One Country

"Yes. He’s the founder of the Electronic Intifada website and he’s written a very short, accessible, reasonable and humane book in which he makes parallels between the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and the struggle to go beyond the Zionist state in Palestine and he argues that the Palestinians, like the ANC, must articulate an inclusive vision for the future that Jews can feel a part of. He looks at the South African model and at the Swiss model of different ethnic groups managing to live more or less peacefully together. Despite a difficult history, South Africa is now able to move beyond the past. In practical terms this is not going to be achieved by petty nationalism and tribalism and it would benefit Israel and the whole world if a humane one-state solution could be arrived at. He points out that there already is one state with an integrated infrastructure and no borders, but it’s an apartheid state. The West Bank is, in fact, religiously much more important to Jews than the coastal areas, so the Jews should stay in the West Bank but let the Palestinians return to their homes in Israel. Yes, he’s very optimistic. I’ve actually been to Palestine and seen it myself and there is no way a two-state solution is ever going to work. The endless theatre of supposed process towards a two-state solution just masks the continuing dispossession and cantonisation and barbarisation of the Palestinian people. Every village is surrounded by barbed wire, less than a fifth of the water in the West Bank goes to Palestinians, there is a network of Jews-only roads and Jews-only settlements. It is obvious apartheid. Let’s recognise the reality that a two-state solution won’t work. When it was proposed in South Africa as the Bantustan System it was a joke and the whole world laughed. One man, one vote, let’s live as equals. That’s what we should be saying. Otherwise the Palestinians get more and more desperate, the Israelis fall more and more into fascism, and it will all end in tears."