What Now in Palestine?
Who can dispute that it is hell on earth for the Palestinians in Gaza.? There are millions in Israel and elsewhere, especially in the West, who are delighted by it. There are many billions more in the rest of the world who see it for what it is, and are absolutely disgusted by it all.
October 7th was a predictable spasm of pent up retaliatory action by a chronically abused people. If October 7th was a spasm, the Israeli response is a continuous, hysterical convulsion of bloodletting and utter depravity.
I think it’s time to think about the theoretical details of a liberated Palestine, where Israel is somehow forced to reconstitute itself socially and politically, because the Israeli state cannot continue as it is.
New arrivals to Israel may have to leave, but, as I’ve always said, people should be allowed to live in the land where they were born and raised. No exceptions. But the descendants of exiled Palestinians should be allowed to live anywhere in historic Palestine. If this is allowed to happen, the most racist Jewish Israelis will probably make haste to leave the country back to Brooklyn, or Ukraine, or Germany or to some other whiter place than liberated Palestine. Those who choose to stay, fine. But for those who choose to make trouble, the law can deal with them.
A one-state solution is filled with troubles. A two-state solution is filled with troubles. We might as well go with the most just and democratic solution. One state with various communities living on the land as amicably as possible. One vote for one man and one woman from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
No special privileges, no special status for any group. Of course there world have to be a formal program of truth and reconciliation.
All of this would require a massive socio-psychological intervention to de-program Israelis from their mindset of Jewish supremacism. Every group would need therapy for intergenerational psychological trauma.
All of this world have to play out in stages starting with cessation of hostilities, enforced by an international military that separates the combatants.
…and so on.
As you can see, I’m desperate to get people —authority figures, experts, technocrats, governments— to begin to think about real solutions to this hell on earth. Not some evil, Jared Kushner-esque, dystopian kind of vision, but real workable solutions, so there can be (are you ready for a hopelessly tired cliché?) a just and lasting peace.
If there was ever a time for that cliché to be realized, it is now.
I too think that a one-state solution is the only way to go. As you indicate, it would have to be carefully supervised and implemented by means of constant dialogues. But it has a chance of working, which the two-state doesn’t.
Sure, Jewish supremacism sucks! —absolutely! —but so do Islamic supremacism, Christian supremacism, etc. They are all, at the very least, unhelpful . . . toward a goal of thoroughgoing peace and harmony and mutual respect throughout the world. They are all "toxic."