Asma Jahangir tweeted the other day about the shifting of the Israeli capital to Jerusalem, to which Donald Trump bestowed legitimacy with his support yesterday in total violation of the UN Partition Plan of 1947 that had been supported by the Jewish leaders of the time, ‘should be vehemently opposed’ because ‘it will destroy all chances of a two state option’. The problem with the argument is that the two-state solution is not only controversial but has lost considerable amount of support during the last few years too.
A few years back, when ideologues like Dr Norman Finkelstein advocated, quite controversially by that time’s standards, for the two-state solution, they were hailed as the ‘rock stars’ of the pro-Palestinian movement. But when the same Dr Norman Finkelstein sticks today with what he said back in the 90s and early 2000s, he is banished as a ‘liberal Zionist’. That is because the public opinion has already started to shift towards the one-state solution. While the likes of Dr Norman have worked tirelessly for the two-state solution, which was considered a radical position back in the 90s, it has become so mainstream now that it has started to be considered a ‘moderate’ proposition while the radicals want a one-person-one-vote arrangement in a ‘one-state’ Israel comprising of the Jews and the Arabs living together in that proposed alignment.
Palestine-Israel conflict is a political issue, not just a physical one. Jerusalem is the home to the holy sites of Muslims, Christians and Jews alike and when the stakes are so high in a conflict, it is impossible to keep the politics out of it. What we have at our hands is a situation where the world leaders are either indifferent to the situation or simply hapless. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has delivered on one of the most controversial of his promises from the election campaign and nobody knows what to do with this man to stop him from fulfilling his promises. It’s a fact that the state of Israel is way too powerful today than it was back in 1947 at the time of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine. There is no reason for Trump to go back on his promise, considering the fact that there is no active political and public support on display for the two-state solution anywhere in the world apart from a useless 2013 UN resolution, accepted by 165 votes to 6, backing it. Besides, the one-state solution is not just a radical idea today. It is also gaining the popularity among the masses. The ideologues like the highly respected scholars Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe have advocated the one-state policy in their 2015 book ‘On Palestine’ quite vehemently and their arguments are quite convincing.
What Chomsky and Pappe argue is that the two-state solution was never a viable one, especially given the kind of support Israel enjoys in the power circles of the US and European countries. Israel does not need to partition itself unless it is under heavy pressure to do so, and that pressure can only come from the most powerful governments of the world, including the US’s. But what we have at our hands right now is the fact that the man in charge of the US government is providing the legitimacy to Israel’s shifting of its capital to Jerusalem. What does that mean? It clearly means that the politics is not on the side of the two-state solution currently.
It is an established fact that the Jewish community is too powerful to be ignored. No US president has gone that far in Israel’s support before Trump, but then Israel has never been as secure as it is right now. Today, the Arab autocracies are for the first time facing an existential threat that isn’t even remotely linked with Israel. The war in Yemen has both Iran and Saudi Arabia daggers drawn at each other while the 40-state alliance that the Saudi government has forged to support it not only includes all the major oil-producing Gulf states, except Qatar now, but the powerful Sunni-dominated countries outside the Middle East too, including Pakistan and Egypt, who have historically tried to remain neutral in the Saudi-Iran conflict.
So why would the US toe the Arabs’ policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict at this moment? In fact, Donald Trump has now started pressing the Saudis to ‘completely allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it’ in a statement issued on December 6. It clearly means that the Trump administration is not going to allow the Saudis to raise much voice on the issue. Pakistan is insignificant. Iran has no say in the global community. Turkey stands alone and will eventually accept the latest settlement as the new status quo. There is no incentive for Israel or the US to retract.
And that is why the two-state solution is already gone for good. Israel has the military might. It has a powerful, vibrant economy. And it has the most influential government of the world on its side. Meanwhile, its enemies are busy fighting each other. The only solution left with the Palestinian people is to strive for their legal rights living within Israel. There is no doubt that right now the public opinion outside of Israel is still heavily tilted in favour of the two-state solution but the sheer lack of workability of this idea is hampering the peace process, no matter what the authorities say or do. Had the one-state solution always been the actual goal, there would have been much higher chances of it being achieved. You can’t ask Israel to dismember itself with the kind of situation the world is in right now but you can ask for civil rights, right to vote, inclusion and integration of the Arabs and the Jews living within that state. And the world will be more receptive towards these demands.
Once the Palestinians gain the voting rights in that ‘one-state’, they’d certainly start securing their civil rights as well. Population-wise they are at par with the Jews. According to a 2014 survey, Muslims make approximately 47% of the total population of the entire territory while the Jews make 50%. The same estimates show that by 2025, Muslim population will have surpassed the Jewish population and that will effectively mean, in a one-man-one-vote system, that the Muslims would have a very strong voice in any political setup; they might even be able to form their own government. Well, who knows? Israeli government will obviously resist that but such a solution will be acceptable to the moderate Israelis. There are popular rights groups within Israel who would support the idea. It is like Baloch people asking for a separate country might not enjoy support in major parts of Pakistan but they asking for their civil rights remaining within Pakistan will certainly convince every Pakistani living in Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or rest of the country to support them.
So the two-state solution was always doomed, a failure right from the start. Pakistan was able to secure its two-state solution after the World War II because the world was ready to accept it as a solution at the time and the British were okay with the idea too. However, it became possible only when Indian National congress agreed to it, and that was out of political fatigue since Muslim League was a political party and not a terror group. What we have right now is an Israel that is hell bent on securing the whole of Palestinian territory, a world that is either indifferent to the situation or just doesn’t have the strength to deal with it, and a Palestinian leadership drawn from terrorists’ ranks. You can’t get the world to rally around your cause in such a mix. Strive for a one-state solution, with non-violence as the core policy, and there might be some hope for peace in the region favourable to the Arabs living in Palestine.