The Two State Solution Is Over and Bibi Killed It

Herzl's Beautiful Dream May Be Over--Where Do We Go From Here?

There is a ‘hiding in plain sight’ corollary to the heartfelt debate in the Jewish community over Peter Beinart’s recent New York Times opinion piece “I No Longer Believe In A Jewish State”. The inconvenient and oft-overlooked truth that Israelis and Jews of varied political persuasions seem unable to wrap their minds around is this: ‘If the vision of an independent  Jewish state, first articulated by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, is being  laid to rest in 2020, it is Bibi, not Beinart, who is snuffing it out.’

In his article, Beinart persuasively points out that massive Jewish settlement of East Jerusalem and the West Bank has deep-sixed any realistic possibility of a two state solution; whether or not Israel moves ahead with annexation of much of the West Bank as advocated by Prime Minister Netanyahu. Given that bleak assessment, shared by majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, liberal Zionists must now adapt and struggle instead to achieve what most of us hitherto considered to be the lesser of two evils; namely, a one state solution based on equal rights for all its inhabitants, as opposed to an ‘apartheid’ one state solution with the Jewish half of the population repressing the Palestinian half. To sweeten the deal, Beinart floats the vision of a confederation known as Israel-Palestine, in which each of the two component parts enjoy cultural autonomy and a good measure of self-government. Yet he acknowledges that sovereignty would ultimately be shared.   

Predictably, Beinart has been excoriated by self-proclaimed Zionists from hard right to center-left for having renounced the cause of Jewish statehood. Yet, it was not longstanding believers in liberal Zionism who snuffed out the dream, articulated in Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah (The Hope) of a free Jewish state in its ancestral land.  Instead, it was the Israeli right that ensured there would be no sustainable Jewish state by flooding  East Jerusalem and the West Bank with 650,000 Jewish settlers, deliberately mixing them with the Palestinian population so as to make  separation all-but-impossible.

Given that history, it takes enormous chutzpah for Netanyahu and company to wrap themselves in the Star of David and accuse the Jewish center-left of being anti-Zionist. They themselves destroyed the dream of a viable Jewish state and should not be allowed to project that sin onto the rest of us.

I write this essay as someone who devoted nearly 50 years to advocacy for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation which would allow Israel to survive and flourish as a Jewish state. I was advocating for a two- state solution by the early 1980’s; more than 10 years before Israeli officially accepted that position—at least for a time--by signing the Oslo Accords in 1993. I felt in my gut for most of my life that if Israel were ever, God Forbid, to be destroyed, I would not want to go on living. Therefore I take umbrage at the Israeli right accusing me of being anti-Zionist; usually contemptuously throwing in that extra-sweet appellation ‘self-hating Jew’. Dear reader, I ask who is the real self-hating Jew: the person who devotes his or her life to the fulfillment of the vision of a democratic, Jewish state or someone sets out purposely to destroy it?    

It is admittedly hard for most of us—including myself---to fully absorb the implications of the very real premise that the chief culprit in the demise of Zionism is the Jewish state itself. Yet successive Israeli governments of Israel dating back to the 1970’s deliberately erased the Green Line and flooded the area they renamed ‘Judea and Samaria’ with Jewish settlers. To be sure, Palestinian rejectionism and violence played an important role in convincing many Israelis to oppose surrendering the occupied territories. Yet neither Hamas, the PFLP or Fatah compelled Israel to create even one settlement. We did that to ourselves.

So how to explain why successive Israeli governments seemingly took leave of their senses and sabotaged the existence of an independent and sovereign Jewish state? The answer, I believe, is that adherents of these policies deluded themselves into believing it would be possible to sustain an enlarged Israel with a Jewish majority by inducing large numbers of Palestinians to emigrate, or by forcing them out. Yet that strategy failed to anticipate that deteriorating conditions across the Middle East and drastic limitations on immigration in many western countries would sharply limit the ability of Palestinians to emigrate, even if they desired to do so. In the absence of large scale Palestinian emigration, the only solution the Israeli right has to the demographic dilemma of maintaining a Jewish state in a bi-national space, is to deny citizenship and basic rights to the Palestinians and keep them under perpetual occupation.

That policy is not only immoral and un-Jewish but impossible to sustain over the long term. An occupier cannot successfully absorb a piece of land without providing for the rights and well-being of the people who live there, nor prevent an eventual growing together of constituent communities living side by side within one polity. Increasingly, we see ever-greater cultural and economic integration of so-called Israelis Arabs, and the birth of a palpable new Israeli-Palestinian identity among Arabs and Jews alike. A similar dynamic will take place over time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as growing numbers of Israelis and Palestinians build a vibrant network of NGOs and individuals dedicated to improving the quality of life for all, while strengthening inter-communal ties of friendship and trust.

Might the two-state solution be somehow revived? Sadly, it seems decidedly unlikely, given the Israeli government's fixation on settlement and eventual annexation; but miracles do happen and if this one does, no one will be happier than I. In the meantime, it is incumbent for those of us who care about both peoples to focus on nurturing conditions in which Israelis and Palestinians are able to live side by side in equality and peace. Whether it turns out to be one-state, a confederation or two states, we are duty- bound to fight so that it doesn't turn into apartheid.   

Rather than falling into despair and mourning what should have been, let us therefore embrace a different, but equally uplifting dream: working to ensure that all the people of Israel-Palestine share equally—and rejoice together in—our precious Common Land.