CALLING THE TWO-STATE BLUFF – The Campaign Against Normalizing Israeli Apartheid

We really shouldn’t even speak anymore about the “two-state solution.” Raising a political possibility for discussion that never was only muddies the waters. For more than a century Zionism has relentlessly pursued it’s stated intent to Judaize all of Palestine – and has done so. Suggesting that a truly sovereign, viable and territorially-contiguous Palestinian state can emerge out of the small and truncated enclaves in which Israel has trapped five million Palestinians serves but one purpose: conflict management. It keeps the Palestine issue open for future but never-materializing “negotiations” while allowing the US and others to continue supporting abstract Palestinian “rights.”

But that is where we are. The “two-state solution” has become the default position of virtually every government, the US at the fore. Even the Palestinian Authority, as a condition for its existence, has been coerced to support it. Indeed, the process of normalization between Israel and the “moderate” Sunni world, now dependent on Saudi Arabia’s joining (which will undoubtedly happen in Trump’s second term), is pre-conditioned by some sort of a Palestinian state.

“Some sort.” And here lies the rub. Israel, too, needs a Palestinians state. If the very purpose of Zionism is a Jewish state over all the Land of Israel (from the River to the Sea), what to do with the five million Palestinians of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)? It is clear they cannot be granted citizenship since that would end the Jewish majority. But to confine them to enclaves within a Greater Israel without citizenship is naked apartheid. The only way out for Israel is apartheid in the guise of a two-state solution. If we are forced to play the two-state game, then lets insist that the Palestinian state be genuinely sovereign and viable. At a minimum that means insisting on the following prerequisites:

A Palestinian state must have control over its internationally recognized borders, a fundamental criterion of sovereignty, access to Arab markets to its economic viability;
It must be territorially contiguous. In order to make the West Bank a coherent state territory, most or all of Israel’s settlements will have to be removed since their very location was strategically planned so as to guarantee permanent Israeli control. And an extraterritorial passage for people and goods would have to established between the West Bank and Gaza;
Within its national territory it must exercise sovereign control over all its resources, from natural resources – water, land, minerals, quarries and offshore natural gas – to sacred sites and tourist attractions. And it must have the ability to develop its economy if it is to meet the needs of the coming generations;
In that vein, the Palestinian state must include East Jerusalem, the most significant symbol of Palestinian national and religious life and a major part of its economy, tourism being one of Palestine’s largest industries. Here an arrangement of shared sovereignty over the Old City might be possible;
As opposed to Israel’s demand that the Palestinian state be demilitarized, it must have the ability to defend its sovereignty and territory. At the least a Palestinian armed force is required that has policing capabilities within the state’s borders and sovereignty of action on them, backed up by international guarantees of the state’s sovereignty.
And the state must have the capacity to reintegrate those refugees who choose to return.

How do these fundamental requirements for a two-state solution match up against Trump’s once-and-future Deal of the Century and Netanyahu’s counter-proposal? The maps tell all.

We must begin with the two-staters territorial shill-game: 78:22. Since the passage of UN Resolution 242 in 1967, the two-state solution has been predicated on an Israel occupying 78 percent of historic Palestine alongside a Palestinian state on the 22 percent represented by the Occupied Territory. That’s it. Any plan conforming to those parameters is fine. But as the prerequisites listed above show, whether that 22 percent constitutes a genuine state capable of meet its people’s needs now and in the future, including the refugee issue, or merely an internationally-sanctioned Bantustan, depends only partly on territory – a contiguous, coherent territory. Whether the Palestinian state is a truly sovereign and economically viable is equally crucial.

Neither the maps nor non-negotiable Israeli “security” positions point to anything but a truncated, non-viable, quasi-sovereign Bantustan controlled by the Israeli apartheid regime encompassing it. In both, the Israeli settlements remain, though in Trump’s plan some of the small and more remote settlements are removed to create more contiguity among the many enclaves of Areas A and B. In both, Jerusalem is detached from the Palestinian state, cutting out its economic, cultural and religious heart. Both “compensate” for the loss of Palestinian land by marginally “thickening” Palestinian enclaves, Trump’s plan by adding barren desert territory to a largely uninhabitable Gaza.

While the Trump plan allows connections passages between the three Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and a tunnel between the West Bank and Gaza, Netanyahu’s counter-proposal prevents continuity between the Palestinian enclaves, ensuring Israeli control. Indeed, Israel insists that it maintain an active and constant military presence within the Palestinian state. Both plans also deny the Palestinian state a border with an Arab country (the Gaza border with Egypt will be controlled by Israel), fatal to both Palestinian sovereignty and economic viability. Not on the maps is Israel’s insistence on control over Palestinian airspace and its electro-magnetic (communications) sphere. Israel also insists on having veto power over Palestinian foreign policy.

Although the refugee issue is of no concern to either Trump or Netanyahu, it is elemental to the Palestinians. Not only will the small, truncated Palestinian they envision state be unable to repatriate a meaningful segment of the 9.17 million Palestinian refugees or internally displaced people, but given that 40 percent of Palestinians inside what would become the State of Palestinian are under the age of 15, it will struggle to provide any economic future its younger generations.

Returning to our checklist of fundamental requirements for a genuine two-state solution, the Trump and Netanyahu plans fall far short. If anything, they conform to Netanyahu’s notion of what a two-state solution means: an Israeli state whose settlements extend from the River to the Sea, encompassing a Palestinian “state-minus” enjoying, if not sovereignty, then “autonomy-plus.” A new apartheid regime in the world.

It is clear that no genuine “two-state solution” is in the works, but two-state apartheid is. The incoming Trump Administration will endeavor to complete the Abraham Accords based on some compromise between Trump’s Deal of the Century and Netanyahu’s counter-proposal. If governments nonetheless insist on a two-state solution, it is our task to keep them honest and transparent. OK, two states, but only if the Palestinian state is genuinely sovereign, territorially contiguous, economically viable. We must be the watchdogs lest two-state apartheid be sold as a just solution.