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MIDEAST: 'Hello, I'm Israeli-Palestinian'
By Peter Hirschberg
JERUSALEM, Feb 9 (IPS) - Ali Jarbawi has long seen the creation of two states,
Israel and Palestine, living side by side, as the best solution to the Middle East
conflict. But the professor of political science from Bir Zeit university in the West
Bank is not sure any more.
Jarbawi believes the two-state solution is on the verge of extinction, leaving
Israelis and Palestinians facing a new reality - the prospect of life in a single
binational state.
Jewish settlements built in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have entangled
the people, making a solution based on two states look increasingly unlikely.
Now, says Jarbawi, the separation barrier Israel is building deep inside the
West Bank and which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to turn into a boundary
between Israelis and Palestinians is final evidence that Israel is not interested in
allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
"Most Palestinians prefer the idea of separation because they want their own
state," Jarbawi told IPS. "But Sharon's idea of a two-state solution is to squeeze
us into cantons in the West Bank. Given the choice between cantonisation and a
one-state solution, Palestinians will go for the latter. We are at the edge of the
two-state solution closing down."
The apparent collapse of yet another U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East,
the seemingly unending Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting, and the approach of
demographic parity between Jews and Arabs living in the area between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea have all raised questions about the
future and longevity of the two-state solution. These questions are being raised
among Palestinians and Israelis, and on the pages of the world's leading
newspapers and journals.
Jarbawi is not the only Palestinian warning about the imminent death of the
two-state solution, which has long been supported by the international
community as the preferred model for ending the conflict. Palestinian Prime
Minister Ahmed Korei cautioned recently that if Sharon took unilateral steps that
included absorbing large chunks of the West Bank into Israel, the Palestinians
would abandon their demand for their own, separate state and call for a single
state with Israelis.
Pointing to Israel's settlement policy and the West Bank separation barrier,
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat warned in late January that "time
is running out for the two-state solution."
Some in Israel have dismissed these comments as a tactical ploy by
Palestinian leaders to scare Israeli Jews. The threat: if Israelis do not agree to
the creation of a Palestinian state, then higher Palestinian birth rates will ensure
that in a decade Jews will be a minority in the area west of the Jordan River.
There are currently 5.2 million Jews living in Israel, and 3.5 million Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza, and a further 1.2 million Arabs who are citizens in
Israel.
The Israeli left has long warned of what it calls the "demographic threat",
arguing that if settlement construction does not cease and Israel fails to
relinquish its control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will ultimately slide
into an apartheid-like reality.
Israel, they contend, might survive for some time, but it will cease to be a
democracy, and like South Africa will become increasingly isolated and will
ultimately crumble. The death of the two-state solution, therefore, effectively
means the death of the Jewish state.
Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo peace accords and now of the
Geneva accord - an unofficial peace plan unveiled last year that is based on
the idea of two states - has warned that his latest plan is "perhaps the last
chance for a fair division of the land between Jews and Palestinians before the
creation of a Palestinian majority west of Jordan that will effectively make the
country binational."
But this thinking has now also begun to penetrate right-wing ranks in Israel.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the ruling centre-right Likud party said in
a recent interview that "more and more Palestinians are uninterested in a
negotiated, two-state solution."
Olmert said this meant a change from a struggle against occupation as they
see it to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. "That is of course a much cleaner
struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful
one," he said. "For us it would mean the end of the Jewish state."
Some on the far right in Israel propose transferring Palestinians to Jordan, but
they are a small minority. Jewish settler leaders, not unaware of demographics,
have been suggesting various solutions, including giving Palestinians voting
rights in Jordan.
That is a non-starter, given Palestinian demands for self-determination,
Jordan's fear that it could become a Palestinian state - 60 percent of
Jordanians are Palestinian - and the international community's backing for an
independent Palestinian state.
Some commentators have suggested that the demographic fear is now driving
Sharon's latest plan announced last week to unilaterally dismantle Jewish
settlements in the Gaza Strip.
In making his decision, Sharon might have read a recent poll that indicated
Israeli Jews' fear of a binational scenario. The survey conducted at Tel Aviv
University found that 67 percent of respondents feared a binational reality.
Seventy-eight percent of Jews said they favoured a two-state solution; only 6
percent said they support a binational state.
Not surprisingly, support for a binational state among Palestinians is higher, at
around 30 percent. With demography on their side - Palestinian birth rates are
higher than Jewish ones - they would ultimately become a majority in a single
state.
Arafat is also on record saying that "the womb of the Arab woman is my best
weapon." Some Israelis point to this as proof that he has never been committed
to the idea of two states.
Some Palestinian intellectuals and Israelis on the far left actually espouse a
one-state solution, arguing it is preferable to separation. With the two peoples
merged into a single entity, they contend, many of the vexing problems that now
make the conflict seemingly insoluble would melt away. There would be no
reason to argue over delineation of borders, or over control of Jerusalem, and it
would not even be necessary to remove settlements.
This is not Ali Jerbawi's preferred route to statehood and to solving the conflict.
Since Israelis would not agree to a single state, he says. It would mean an
"apartheid-like struggle" in which Palestinians substitute their demand for
national self-determination with a demand for one-person-one-vote in a single
state. "This type of struggle will take many years," he says. "We want to end
Palestinian suffering."
But in the absence of Israeli agreement to the creation of a viable Palestinian
state - in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank - he is prepared to go the one-
state route. "If that happens, then we will say to the Israelis, 'We will meet you in
10 to 15 years time with the demand for one-person-one vote in a single state'."
(END/2004)
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