Two States Or One? Let Israel Choose

C-Span has in its archives the 17 February 2006 press conference held to disclose the findings of a summit attended that day by Arab American and humanitarian organisations. President of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby, as well, Dr. Ziad Asali, president, American Task Force for Palestine and Dr. Peter Gubser, president, ANERA Washington, D.C., explained the crises that would result from various policies under consideration including why “starving” the Palestinian Authority in effect is starving the Palestinian people.

“The single largest source of wealth in the West Bank and Gaza is derived from civil service jobs. If you eliminate that or if you make it difficult for that budget to be met so that those people and their families can continue to earn a living the consequences for the society are enormous both politically because it would wreak havoc in the society but also in terms of the humanitarian crisis that would ensue. And so I think before we start talking about starving the PA you are actually talking about starving the Palestinian people because no economy was able to develop in the 15 years since we’ve had the beginnings of a peace process precisely because the Palestinian economy as Ziad noted never was free to import or export or develop its own sources of wealth and so it has been a dependent economy since the occupation and nothing has changed in that regard.” – James Zogby [ 24:12 ]

The reason the PA is so bloated, as Zogby put it, is due Israel’s closure of the border which inflicted the loss of 140,000 day labour jobs. “Those were made up by the Authority by creating about 120 or so thousand civil service jobs and another maybe 60,000 in police…to avoid a huge crisis. The economy couldn’t grow.” He also made clear, outlined here, the U.S. aid in question has never gone directly to the PA except in three limited circumstances, but to humanitarian organisations.

USAID funds – what is at stake – what is in jeopardy, is addressed by Dr. Peter Gubser. [ 12:00 ] What the United States (and any allies it can convince to go along) is contemplating for the Palestinians is an abominable miscarriage of humanitarian goals.

Radio, television and internet continues to feature so-called experts and journalists, such as Charles Krauthammer who has enjoyed a lucrative career merely changing the title and date on old garbage, who claim a rationale for these contemptible actions is that the destruction of Israel is in the Hamas charter. But although Zogby is disturbed by the inflammatory and damaging rhetoric employed since the election, when a journalist framed her question around this particular bit of bile, he failed to dispel it.

He chose instead to warn against the devastating impact of the following event.

Israel Suspends Tax Money Flow to Palestinians
By STEVEN ERLANGER
20 February 2006 New York Times

JERUSALEM, Feb. 19 � The Israeli cabinet decided Sunday to immediately freeze the transfer of about $50 million a month in tax and customs receipts due to the Palestinian Authority, arguing that the swearing in of a Hamas-dominated legislature on Saturday meant that the Palestinians were now led by the militant group.

“It is clear that in the light of the Hamas majority in the parliament and the instructions to form a new government that were given to the head of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority is in practice becoming a terrorist authority,” Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, told his cabinet. “The state of Israel will not agree to this.”

Apparently, Israel acquired the authority to steal this money whenever it decides by forcing an agreement through the Paris Accords of 1995 [ 30:54 ], otherwise known as Oslo II and alternatively as Taba. Such a partner for peace all free people should endure. But of course the Palestinians are not free. They have been held hostage to a so-called peace process that for 15 of the past 39 years has only succeeded in inflicting even greater misery upon an occupied people, the continuing theft of land, and the denial of basic human rights and essential services that every human being in the world is entitled to attain, according to the democracy experts and exporters.

The NYT article claims this action contravenes the current position of “the United States, and the rest of the so-called quartet � the European Union, Russia and the United Nations � that has been promoting peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.” If that in fact is the case, where is the condemnation?

John V. Whitbeck has it right, I think. If now is not the time to go beyond the rhetoric and lies, when?

TWO STATES OR ONE? LET ISRAEL CHOOSE
By John V. Whitbeck

The coming weeks offer an unparalleled opportunity to leapfrog over the long comatose “peace process” and actually achieve peace in the Holy Land.

All that is needed is some clear, constructive and original thinking on the part of the new Palestinian leadership. Demonized though it may be in the West, Hamas won the recent Palestinian elections not simply because it was perceived as clean but also because it was perceived, justifiably, as competent and coherent. It is capable of such thinking.

As its first order of business after forming the new Palestinian government, Hamas should publicly announce its support for the Arab League’s Beirut Declaration of March 2002, by which all Arab states (including Palestine) offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel’s compliance with international law by returning to its internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. (Not incidentally, such an announcement would destroy the “destruction of Israel” excuse for current Israeli and Western plans to overturn the results of Palestine’s democratic elections and to bring the Palestinian people to their knees through economic privation.)

Israel has been able to ignore this generous offer, whose continuing validity the Arab League has periodically reaffirmed, because it has always been offered as a carrot unaccompanied by any consequential alternative which a significant number of Israelis might view as a stick. In this context, the new Palestinian leadership should simultaneously declare (preferably with the concurrence of President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah) that, if Israel does not publicly agree to proceed toward a two-state solution in accordance with the Beirut Declaration by a reasonable date (say, three months hence), the Palestinian people will consider that Israel has definitively rejected a two- state solution in favor of a one-state solution and, accordingly, will thereafter seek their liberation and self-determination through citizenship in a single democratic state in all of pre-1948 Palestine, free of all forms of discrimination and with equal rights for all who live there.

The new Palestinian leadership should make clear that, after 39 years of foreign military occupation, the Palestinian people can no longer tolerate the cynical series of never-ending “peace plans” (including the current “roadmap”) designed by others simply to postpone the necessary and obvious choices and to string out forever a perpetual “peace process” while further entrenching the occupation with new “facts on the ground”.

It should make clear that the Palestinian people demand, without further delay, a solution that will permit both Palestinians and Israelis to live decent, dignified and secure lives, that they could accept either a two-state solution in accordance with international law or a one-state solution in accordance with fundamental democratic principles and that they are willing to let the Israeli people choose whichever of those two alternatives Israelis prefer and to accept Israel’s choice.

It should appeal to the international community, and particularly to Israel’s traditional friends, to encourage Israel to choose peace — on the basis of whichever of these two alternatives (the only alternatives for peace which exist or will ever exist) Israelis prefer.

Finally, it should appeal to all Palestinian factions, with the full force of the legitimacy it has earned, to suspend all acts of violent resistance to the occupation throughout the period allotted for Israel’s choice and to make that suspension permanent if Israel chooses positively.

Importantly, this “Palestinian peace plan” should be launched promptly, prior to Israel’s March 28 general election. Israeli law does not contemplate referendums, but general elections can serve that purpose. One or more competing parties, if given adequate time to react, might offer Israeli voters a positive choice. If all the major Israeli parties were to reject both a decent two-state solution and a democratic one-state solution, the world could draw the appropriate conclusions and Western public opinion could shift in ways which, over a longer term, would themselves prove a force for peace with some measure of justice.

The former Palestinian leadership was a passive and reactive one. It simply responded to whatever initiatives others, who rarely had the best interests of the Palestinian people at heart, chose to declare, for a time, the “only game in town”. It never dared to try to seize the initiative, to set the agenda and to make Israel and the world react to a positive Palestinian idea.

The Palestinian people have voted for change. A rare moment of opportunity is at hand. It can and must be seized.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck“.