It’s a ridiculous, nonsensical notion, as the grand old man of the Israeli left reminds us—and not for the first time—in his latest column (I addressed the issue myself here a couple of years ago). The lede
“THE TWO-STATE solution is dead!” This mantra has been repeated so often lately, by so many authoritative commentators, that it must be true.
Well, it ain‘t.
And he explains why. Along the way he addresses the inevitable South Africa parallel
THE ONE-STATERS like to base themselves on the South African experience. For them, Israel is an apartheid state, like the former South Africa, and therefore the solution must be South African-like.
The situation in the occupied territories, and to some extent in Israel proper, does indeed strongly resemble the apartheid regime. The apartheid example may be justly cited in political debate. But in reality, there is very little deeper resemblance – if any – between the two countries.David Ben-Gurion once gave the South African leaders a piece of advice: partition. Concentrate the white population in the south, in the Cape region, and cede the other parts of the country to the blacks. Both sides in South Africa rejected this idea furiously, because both sides believed in a single, united country.
They largely spoke the same languages, adhered to the same religion, were integrated in the same economy. The fight was about the master-slave relationship, with a small minority lording it over a massive majority.
Nothing of this is true in our country. Here we have two different nations, two populations of nearly equal size, two languages, two (or rather, three) religions, two cultures, two totally different economies.
He makes one obvious point that BDSers tend to ignore
A false proposition leads to false conclusions. One of them is that Israel, like Apartheid South Africa, can be brought to its knees by an international boycott. About South Africa, this is a patronizing imperialist illusion. The boycott, moral and important as it was, did not do the job. It was the Africans themselves, aided by some local white idealists, who did it by their courageous strikes and uprisings.
For my views of BDS, go here..
Avnery concludes with a series of rhetorical questions
ASSUMING FOR a moment that the one-state solution would really come about, how would it function?
Will Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs serve in the same army, pay the same taxes, obey the same laws, work together in the same political parties? Will there be social intercourse between them? Or will the state sink into an interminable civil war?
And makes an obvious point
Other peoples have found it impossible to live together in one state. Take the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia. Serbia. Czechoslovakia. Cyprus. Sudan. The Scots want to secede from the United Kingdom. So do the Basques and the Catalans from Spain. The French in Canada and the Flemish in Belgium are uneasy. As far as I know, nowhere in the entire world have two different peoples agreed to form a joint state for decades.
NO, THE two-state solution is not dead. It cannot die, because it is the only solution there is.
Obviously. Read the whole piece here.
I read the whole story. One sentence bothers me more than the rest : “(The two-state solution) is the only solution there is.” I always grin when somebody tells me, “this is the one and only way to go and the all the rest is balooney”, especially if this same persons also tells me a few lines above : “Speaking about a process that will surely last 50 years and more, who knows what will happen? What changes will take place in the world in the meantime ?”. Well, indeed, I don’t know, and I am especially ignorant since I am not an Israeli citizen, furthermore the question seems very academic to me since what we may believe or not doesn’t seem to influence much the actual situation, one way or the other, does-it ? Therefore, with all due respect to Mr. Avneri, I don’t buy “the two state solution is the only solution”.