[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus]
Israel’s only hope for the continuation of its Zionist dream of a democratic, Jewish state lies in a solution in which both Israel and the Palestinians have their own separate states — the “two-state solution.”
Absent such a solution and because of demographic imperatives, Israel will become either a non-democratic, apartheid state or a state in which Jews will be in the minority.
This situation has existed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, after which Israel took possession of East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and large chunks of the West Bank, all previously held by Palestine under the 1948 U.N. partition of Palestine.
In those 44 years of occupation, the two-state solution has been extremely elusive. Israel would seem to have been driven by its desire to hold on (illegally, under international law) to those territories and to expand them through its “settlement” policies, where Palestinian motivation appears to have been driven by their desire to “throw the Israelis into the sea.” Arab countries have fully backed the Palestinians, and we Americans have done the same for Israel. Under those circumstances, there has never been enough momentum for success, and recently, America’s ability to actually influence the situation has faded with our increasing military involvement in the Middle East.
Now, suddenly, the game has changed. Instead of continuing to rely on the United States for support, which has never materialized, and to push for a two-state solution, which is clearly of little to no interest to the Netanyahu government, the Palestinians have changed course. Hamas and Fatah have decided to make nice. They have finally given up on any help from America. Sensing increased international frustration with a lack of progress toward a two-state solution, as mirrored in what many countries see as Israeli intransigence, they have decided to try to gain recognition as a state under the United Nations.
If this succeeds, as appears likely, the Israelis will be put in the position of occupying parts of a fellow member state of the U.N.
Where would that leave Israel in the international community?
As the author of much if not most of the violence against Israel, Hamas has always been a total anathema to Israelis. Israel has flatly refused to deal with them in any way other than militarily.
All of this has happened without any participation of the United States. We have, in fact, continued our attitude that Israel can do no wrong, despite the obvious fact that either Israeli or Palestinian intransigence will likely lead to a total change in the nature of the state of Israel, leaving an undemocratic apartheid state that would be difficult for Americans to support, or a minority Jewish state impossible for Israeli Jews to support.
Common sense would make one think that the two-state solution would be more and more attractive. But where it may be so for Palestinians and, by extension, Arabs, it would appear not to be for the majority of Israelis. In addition to that, the Palestinians have now apparently made peace between their two previously hostile factions, Fatah and Hamas.
The Netanyahu government has said it will never negotiate anything with Hamas. At the same time, it has pulled out all the stops in trying to block the Palestine recognition move in the United Nations. In doing that, it has cranked up all its “Israel right or wrong” allies, particularly here in the United States, to fight against any consideration of U.N. recognition of Israel, even though that flies directly in the face of hopes for the continued existence of a democratic Jewish state that Israelis and Americans will continue to support.
This leaves only one question. What are the true goals of Israelis and their American supporters who are so stridently opposed to a two-state solution? The only answer that holds water is that they are more interested in the acquisition of Palestinian land than in the Zionist dream. Nothing else makes any sense.
A clue to this phenomenon may lie in the nature of recent Jewish immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union and Russia. In both cases, the raw material that has come to Israel has had neither interest nor experience in democracy. Given their backgrounds, they are the direct antithesis of the Zionists who created and nurtured that Israel.
Zionism may be dead or dying. Today’s Israelis and their supporters appear far more interested in growing the size of Israel than in its democratic nature or its Zionist founders’ dreams.
