In the conflict over Zionism, it seems that we have an interesting situation where both sides act as if time is on their side. This is because there is a true disagreement over what will happen if it is acknowledged that there is no longer a viable two state option.
Zionists seem to believe one of two things: one is that the US and relevant members of the world community will give their blessings at that point to a new round of full ethnic cleansing - where enough Palestinians are driven from the territories that the remainder can be incorporated into Israel without posing a demographic threat to their vision of Israel as a Jewish state.
The other possible (and more likely) belief is that it is impossible to predict confidently that further outright ethnic cleansing will be tolerated, but the moment when it is clear that it would be necessary can be put off indefinitely, and in the meantime Israel can continue to provide a Jewish state to those who want it.
Anti-Zionists seem to believe the opposite, that the world community will impose minority status on Jews of Israel as they did to the Whites of South Africa.
If anti-Zionists and those Zionists who favor delaying the recognition of the impossibility of a two state solution are right - I think they are. A solution along the lines of South Africa fits with most value systems currently held in the world far better than a solution along the lines of post-partition India - then Abbas does his people a huge disservice when he realizes that there is no longer a viable two-state solution and bends to US and Israeli pressure to refrain from saying that.
Another senior aide said Abbas was on the verge of announcing the death of the two-state solution but heavy pressure from Washington made him tone down his words.On the other hand, this is the exact type of weak betrayal of his own people that Israel and the United States orchestrated his rise to the position of Palestinian president to execute.
2 comments:
Left to their own devices, the powerful members of the international comunity would indeed tolerate ethnic cleansing if there were no consequences to it and if it could be porttrayed as a matter of Palestinian intransegence, terror, etc. Those same members will likely not tolerate it if there are powerful voices to oppose it. That means a nuclear Iran, a Turkey that is not aligned with Israel and a Russia and China that are trying to make alliances in the Muslim world. Also, the US position has to be too weak to offer the political diplomatic cover for mass ethnic cleansing.
If these changes do not take place, you cannot count on an antiapartheidt movement being successful. Israel
enjoys too much international legitimacy and has a well organized network of supporters.
The World stood by and the American Occupation acquiesced as Baghdad was cleansed from a large part of its Sunni population.
That was a couple of a hundred thousand people. The West Bank is only a couple of orders of magnitude above that. Would the Israelis get away w/ cleansing the West Bank? How do they get away w/ what they do in Gaza?
WILL
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