If someone despairs of swimming the English Channel and decides, therefore, to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, it might be considered slightly odd. When my Palestinian friend, Michael Tarazy, despairs of the two-state solution and now advocates One State (IHT, Oct. 5), it does not look to me much more realistic.

Many beautiful utopian ideas have come to nothing, and some, like communism, have caused great tragedies, because they run contrary to human nature.

France is a member of the EU, but tell a Frenchman to dismantle France and merge with, say, the Germans in One State, and he will not be amused. The idea that Israelis would voluntarily dissolve their state, for which they have fought so hard (and for which, according to Zionist dogma, “eighty generations have longed and prayed”) is far-fetched indeed. It could only happen after a crushing military defeat, but then the whole question would be moot anyway.

Nor, I believe, will the mass of the Palestinians give up their right to have a state of their own, like any other people on earth -unless, of course, the One State solution is a euphemism for dismantling Israel and turning all of the country into an Arab state.

Since nothing like this will happen in the next 100 years, the discussion could end right here. However, it may be worthwhile to examine some of the points made:

– There is very little similarity between Israel/Palestine and South Africa. In Israel/Palestine we have two nations with different histories, cultures, languages, religions and national aspirations.

– The apartheid rulers were partners of the Nazis and universally detested. Israel is “the state of the Holocaust survivors”, and, as such, enjoys considerable sympathy and immunity from criticism. The pressure of world public opinion that helped bring racist South Africa to its knees is not going to materialize here.

– Per capita income of Israelis is almost tenfold higher than that of the Palestinians. Not only militarily, but also technologically and economically, the gap is immense. In the putative One State, Israelis will dominate all fields of endeavor for generations to come. The One State would in practice be an apartheid state.

– Even preaching the One State solution is dangerous, since it legitimizes the eradication of the pre-1967 Green Line and the unlimited expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If one advocates this solution, how can one object to Israelis living everywhere in the country?

– At this point in time, more Israelis than Palestinians live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. One has indeed to be naive beyond belief to imagine that Israelis would accord the Palestinians citizenship and then passively stand by while Palestinians become the majority, thus effectively turning the state into another country where Jews are a tolerated minority.

– It is far more likely that in the joint state there would rage a perpetual civil war, making the present conflict look like a garden party.

No, the two-state solution, which my friends and I have advocated for the last 55 years (following the 1947 UN resolution to that effect) is not only the best solution, it is the only one. The alternative is not One State, but escalating bloodshed, ethnic cleansing and catastrophe.

Two States do not mean two ghettoes. On the contrary, we want two states with an open border between them, not the US-Mexico but the US-Canada model. While each side will live in a state that expresses its national identity, our economies will inevitably grow closer together, our joint capital (Jerusalem) will symbolize our joint destiny. And down the road, some kind of Semitic Union, on the lines of the EU, may come into being.

Already 22 years ago, Yasser Arafat told me of his belief in a “Benelux solution” – a close cooperation between three sovereignstates, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. He has repeated this many times since. I share this view with him.

What makes sense to me in terms of national rights (I am not Palestinian, but coming from a Palestinian-rights focused perspective) is that, whenever possible, those rights should be reciprocal. In other words, whatever one community expects or demands for itself, it must accept for the other. There are some cases where this may not work (the flag for instance, although the principle can still inform potential solutions). But it works on some of the biggest issues, among them right of return, and right of settlement.

Not that it would be easily agreed to, but this principle does have the political and cognitive benefit of commonsense fairness. If we accept as the basis for binationalism the idea that Jews and Palestinians are both indigenous to the territory, then it follows logically that people of both groups should be able to live within it, wherever they choose.

Perhaps my perspective should be more Machiavellian, but I believe that a settlement built as closely as possible around ideas of universal rights, will also be the most durable and fruitful.

I remember “us” people from the democratic, liberal left having started to discuss all the above already late 1977, early 1978 in Haifa, in Tel-Aviv, in Jerusalem …

And I see almost no palpable change in the problems seen and solutions thought of since these 35 years …
Regards.

Quoted passage extremely well displays how little people outside Israel actually know about what “right-wing” Israelis desire.