What a State!
9/2/2024
At first blush, I, too, was shocked to hear Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week rejecting a “Two State Solution” for the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine problem, where two indigenous peoples, the local Arabs and the Jews, have been fighting over the dissolution of Britain’s Mandate in Palestine since 1948.
The United Nations voted in that year to approve a Partition Plan which provided for a Two State Solution – with Jerusalem to be an international city. Israel accepted it and declared the State of Israel over their allotted portion on 14th May 1948. The neighboring Arab Kingdoms, along with some Palestinians under the leadership of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (a Nazi collaborator and Hitler’s friend), tried to strangle the Jewish State at birth – as soon as it was proclaimed.
That was the reason for the failure of the first United Nations-sponsored Two State Solution.
There are plenty of States which reject Two State Solutions: Start with Russian’s rejection of Ukraine’s independence after more than 30 years.
Spain will not entertain a three-state solution with insurrectionist Basques or Catalonians. Neither will Canada accept an independent Quebec.
China did not favour a Two State Solution for Tibet and refuses to countenance Taiwanese independence. While Jordan controlled the West Bank of the Jordan and East Jerusalem, and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip from 1948 (until they lost those territories in a war with Israel in 1967), neither had sought to establish a Palestinian State in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem.
Has Turkey recognized the independence of Kurdistan (for the Kurds), or India, of Khalistan, as a homeland for the Sikhs? And let us not forget England’s dominion over Scotland and the UK Government’s reluctance to hold another independence referendum, particularly since Scotland voted “No” to Brexit when England voted “Yes”. The ultimate rejection of a Two State Solution was the American Civil War (1861-1865).
While I am not a supporter of hyper-nationalism in any form, Israel’s conduct seems to gain a lot more attention and condemnation than the oppressive conduct of other states towards ethnic groups with suppressed aspirations for statehood. And there are fewer Palestinians than Sikhs, fewer Palestinians than Kurds, fewer Palestinians than Catalans.
I am not about to argue for Israel’s continuing dominion over the Palestinians living on the West Bank of the Jordan or in Gaza. I believe that all permanent residents of East Jerusalem should, without exception, have the same rights as Jewish citizens of East Jerusalem.
Israel’s security fears over a Two State Solution may be somewhat misplaced. Israel seems to have found it easier to defeat Arab states than terrorist guerrillas. That has been the experience of most states fighting guerrilla armies.
However unless there is a trade off in putting an end to Iran’s continuing sponsorship of international terrorism, Israel would again be faced with an enemy State right on its borders, as well as with the three “Hs”- Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah.
No Palestinian state should be permitted to become a military base for Iranian iniquities.
The other alternative: Israel-Palestine as a federation with Jerusalem as its capital. Both can live and work in each other’s State but they can only vote and own property in their own State. The State of Israel would be the pre-1967 borders, plus East Jerusalem and Golan, and the State of Palestine would be the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (ie joint administration). It seems an impossible dream but then by and large, the Palestinian Arabs who stayed in Israel from 1948 and became citizens of the State of Israel and Israeli Jews struck a positive modus vivendi. In Israel there are Arab political parties, Arabs are elected to Parliament (the Knesset), and Arabs have been in coalition to govern the State of Israel, as recently as within the last 5 years.
Israel cannot continue to rule over the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank; neither can it integrate them into Israel without jeopardising the notion of a “Jewish State” unless it were to practise a form of apartheid which, up till now – don’t believe the liars who say otherwise – it has not done, but which anything short of a Two State Solution or a democratic federation, would likely produce.
Since 7 October 2023, there are unprecedented levels of fear and hatred driving the Middle East narrative – and understandably so. Both sides have plenty of reason to fear and hate each other. Before there can be any kind of Palestinian Statehood there needs to be transitional arrangements; a joint mandate given by the UN to the UAE, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to administer the West Bank and Gaza during a 5 year transitional phase.
The media’s treatment of proportionality between combatants in the Israel-Hamas war is bordering on the absurd. If South Africa was Hamas’ legal arm, the ABC has become its propaganda mouthpiece.
Only 2,403 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbour by the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941, but the US killed 229,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including an untold number of civilians, babies and their mothers, over 2 days in August 1945. Imagine how the world would remember those 2 days if the Japanese had dropped those bombs on San Francisco and Los Angeles instead.
When Jews say the media reaction to this war involves far more than a mere tinge of antisemitism, it is because in the media, and particularly on the ABC, it is not what you do but by whom it is done, which dominates the message. Why did the “Me Too” movement appear not to care much about the rape and torture of Israeli women and girls by Hamas? Because what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander! Imagine if that happened in reverse, and Jews had tortured and raped Palestinian women and children.
We must look for more than just answers but solutions and I, as a citizen of the world, a liberal and a Jew, cannot abide or endorse man’s inhumanity to man. I recognize that there are times when we must fight, noting the adage that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for men of goodwill to do nothing”.
Should the British be embarrassed that in World War II, 384,000 British soldiers were killed in combat and 70,000 civilians perished (a total of 454,000) compared with Germany’s total civilian and military deaths ranking at between 6,600,000 and 8,800,000 – a near twenty-fold disparity? Should the Americans hang down their heads in shame that while there were between 2,600,000 and 3,100,000 civilian and military deaths among the Japanese, there were only 420,000 American military and civilian deaths? Applying the logic of the ABC’s Global Affairs Editor, John Lyons, one side can do no right and the other, no wrong.
Just as in the Middle East today, so, too, in World War II, the fight is for the future, the fight is for a world order, in which civilisation prevails over barbarism and that may involve “whatever it takes”.
Stewart A Levitt
