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March 12, 2008

One State or Two? Neither.

The Issue is Zionism

By JONATHAN COOK

Editors’ note: On Monday we ran Michael Neumann’s argument against the so-called
“one state” solution for Israel and Palestine. This is the second of three replies. AC /
JSC.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same
can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved
by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land
into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.
The philosopher Michael Neumann has dedicated two articles, in 2007 and earlier this
week, for CounterPunch discrediting the one-state idea as impractical and therefore
as worthless of consideration. In response, Kathy Christison has mounted a robust
defense, neatly exposing the twists and turns of Neumann’s logic. I will not trouble to
cover the same ground.
I want instead to address Neumann’s central argument: that it is at least possible to
imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept
a single state. That argument, the rallying cry of most two-staters, paints the one-
state crowd as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.
The idea, Neumann writes, “that Israel would concede a single state is laughable. …
There is no chance at all [Israelis] will accept a single state that gives the Palestinians
anything remotely like their rights.”
According to Neumann, unlike the one-state solution, the means to realizing two
states are within our grasp: the removal of the half a million Jewish settlers living in
the occupied Palestinian territories. Then, he writes, “a two-state solution will,
indeed, leave Palestinians with a sovereign state, because that’s what a two-state
solution means. It doesn’t mean one state and another non-state, and no Palestinian
proponent of a two-state solution will settle for less than sovereignty.”
There is something surprisingly naive about his arguing that, just because something
is called a two-state solution, it will necessarily result in two sovereign states. What
are the mimimum requirements for a state to qualify as sovereign, and who decides?
True, the various two-state solutions proposed by Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and
George Bush, and supported by most of the international community, would fail
according to Neumann’s criterion because they were not premised on the removal of
all the settlers.
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But an alternative two-state solution requiring Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967

