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Israfax
Meanwhile, an old and discredited idea has also been revived, a "one-state" (or "bi-national" state) solution for achieving Arab-Israeli peace. This revival, coming in the midst of a renascent, global antisemitism, is symbolically and practically disturbing. What it in fact is intended to mean, despite its benign, utopian image of Jews and Arabs living together in one shared state--is politicide, the destruction of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state. The striking reverse side of this one-state coin is its advocates' abandonment of the "two-state" orthodoxy, ushered in with the 1993 Oslo Accords. Since 1993, pro-Oslo Israelis and Palestinians have argued that the "only solution" to the Middle East conflict is the existence of two independent, sovereign states, one Jewish, one Palestinian-Muslim, west of the Jordan River. (Since the Arab Kingdom of Jordan already existed east of the Jordan, this has meant accepting a third, Arab-Muslim sovereign state, in historic Palestine.) In fact, however, the Arabs (today, "Palestinians") have rejected "two states" again and again: in 1937, when Britain, Mandatory for Palestine, bowing to Arab pressures, proposed it in a White Paper; in 1947, when the UN proposed it (and Ben-Gurion accepted it); again in 1967 (when Israel again offered negotiations), and again after 1993, when--despite signing the Oslo Accords--the Palestinians consistently violated all of the treaty's clauses. Finally, they confirmed their historic rejection of a sovereign Jewish state in 2000, when Arafat, without even a counter-offer, rejected Ehud Barak's radically generous attempts--at Camp David and again at Taba--to save Oslo. Instead, Arafat ordered the current terrorist campaign against Israel. Clearly, the Palestinians' persistent goal is not a "two-state" solution, which would recognize Jewish sovereignty, but the destruction of Israel and its replacement by one Muslim state "from the river to the sea". So why the bi-national "one-state" campaign now? The revival of this failed relic of the 1930s and 1940s non-Zionist left in the pre-State Jewish Yishuv has two, related reasons. First, it reflects the demise of Oslo (or, better, of Arafat's attempt to use Oslo as a means of weakening Israel). Second, it expresses the failure--despite almost 1,000 Israeli deaths--of Arafat's post-Oslo terror war, which was directed at internationalizing the conflict. Peace negotiations, if they resume, await--and here the Americans agree--the replacement of Arafat, the ending of terrorist violence, and the destruction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This may take years; meanwhile, Israel's security fence continues its inevitable march to a de facto, and unilaterally-determined, border. Hence a new ploy, the one-state propaganda campaign. Turning on the demographic overwhelming of Jewish Israel by the union of a million Israeli Arabs with millions of returning Palestinian "refugees", it would be risible, were it not for its context. And this is a massive, global, antisemitic revival, from Durban to the Malaysian leader Matahir's "Jews rule the world" Muslim Conference address, to the European Union's recent "Israel as the world's greatest threat to peace" poll. Presenting Israel as "the Jew" on a world scale is part of the focused delegitimization of the democratic Jewish state, which includes denying it what is accepted unequivocally for all others (including the world's worst despotisms)--an independent, sovereign existence. Symbolically, and functionally, this prepares the way--in a world where Pakistan, and soon Iran, have "Islamic" nuclear weapons--for its destruction. Current "son-of-Oslo" two-state peace proposals work in their way to weaken Israel. But the "one-state" idea is especially dangerous, for behind it lurks something more explicitly monstrous. If dynamic, sovereign Israel, legatee of the Holocaust, is the indispensable center of the Jewish people, then what we are facing is not only "politicide", the liquidation of a state, but a second genocidal drive aimed at the Jewish people. (Prof. Krantz, editor of ISRAFAX, is Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research) Book Review |
     
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