http://farescenter.tufts.edu/events/lectureSeries/2010Feb10.aspIsrael, the Palestinians, and the One-State Agenda
Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 5:30PM
Cabot Intercultural Center, 702, The Fletcher School
Speaker: Hussein Ibish, Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine
Co-Sponsors: Middle Eastern Studies Major and the International Relations Program
Summary
Hussein Ibish, author of several studies on anti-Arab discrimination, delivered a talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his perception of the proposed "one-state solution." Ibish currently serves as the Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and the Executive Director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership, and has published widely on topics related to political freedom and the Middle East. Ibish discussed his book, What's Wrong With the One State Agenda?
Ibish's book examines the arguments espoused by Palestinian activists, chiefly those on college campuses in the United States and the United Kingdom, for abandoning the goal of a creating of a single democratic state in all of Israeli and the occupied Palestinian territories. Ibish rejects the one-state solution as untenable, and believes it is a "strategic blunder for Palestinians and friends of Palestine." Yet the pro-Palestinian camp has never before challenged this goal of seeking an independent Palestinian state by replacing Israel with a single unified state that includes rights for its refugees. Instead, the idea's main critics have been on the Israeli right and historians such as Benny Morris, whose book rejecting the one-state solution is denounced by Ibish as "a racist tract, assuming that Palestinians are an incorrigible people who are unfit to be dealt with."
The idea of a single bi-national state is not new–Jewish settlers in the 1930s discussed it–but it has never been a significant part of the Israeli political discourse. Ibish attributes the intellectual and emotional impact of the second intifada's shocking violence to the emergence of the one-state idea as a potential solution. The second intifada led to the rise of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the election of a right-wing Israeli government, and the rise of intense religious rhetoric on both sides.
Ibish points out that the vast majority of Israeli Jews would never accept a one state solution, because it would mean the end of their state. The idea of ceding Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan is equally untenable because it would pose an existential threat to both countries. Like the one state solution, this is not really a "solution" at all because one or more of the parties will never agree to it without some sort of compulsion. Most fundamentally, Ibish asks that if Israel has not been compelled or convinced to end the occupation thus far, how can it be compelled or convinced to dissolve itself through one state solution?
Ibish believes that there is a responsibility incumbent on all actors in the conflict, as well as outside observers, to do all that they can to end the occupation. Otherwise, he feels the inevitable conclusion will be a religious war. Peace becomes impossible only when a majority of people think it is, and Ibish does not believe that we are at that hopeless juncture yet. While both sides want peace, the problem is that they do not believe each other.
According to Ibish, ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is unlikely, difficult, and easy to reject as unworkable. Ibish explains: "But I think we have to make it work. We can make it work. Because the alternative is extremely gruesome and difficult for everyone." He feels that adding the bottom-up, institution building agenda enacted in August 2009 in the West Bank, which compliments a top-down, diplomatic agenda and has real political implications, can be transformative. This method of institution building can unilaterally build the framework of a Palestinian state, in spite of the Israeli occupation, along with support from the outside world, and under American protection. "You can think of it as the Palestinian answer to settlement building – and it is actually that," he says of this two-pronged peaceful and diplomatic strategy for bringing about an eventual end to the conflict.
