http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=101675&d=25&m=9&y=2007
Tuesday, 25, September, 2007 (13, Ramadhan, 1428)
Why Palestinians Should Say No to One-State Solution
Rafi Dajani & Ghaith Al-Omari, Arab News
The Palestinian national vision has been defined by the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) since 1988 as the realization of the two-state
solution: Palestine and Israeli living side by side in peace and security. It
remains the view of the overwhelming majority not only within the officialdom
of the international community but - as polling has consistently shown - also
among Palestinians.
While this remains the view of the majority of Arab-Americans, a vocal
challenge to this vision has recently emerged from some Palestinian-Americans
in the shape of the so-called "binational one-state solution".
According to this vision, Palestinians and Jews will live in the whole of
historic Palestine as equal citizens in a polity that transcends national and
religious definition. That such a vision goes against the very foundations of
modern nationalism, that it requires both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples to
abandon their nationalist dreams and identities, or that it requires such a
fundamental shift in the basic tenets of the whole international system seems
of marginal importance to its advocates. They prefer to stress the purity and
seeming inclusiveness of this concept. Relying primarily on the false South
African analogy, the idealism of student followers and the inflated influence
of cyberspace Listservs, they promote an impossible illusion that both
distracts dangerously from difficult yet achievable goals and makes their
achievement even more challenging.
While the noise created by one-staters in the US is considerable, this
vision has almost no support among Palestinians living in the occupied
territories, who understand that realistic solutions not idealistic fantasies
are the way out of their daily misery and humiliation.
Lacking a constituency among Palestinians, advocates of this view cling
to illusionary allies, mainly non-Zionist Jews. They also become unwitting
allies of the hard-line US and Israeli right in declaring the two-state
solution dead. In addition, they inevitably ally themselves with Islamist
movements that oppose the two-state solution. The one staters, many of whom are
socially liberal, end up supporting organizations and ideologies that have
failed to present any coherent moral, social or political plan.
Outlandish ideas are not the exclusive domain of the Palestinian-American
community, and as long as these ideas remain within the realm of individual
thinking, they are not damaging. Alarm bells must ring, however, when such
visions become identified with the community at large. The Palestinian-American
community is prone to this since it is largely absent from its adopted
country's political system in an organized fashion.
What underlies the tension within the Palestinian-American community is
not only the struggle of ideas, but - more importantly - it is the struggle to
define the political role the community wants for itself.
If it presumes to speak for the Palestinian people and to take leadership
over from those in Palestine, it will find itself left behind: National
decisions will be taken by Palestinians living in the homeland based on their
own considerations of reality and achievability and their economic and
political interests, not on the visions of purity advocated by a distant and
detached Diaspora.
Similarly, if the community fails to be part of American political life,
if it chooses to simply condemn and criticize the new country, to play the role
of the perpetual victim, it will consign itself to irrelevance, and even worse:
Suspicion and exclusion. The only space in which the community can be effective
is within the America body politic, with special sensitivity to Palestinian
interests that are aligned with US interests.
The Palestinian-American community can either live in a political and
national no-man's land, away from Palestine but not really part of America, or
it can get its hands a bit dirty, engage the Palestinian and American reality,
and make a difference. The challenges facing the Palestinian-American community
can be overcome with unity of community and message and above all,
participating in the political system of their adopted country, America.
- Rafi Dajani is the executive director of the American Task Force on
Palestine. Ghaith Al-Omari is senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
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