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January 16, 2004/Tevet 22 5764, Vol. 56, No.17
Is a one-state solution realistic?
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - When the Palestinian Authority prime minister warned recently that Palestinians might abandon their goal of an independent state and instead seek a single state of Arabs and Jews, Ahmed Qurei was playing one of his trump cards in the conflict with Israel.
The idea is ultimately to delegitimize Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through an international campaign for a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in which Arabs soon would be a majority. If successful, the strategy would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Abandoned years ago by a PLO that ostensibly had recognized Israel's right to exist, the one-state idea has made a comeback in recent months among left-wing intellectuals and among Palestinians who either fear Israeli plans to withdraw unilaterally from areas the Palestinians claim or who feel they are close to realizing cherished dreams of dismantling the Jewish state.
The plan is not without its problems. The United States remains fully committed to President Bush's vision of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living next to each other in peace, as does the European Union.
Moreover, the Israeli government's declared intention to withdraw unilaterally from most of the West Bank and Gaza is designed partly to preempt international pressure for a binational state. Once Israelis and Palestinians are clearly separated, the theory goes, the single-state solution will lose much of its appeal.
Qurei's binational threat came in an early January interview with Reuters and was in response to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan, if the peace process remains moribund, to withdraw unilaterally from much of the West Bank behind Israel's security fence.
If that means annexing land the Palestinians claim, Qurei declared that the Palestinians would have no choice but to press for a binational state because, he said, they would be left without enough land to establish a viable state of their own.
Clearly, the Palestinians have been badly rattled by the fence's efficacy in preventing terrorist attacks and by Israel's unilateral separation formula. Now they're trying to create levers of pressure to disrupt the planned Israeli moves.
The Palestinian-led appeal on the fence to the International Court of Justice in The Hague is one such gambit; Qurei's binational statement and the unilateral declaration of statehood threat are two more.
Though the Palestinians for now still officially favor a two-state solution, P.A. policy easily could switch to a binational state if conditions on the ground or the international stage change.
But how effective would such policy be?
Much will depend on Israel's security fence. Its very presence creates, de facto, a two-state situation. But if the fence is delegitimized and perceived by the international community to be dispossessing Palestinians, calls for a binational state to replace what is seen as an unjust reality could gain momentum.
Besides the Palestinians, pressure for a binational state could come from Israeli Arabs and left-wing intellectuals in Europe and the United States. Azmi Beshara, an Arab member of Israel's Knesset and a leading Israeli Arab intellectual, has been touting the binational idea for years.
Over the past few months, binationalism also has been gaining ground in Western intellectual circles. In The New York Review of Books last October, New York University professor Tony Judt caused a stir when he described Israel as "an anachronism" that ought to be replaced by a binational state with a Palestinian majority.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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