borders might still not concede, for example, a Palestinian army -- equipped and
trained by Iran? -- to guard the borders of the West Bank and Gaza. Would that
count? And how likely does Neumann think it that Israel and the US would grant that
kind of sovereignty to a Palestine state?
Correctly, Neumann repeatedly reminds us that those with power are the ones who
dictate solutions. In which case we can be sure that when the time is right Israel and
its sponsor, the United States, will impose their own version of the two-state solution
and that it will be far from the genuine article Neumann advocates.
No matter. Let us leave aside that particular somersault of logic for the moment and
return to the main argument: that the creation of two states is inherently more
achievable and practical than the establishment of a single state.
Strangely, however, from all the available evidence, this is not how it looks to Israel’s
current leaders.
Prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has expressed in several speeches the fear
that, should the Palestinian population under Israeli rule -- both in the occupied
territories and inside Israel proper -- reach the point where it outnumbers the Jewish
population, as demographers expect in the next few years, Israel will be compared to
apartheid South Africa. In his words, Israel is facing an imminent and powerful
“struggle for one-man-one-vote” along the lines of the anti-apartheid movement.
According to Olmert, without evasive action, political logic is drifting inexorably
towards the creation of one state in Israel and Palestine. This was his sentiment as he
addressed delegates to the recent Herzliya conference:
“Once we were afraid of the possibility that the reality in Israel would force a bi-
national state on us. In 1948, the obstinate policy of all the Arabs, the anti-Israel
fanaticism and our strength and the leadership of David Ben-Gurion saved us from
such a state. For 60 years, we fought with unparalleled courage in order to avoid
living in a reality of bi-nationalism, and in order to ensure that Israel exists as a
Jewish and democratic state with a solid Jewish majority. We must act to this end and
understand that such a [bi-national] reality is being created, and in a very short while
it will be beyond our control.”
Olmert’s energies are therefore consumed with finding an alternative political
program that can be sold to the rest of the world. That is the reason he, and Sharon
before him, began talking about a Palestinian state. Strangely, however, neither took
up the offer of the ideal two-state solution -- the kind Neumann wants -- made in
2002. Then Saudi Arabia and the rest Arab world promised Israel peace in return for
its withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. They repeated their offer last year. Israel has
steadfastly ignored them.
Instead an alternative version of two states -- the bogus two-state solution -- has
become the default position of Israeli politics. It requires only that Israel and the
Palestinians appear to divide the land, while in truth the occupation continues and
Jewish sovereignty over all of historic Palestine is not only maintained but rubber-
stamped by the international community. In other words, the Gazafication of the
West Bank.
When Olmert warns that without two states “Israel is finished”, he is thinking
primarily about how to stop the emergence of a single state. So, if Neumann is to be
believed, Olmert is a dreamer, because he fears that a one-state solution is not only
achievable but dangerously close at hand. Sharon, it seems, suffered from the same
delusion, given that demography was the main impulse for his disengaging from
Gaza.
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Or maybe both of them understood rather better than Neumann what is meant by a
Jewish state, and what political conditions are incompatible with it.
In fact, the division of the land demanded by Neumann, however equitable, would be
the very moment when the struggle for Israel to remain a Jewish state would enter its
most critical and difficult phase. Which is precisely why Israel has blocked any
meaningful division of the land so far and will continue to do so.
In the unimaginable event that the Israel were to divide the land, a Jewish state
would not be able to live with the consequences of such a division for long.
Eventually, the maintenance of an ethnic Israeli state would (and will) prove
unsustainable: environmentally, demographically and ultimately physically. Division
of the land simply “fast-forwards” the self-destructiveness inherent in a Jewish state.
Let us examine just a few of the consequences for the Jewish state of a genuine two-
state solution.
First, Israel inside its recognized, shrunken borders would face an immediate and
very serious water shortage. That is because, in returning the West Bank to the
Palestinians, Israel would lose control of the large mountain aquifers that currently
supply most of its water, not only to Israel proper but also to the Jewish settlers living
illegally in the occupied territories. Israel would no longer be able to steal the water,
but would be expected to negotiate for it on the open market.
Given the politics of water in the Middle East, that would be no simple matter.
However impoverished the new sovereign Palestinian state was, it would lose all
legitimacy in the eyes of its own population were it to sell more than a trickle of
water to the Israelis.
We can understand why by examining the current water situation. At the moment
Israel drains off almost all of the water provided by the rivers and aquifers inside
Israel and in the occupied territories for use by its own population, allowing each
Palestinian far less than the minimum amount he or she requires each day, according
to the World Health Organization.
In a stark warning this month, Israel’s Water Authority reported that overdrilling has
polluted with sea water most of the supply from the coastal aquifer, that is the main
fresh water source inside Israel’s recognized borders.
Were Palestinians to be allowed a proper water ration from their own mountain
aquifer, as well as to build a modern economy, there would not be enough left over
to satisfy Israel’s first-world thirst. And that is before we consider the extra demand
on water resources from all those Palestinians who choose to realize their right to
return, not to their homes in Israel, but to the new sovereign Palestinian state.
In addition, for reasons that we will come to, the sovereign Jewish state would have
every reason to continue its Judaization policies, trying to attact as many Jews from
the rest of the world as possible, thereby further straining the region’s water
resources.
The environmental unsustainability of both states seeking to absorb large
populations would inevitably result in a regional water crisis. In addition, should
Israeli Jews, sensing water shortages, start to leave in significant numbers, Israel
would have an even more pressing reason to locate water, by fair means or foul.
It can be expected that in a short time Israel, with the fourth most powerful army in
the world, would seek to manufacture reasons for war against its weaker neighbors,
particularly the Palestinians but possibly also Lebanon, in a bid to steal their water.
Water shortages would, of course, be a problem facing a single state too. But, at
least in one state there would be mechanisms in place to reduce such tensions, to
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manage population growth and economic development, and to divide water

