from the two-state paradigm to the so-called “one-state solution.” Despite the different interpretations of the “one-state,” the defenders commonly postulate a democratic polity based on full equality, a binational state without supremacy of any ethnicity or religious group. But still, it will be a country with unresolved conflicts emanating from the ideology of Zionism, mainly shared by Jews and from the existing law that defines Israel as a Jewish nation.
Pappe and others who see the creation of an independent Palestine as almost impossible, unless Israel takes steps to return East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, removing settlers from 60% of those areas, withdrawing occupation administration and opening them to those Palestinians willing to return. Would the Israeli government do that with or without Netanyahu and his accomplices?
But in exchange for the right of return of the exiled Palestinians, under international observation and with the help of third-party peacekeeping forces, many possibilities will arise after the establishment of a single state within the boundaries of what was Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, consisting of the combined territory of Israel (excluding the annexed Golan Heights) and the State of Palestine.
As I understand from the various interviews of Pappe, the formula expressed as a “one-state solution” is not what some scholars and Zionists term as “the one-state reality.”
If we let the existing insoluble situation continue, if we let U.S. President Donald Trump build a Riviera in Gaza purged of Palestinians, and if we allow 2 billion Arab and Muslim people to keep hoping for a miracle from heaven while the Europeans busy themselves with smart nuclear weapons against Russia, what will happen? The Palestine problem will solve itself as the term one-state reality purports: one de facto country.
If, however, a single state is created in Palestine, it will not be an easy endeavor to establish a democratic society in it; but 7 million Jewish people in Israel and 14 million Palestinians all over the world (let’s assume a half of them would return) could in no time create a multinational, multi-religious society with free political parties and elections.
I agree with professor Pappe that creating such an exemplary country would be easier than hitting our heads against the brick wall of a two-state solution.
