'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Palestine/Israel: one state or two?

I was reading Imshin's blog from Israel, and came across a post in which she translated a long extract from a recent article by Shlomo Avnieri bitterly criticizing the few brave souls inside Israel who started to argue that, given the huge degree of demographic mixing that the settlers have achieved, maybe the best path now is to aim for a unitary binational state in Israel/Palestine rather than for the very difficult disaggregation of the populations into two mono-ethnic states.

If Avnieri's arguments are the best that the "anti- one state" brigade can come up with, then that is really a poor showing. I note that Avnieri has been around for a VERY LONG TIME as first an Israeli Foreign Ministry official whose arguments were always (no surprise here) that Israel could do no wrong, and more recently as a retired person whose tune seems not to have been changed by one jot. Also, he doesn't seem to have learned much over recent years. He notes the collapse of many mutli-ethnic states after the fall of communism, but seems unaware of the continued existence of large numbers of other multi-ethnic states around the world.

Even on Canada and Belgium, the recognition he gives is grudging indeed:

Canada and Belgium--two veteran bi-national states--are facing great difficulties, in which the last word has not yet been said, even though no one has been murdered or killed there for over 150 years.

Most importantly--since this is really is the best analogy to the prospect facing Jewish Israelis--he totally neglects the incredible experiment in multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicism that has been underway in South Africa for the past nine years.

Here's why the South African experiment is so relevant: because there, as in any future Israeli-Palestinian binational state, you have members of the colonizing community living in full civic equality within one state with members of the colonized community. And yet, with huge amounts of creativity and goodwill, they are managing to do it.

In his article, Avnieri asks huffily a bunch of questions that he assumes to think we will agree would have the aanswer "It's impossible!"

However, the record of South Africa's amazing cultura/political transformation shows us that for a forward-looking, generous-hearted people, it is by no means "impossible" to find answers to the kinds of questions he asks. Such as these:

* How will it be possible to run a state in which half of the population will see the fifteenth of May as a holiday, and the other half as a tragedy, a day of national mourning: What will be celebrated exactly?
* What will be taught in mixed state schools, for instance, about Herzl: Founder of a national movement or western colonialist? What will be taught about the Mufti (of Jerusalem in the period of the British Mandate--I.J.): National hero or collaborator with the Nazis? Or maybe one thing will be taught in the Jewish schools and another in the Arab schools?
* Will it be permitted to name streets after Hovevei Tzion (a group of ninteenth century Jewish settlers--I.J.), Herzl, Bialik (Israel?s national poet--I.J.), Ben Gurion or (heaven help us) Jabotinsky (founder of the right wing Revisionist Party, that provided the ideological basis for the Etzel and the Lehi Organizations--I.J.)? Will roads be named after Izzadin A-Kassam and Haj Amin al-Husseini? Will Zionism Bvd. in Haifa change its name to something "neutral" (Avineri obviously brings this example because this road used to be called UN Bvd. and its name was changed in 1975 when the UN passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism--I.J.)? Or will a parallel road be named "Hamas Bvd.", for the sake of balance?
* What will be taught about the Holocaust? A terrible crime or a Jewish "invention"?
* How will the history of the 1948 war be taught? What will be said in schools about the suicide bombers: Murderers or heroes of the War of Independence?
* If organizations, Jewish or Arab, threatening violent action, will be established, which police force exactly will deal with them?
*If the state has an army, what will it be called exactly? Or maybe there will be two armies, the IDF and the PLA?

But his pessimism that answers to such questions can ever be found is quite misplaced. Let him go to South Africa. Let as many Jewish Israelis as possible go there, and see with their own eyes how challenges exactly similar to these ones have been addressed there...