I WAS shocked when I read the headline in Haaretz. It quoted Sari Nusseibeh as saying “There is no room for two”, meaning two states between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan.
What? Has Nusseibeh abandoned his support for a solution based on coexistence between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine?
Five years ago, in cooperation with the Israeli Adm. Ami Ayalon (and current minister without portfolio), he published an unambiguous peace plan, envisioning the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, with the border based on the Green Line and with Jerusalem as the capital of both states.
Therefore I was shocked when I saw the headline. Could it be that Nusseibeh has forsaken the central plank of his outlook?
In the interview, Nusseibeh says something entirely different. Not only does he not say that “there is no room for two”, but on the contrary, he lauds the two-state solution as the best practical solution. However, he adds a warning to the Israelis: Because of the rapid expansion of the settlements, time for the realization of this solution is running out. He even fixes a time limit: The end of 2008. This amounts to an ultimatum: If the Israelis miss this opportunity, which is still there, and if they continue to accelerate the settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Palestinians will turn their backs on this solution. Instead, they will accept the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories to Israel, i.e. Israeli rule over the entire country between the sea and the river, and struggle for equal civil rights within this state. He calls this a “default alternative”.
NUSSEIBEH is holding the demographic pistol against the temple of the Israeli public. He is telling them, in effect: The Palestinians will be a large minority in such a state. Their struggle for equality will compel Israel, in the end, to accord them full citizenship. Within a few years the Arab citizens will constitute the majority. Exit the Zionist dream. Exit the Jewish state. (Tzipi Livni, by the way, is saying much the same thing.)
With all due respect and friendship for Nusseibeh, I believe that this tactic of his is unwise. Very unwise.
The one-state idea is not a solution, but an anti-solution. It is a recipe for an ongoing bloody conflict. Not a dream, but a nightmare. There is no chance at all that the Jewish public will agree, in this generation or the next, to live as a minority in a state dominated by an Arab majority. 99.99 percent of the Jewish population will fight against this tooth and nail. The demography will not stop haunting them, but on the contrary, it will push them to do things which are unthinkable today. Ethnic cleansing will become a practical agenda. Even moderate Israelis will be driven into the arms of the fascist right-wing. All means of oppression will become acceptable when the Jewish majority adopts the aim of causing the Arabs to leave the country before they have a chance of becoming the majority.
The real choice is, therefore: The “two-state solution” or the “ethnic cleansing solution”. In the best case, the binational state is impractical. I assume that Nusseibeh, too, knows this. In his eyes, the threat is a tactical move. He goes even further and suggests carrying out the threat at once in Jerusalem.
The Arab residents of East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens and cannot take part in Knesset elections. Nusseibeh raises the possibility of the Arab residents ending the boycott and putting up an election list of their own. They amount to roughly a third of the city’s population, and the Jewish majority is divided between the orthodox and the secular, so the Arabs would be able to decide who would be the next mayor. Nusseibeh does not reject the idea of running for the job himself. He believes that this would frighten the Jews out of their wits. The real danger inherent in this tactic is not that it would convert people into accepting the binational state idea. The main danger is this: If the whole country is about to become a binational state anyway, there is no further reason to restrict Jewish settlement anywhere at all.
The “vision” of the binational state belongs to the far future, but the immediate result of campaigning for it is to remove all obstacles to the settlement effort.
This is also the objective which Ehud Olmert, with his devious maneuvering, has in mind. He proclaims loudly that he is in favor of the two-state solution, but only a fool would take him seriously, considering what he is doing on the ground.
Two weeks ago, his people leaked the peace plan which he is submitting to the Palestinian Authority. An innocent, even positive plan.
The devil, as the saying goes, is hiding in the small details. The accord would be a “shelf agreement”. It will be implemented in the future. When? Ah, well...
The occupied territories in the West Bank will be returned to the Palestinians when the Palestinian Authority proves that it is able to control them. Who will decide? We, of course. The Israeli areas that are to be turned over to the Palestinians, in return for the areas which will be annexed to Israel, are located alongside the Gaza Strip. When will they be turned over? After the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip has been overthrown and the Palestinian Authority asserts itself there. The same applies to the Gaza-West Bank passage.
The real sting became apparent when Olmert’s “confidants” explained that immediately after the acceptance of the “shelf agreement” by the Palestinians, Israel will start to accelerate the settlement activities, since — according to the agreement — the settlement blocs will in any case become part of Israel.
In Christian mythology, the devil has a cloven hoof. Sometimes this hoof shows under his long robe, giving him away. Our devil’s hoof is the settlements. While scrutinizing any idea or plan, one should lift the hem of the robe and see what it is standing on.
