John Whitbeck: Palestinians should push for a one state solution

In the Christian Science Monitor, John Whitbeck, who is presented as "an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel" advises that Palestine's leadership commit to a one state solution to the conflict over Zionism if two states have not been agreed to by some specifically set date.

Throughout the long years of the so-called peace process, deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which for all Israeli governments has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative. For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success," permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building bypass roads for Jews only, and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.
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In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa's racial-supremicist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremicist ideology and political system and imposing fragmented and dependent "independent states" on the natives could never have achieved.

The problem is that Abbas, Fayad, Erekat and Dahlan do not work for the Palestinians, they work for the Americans on behalf of the Israelis. He also says the Arab league should threaten to abandon its offer of accepting Israel in favor of one state. Unfortunately, Mubarak and the Abdullahs of Jordan and Arabia do not work for the Arabs. They work for the Americans on behalf of the Israelis.

A competitive political process in Palestine would produce leaders and organizations, like Hamas that call for a single state. The process that produced Abbas, where the US directs money to the personalities it chooses and who sometimes, if the result can be determined in advance, are put before the Palestinians for stage-managed elections produces leaders who call for what Israel tells them to call for.

This means though, that Hussein Ibish' big point that Palestine's leaders do not call for one state really just means that Israel does not call for one state. Based on this, and only this fact, it appears to me that Ibish is an apologist for Zionism.

Anyone, including Barack Obama, who says that the only imaginable way for the conflict over Zionism to be resolved is through a two-state solution, while they are saying that, is an apologist for Zionism.