Only One Solution to Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[Classical_Liberal]

........."For two decades, all of us who gathered here were the leading proponents of the establishment of a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel, the so-called two-state solution. But continued expansion of Jewish settlements has rendered the notion of an independent Palestinian homeland in the West Bank and Gaza unworkable, and the one-state solution looks more realistic," he explained. "Some of the Palestinians-about 1.5 millions Arabs who live in Haifa, Lydia, Nazareth, and Um El Fahim-are Israeli citizens who elect candidates to the Knesset and enjoy other civil rights. Then there are about 250,000 Arabs in East Jerusalem who are residents of Israel but don't have Israeli citizenship. And of course, there are close to 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, under military occupation, who need permits to visit family members in neighboring villages. While the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East and elsewhere cannot return to Jaffa or Haifa, if Woody Allen decided to immigrate to Israel tomorrow, he would enjoy full political and civil rights, and he could live anywhere in Israel or could join the 400,000 Jewish settlers who reside in communities in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza." Nusseibeh concluded, "The Americans portray Israel as the 'only democracy in the Middle East,' and we want them to help us win our basic civil rights as citizens of a democratic state."

The rest, as they say, is history. The new civil-rights movement transformed the shape of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, winning the support of Israeli political activists and intellectuals and culminating in the June 2006 March on Jerusalem led by aging American Jewish and black civil-rights campaigners from the 1960s, demanding that Israel grant citizenship to its Arab residents in the West Bank and Gaza. Some of the speakers referred to the Federation of the Fertile Crescent (FFC) of Kurds and Arabs that was established in the former Iraq in 2004 as a model for peaceful co-existence. And now President Clinton welcomes the two in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, where many Americans hear for the first time the national anthem of the IPF, "Sing My Beloved Holy Land," which was composed by American-Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barneboim in memory of his late friend, the American-Palestinian scholar Edward Said. First Husband Bill Clinton, sitting in the audience, next to his old pals Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, could be seen shedding a tear. ...

http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-23-04-2.html

[Carl21014]

1. I agree!

A one state solution is the only option left because of all the land Sharon has stolen.

Israeli Jews would never except being a minority though.

[Classical_Liberal]

2. They already have accepted being a minority by killing two states

.

[Muddleoftheroad]

3. Two states is the only option

So the Palestinians better push for that because they sure in hell won't get the other choice.

[Classical_Liberal]

5. If they don't get the west bank there can't be two states

That is just reality. You keep saying they should fight for a state they have been told they can't have. That is just goofy. A complete waste of time. If Israelis wanted two states they would give the Palestinians enough land to make one on. They need voting rights in the state that governs them so they should work for voting rights in Israel the state where the bantustan(indian reservation) is located in.

[Muddleoftheroad]

6. The final border is undecided

And there is no possibility they will get everything past the Green Line.

Hell, even the Palestinians themselves acknowledge that land is still up in the air. Witness their attempt to acquire a corridor between the West Bank and Gaza.

[methinks2]

4. beautiful fantasy in the first part

"One cannot unscramble an egg," Diana Buttu, a legal adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said in an October 2002 interview, referring to the way the Israeli and the Palestinian populations are intermingled. The Palestinian leaders, she said, should give up their quest for an independent state and push instead for equal citizenship in Israel and "an antiapartheid campaign along the same lines as South Africa." "

I agree with Buttu. Point out that racism is the basis for the current treatment of Palestinians. Americans are sensitive to that topic. And it is US public opinion that will change the situation.

On another note, I almost cried as I read the first part of the article, while I knew it was wishful thinking, I enjoyed the fantasy of Peace and cooperation. I believe it is attainable. Integration was opposed in some factions in US history. But the right way prevailed. It's possible in Israel, if the good-minded people continue the struggle. It's when people are afraid to speak out that because of fear of censure etc . . . that evil prevails.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free
- honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Abraham Lincoln

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it."
- Martin Luther King, Jr

"Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act."
The Talmud