resources equitably.
Second, with the labour-intensive occupation at an end, much of the Jewish state’s
huge citizen army would become surplus to defense requirements. In addition to the
massive social and economic disruptions, the dismantling of the country’s military
complex would fundamentally change Israel’s role in the region, damage its
relationship with the only global superpower and sever its financial ties to Diaspora
Jews.
Israel would no longer have the laboratories of the occupied territories for testing its
military hardware, its battlefield strategies and its booming surveillance and crowd
control industries. If Israel chose to fight the Palestinians, it would have to do so in a
proper war, even if one between very unequal sides. Doubtless the Palestinians, like
Hizbullah, would quickly find regional sponsors to arm and train their army or militias.
The experience and reputation Israel has acquired -- at least among the US military --
in running an occupation and devising new and supposedly sophisticated ways to
control the “Arab mind” would rapidly be lost, and with it Israel’s usefulness to the US
in managing its own long-term occupation of Iraq.
Also, Israel’s vital strategic alliance with the US in dividing the Arab world, over the
issue of the occupation and by signing peace treaties with some states and living in a
state of permanent war with others, would start to unravel.
With the waning of Israel’s special relationship with Washington and the influence of
its lobby groups, as well as the loss of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, the
Jewish Diaspora would begin to lose interest in Israel. Its money and power ebbing
away, Israel might eventually slip into Middle Eastern anonymity, another Jordan. In
such circumstances it would rapidly see a large exodus of privileged Ashkenazi Jews,
many of whom hold second passports.
Third, the Jewish state would not be as Jewish as some might think: currently one in
five Israelis is not Jewish but Palestinian. Although to realize Neumann’s two-state
vision all the Jewish settlers would probably need to leave the occupied territories
and return to Israel, what would be done with all those Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship?
These Palestinians have been citizens of Israel for six decades and live legally on land
that has belonged to their families for many generations. They are also growing in
number at a rate faster than the Jewish population, the reason they are popularly
referred to in Israel as a “demographic timebomb”.
Were these 1.3 million citizens to be removed from Israel by force under Neumann’s
two-state arrangement, it would be a violation of international law by a democratic
state on a scale unprecedented in the modern era, and an act of ethnic cleansing
even larger than the 1948 war that established Israel. The question would be: why
even bother advocating two states if it has to be achieved on such appalling terms?
Assuming instead that the new Jewish state is supposed to maintain, as Israel
currently does, the pretence of being democratic, these citizens would be entitled to
continue living on their land and exercising their rights. Inside a Jewish state that had
offically ended its conflict with the Palestinians, demands would grow from
Palestinian citizens for equal rights and an end to their second-class status.
Most importantly, they would insist on two rights that challenge the very basis of a
Jewish state. They would expect the right, backed by international law, to be able to
marry Palestinians from outside Israel and bring them to live with them. And they
would want a Right of Return for their exiled relatives on a similar basis to the Law of
Return for Jews.
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Israel’s Jewishness would be at stake, even more so than it is today from its
Palestinian minority. It can be assumed that Israel’s leaders would react with great
ferocity to protect the state’s Jewishness. Eventually Israel’s democratic pretensions
would have to be jettisoned and the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens
implemented.
Still, do these arguments against the “practicality” of Neumann’s genuine two-state
arrangement win the day for the one-state solution? Would Israel’s leaders not put up
an equally vicious fight to protect their ethnic privileges by preventing, as they are
doing now, the emergence of a single state?
Yes, they would and they will. But that misses my point. As long as Israel is an ethnic
state, it will be forced to deepen the occupation and intensify its ethnic cleansing
policies to prevent the emergence of genuine Palestinian political influence -- for the
reasons I cite above and for many others I don’t. In truth, both a one-state and a
genuine two-state arrangement are impossible given Israel’s determination to remain
a Jewish state.
The obstacle to a solution, then, is not about dividing the land but about Zionism
itself, the ideology of ethnic supremacism that is the current orthodoxy in Israel. As
long as Israel is a Zionist state, its leaders will allow neither one state nor two real
states.
The solution, therefore, reduces to the question of how to defeat Zionism. It just so
happens that the best way this can be achieved is by confronting the illusions of the
two-state dreamers and explaining why Israel is in permanent bad faith about
seeking peace.
In other words, if we stopped distracting ourselves with the Holy Grail of the two-
state solution, we might channel our energies into something more useful:
discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology of Zionism that upholds it.
Eventually the respectable façade of Zionism might crumble.
Without Zionism, the obstacle to creating either one or two states will finally be
removed. And if that is the case, then why not also campaign for the solution that will
best bring justice to both Israelis and Palestinians?

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book,
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle
East” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net