The news that Peter Hain has put his weight behind the so-called one-state ‘solution’, is disappointing, coinciding as it does with the first efforts in over three years for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate the only solution that promises to end this tragic conflict.
The two-state solution is the only one that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians support. That is the most important indicator for what ‘solidarity’ from those of us living outside the region should look like, with any other approach risking paternalism, meddling or condescension; traits which British policy toward the Middle East has sometimes been guilty of.
The two-state solution also enjoys the support of the United Nations, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Conferences, and every institution and body of note, worldwide. In a conflict, consensus on the parameters of an endgame – among both protagonists and third parties—is a very precious and rare thing. It is the exception, rather than the rule. One should think very carefully before abandoning it, and potentially condemning the millions of people who live this conflict, every day, to the long, bloody and potentially unsuccessful process of fashioning a new consensus. A cursory glance at the morass in Syria should be enough to provide a sobering reminder of what I mean.
I share the fear that Peter expressed about time working against two states, as well as a deep and unmitigated hostility to the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements, which risk destroying any hope of a peaceful future. But I am afraid that the two-state solution being under threat does not, a priori, magically make a single-state solution viable via some sort of binary and basic process of elimination. Life simply does not work that way.
I will be shortly heading to the region for my 30th visit in a little over five years. I am there a lot, and the nature of my work with OneVoice, which works at the grassroots in both societies, means that I meet a great many ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. Most of those I meet (like most Israelis and Palestinians more generally) support two-states; some others do not. What all but a very small sliver of each society share, however, is an intense nationalism. I was born and raised in Ireland, to a republican family, attended a fiercely nationalistic Christian Brothers school, and I like to think I know what nationalism looks like. Most Israelis and Palestinians, however, are in a different league.
For most Israelis, Israel is the Jewish State, born from the ashes of the Holocaust and the first form of Jewish sovereignty and self-determination for thousands of years. The existence and viability of the state in their minds – rightly or wrongly – has become almost indistinguishable from the existence and viability of the Jewish people. The need for a state, and the security it provides, is deeply woven into the Israeli and Jewish psyche, with one of the lessons learned from being the principle victims of humanity’s greatest ever crime.
For Palestinians, they have never had a state. Ever. Think about that. Not only are they a perpetually stateless people, they have been living under a humiliating and suffocating occupation for almost 50 years, denying them not only rights, but also self-determination and sovereignty. Palestinian people are condemned to a second-class refugee status across the Middle East, occupied and encircled in the West Bank, hemmed into Gaza, and still possess and sustain – after nearly being destroyed in 1948 – one of the most vibrant and distinctive national cultures in the Middle East, awaiting a sovereignty that has been inexcusably denied until now.
Both societies are draped in the insignia, symbols and expressions of their respective national cultures. Anybody who has visited the region will understand immediately what I mean. With both national cultures under threat, both societies have become hypernational places. Take a cursory look at Northern Ireland, and the weeks of rioting that we recently saw over what flag should fly over Belfast city hall, and for how long. Now imagine that scenario in Israel-Palestine, over every single issue that has to strike a balance between the two most fiery and oppositional nationalisms that I know of. Flags, coins, holidays, street names, history books, just for starters. And all this in a place where, already, radical settlers rampage through Palestinian villages, vandalising mosques and olive groves, and Palestinian Islamists fire rockets indiscriminately at civilians. I have met Hamas leaders in Gaza, and wild-eyed settlers in the West Bank. If you think they are going to share a bus, never mind an open and inclusive secular state that somehow balances and accounts for the national cultures, religious values, economic disparities, and oppositional narratives of history that Israelis and Palestinian share and contest, then I think you are falling into the same patrician trap that British policymakers have fallen into for nigh-on a century.
I can understand why a one-state solution looks attractive. It appeals to our humane, secular, post-national sensibilities, and has a sort of historical symmetry to it, seemingly undoing historical injustices and reconciling warring narratives. But it is a fantasy. Show me any functioning state in the world that has a roughly 50-50 ethnic divide, a modern history that is almost entirely one of enmity, and a GDP per capita gap of $31,281 vs $1,209? Belgium is coming apart at its national seams, under a dysfunctional constitution that many one-state solution supporters had held up as a model for Israel-Palestine. Belgium collapsing as a stable polity, I hasten to add, is likely to be a lot less destructive than that same process would almost certainly be in Israel-Palestine, potentially ushering in a civil war that could makes the last century’s tragic events look like merely a warm-up act.
I have no doubt in the world that Peter means well. He has met with OneVoice youth leaders from both Israel and Palestine, and was incredibly supportive of their work, empathetic to their concerns, and both intelligent and humane. But he should have listened more clearly to what they, and a majority of their fellow citizens either side of the Green Line say.
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John Lyndon is executive director of OneVoice Europe, a grassroots organisation working in parallel for an end to occupation and a two-state solution. It tweets @OneVoice
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