“One-State Qaddafi” and “Two-States Avnery”

Muammar Qaddafi, Dictator of Libya, moved by the Israeli destruction and massacre in Gaza, was able to publish a plea for a One-State resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the New York Times and the Paris International Herald Tribune. In this brief piece of January 22, 2009, he condemned both the aggression and the role of religious extremists in Israel and Palestine in making any resolution most difficult. Still, he pointed out the ancient and even genetic kinship between Jews and Arab, and is convinced that they could get along well enough to make the Single State possible. Over 20% of Israelis are already of Arab stock. Economically the two countries could work well together. Return of the Palestinian refugees is a necessity, however, and they can be accommodated well, but only in the full land. “Two-States” Uri Avnery, veteran of the creation of Israel, once a Knesset parliamentarian, hero of the Israel peace movement, a hero of mine as well, took issue and in the same Paris IHT of 28 January published the following article, ‘The One-State Illusion’( carrying several passages he has added). His article, however, is here interrupted by the rebuttal of a friend, namely me, Alfred de Grazia, which is set inside  brackets with italics.

The “One-State” [solution is not an] Illusion [but rather the original, and still the only, way to go, especially if part of the American Federation.] There follows the IHT article by Uri Avnery, with my comments in [ ] brackets: It is always pleasing to hear Muammar Qaddafi coming forward with a new idea. He is the joker in the pack of Middle Eastern leaders, appearing in the most unexpected places. He looks at things with fresh eyes. Unfortunately, his ideas are not always the most practical. [Beware of the self-denominated "practical man".] Now he is putting forward the idea that Jews and Arabs in our country should live together in one joint state, to be called Isratine (IHT Jan. 23, Muammar Qaddafi, “The one-state solution”.) [The name Isratine is unfortunate. Some hyper-Israelites assert that the letters ‘tine' spell a dirty word in Arabic and therefore is a dirty joke. I do not think so.. But anyway my name for the unified State of Israel-Palestine USA is the State of Canaan USA.] That is a fetching, if not altogether original idea. Qaddafi has always been a great unifier. In 1972, early in his 40-year rule, he initiated the union of Libya, Egypt and Syria in one state. Then, In 1974, he started work towards a union of Libya and Tunisia. He also proposed the creation of a big Saharan Islamic State. (I wonder if he himself remembers all these projects. Very few others do.) [ Nothing wrong with being a great unifier e.g. Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson.] After these failures, one would have to be a very determined optimist to believe in the union of Israel and Palestine. After all, the peoples of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia are very closely related, profess the same religion, speak the same language and share the same social mores, while Israelis and Palestinians are not related, speak different languages, have different beliefs and are both fiercely nationalistic. [What about the Swiss, the onetime Austro-Hungarian Empire, onetime Roman Republic and Empire, et al.] (Since Qaddafi assumed power in Libya, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and then Serbia, as well as Czechoslovakia and Cyprus have broken up, Belgium is teetering on the brink of a split and the joint state of Bosnia is a fiction. [All of these were better off when united, we might argue.] The United States and Canada, two good neighbors mostly speaking the same language, would not dream of uniting in one single state, [I have often dreamed of this] nor would Germany and France, who have become friendly partners in the EU. [The love affair has gone a long way, however, and they are bossing each other around amicably already.] We don’t see Ireland rushing to rejoin the United Kingdom. On the contrary, many Scots want out. [Etc.,etc. idem] The conflict in our country has been going on for 120 years, since the first Zionist settlers reached the shores of Palestine. A fifth generation has already been born into this conflict, a generation whose entire mental world, like that of their parents, has been shaped by the war. [The American uninvited-settlers vs. Indians conflict went on for 350 years. Would the Iroquois and European settlers have been lovey-dovey as separate countries? And if you are so keen on good neighborliness with your 2-country deal, how can you imagine the two countries as neighbors when they are at each other's throats now – as you say yourself?] It takes quite a stretch of the imagination to believe that under the benevolent guidance of Qaddafi, Israelis and Palestinians will come together tomorrow, serve in the same army, enact the same laws in a joint Parliament and pay the same taxes. One wonders how such a state would function. [This was the problem of George Washington and other Authors of the American Constitution, too. He kept at it. It has finally worked.] Israelis might misunderstand the intentions of our Libyan friend and think that he is asking them to dismantle their state, take in six million Palestinian refugees and resign themselves to live as a minority in an Arab-majority Isratine. They will be tempted to answer: Thanks, but no thanks. If there is one point on which 99% of Israelis are in agreement, it is their desire to live in a Hebrew-speaking state of their own, (in which they are masters of their fate.) [You are not a stupid chauvinist, Uri, who believes in the super-powered Hitlerian Fascist State! You are a great man, who does not believe that an Israeli Garrison State enforcing the Hebrew revival is the be-all end-all of society. You are on your way, however, to joining many fundamentalist Americans who support Israel only as the next step before the Jews become Christians and Yahweh calls up the Armageddon against the Unbelievers and ordains the End of the World.] Palestinians might react quite similarly. After enduring the Zionist onslaught for so long, they also want to be masters of their fate, in a state of their own, under their own flag. [Better yet, why not make American citizens out of Palestinians – refugees included – and Israelis alike?] They might not take kindly to Qaddafi’s contention that their brutal oppression and exploitation by fanatical Jewish settlers in the West Bank constitutes a “successful assimilation” and that in 1948 “Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians.” As a soldier in that war, this comes as quite a surprise to me, too. [This sentence seems irrelevant, except to show what a nice guy Qaddafi is trying to be.] At the end of that terrible war, my friends and I proposed the Two-State Solution. [You did not do so – as I explain and every authority before me, the USA was solidly for a united country and so too most of the world. Then came the split nation, geographically lunatic, which President Truman forced through under pressure from his Jewish sidekick under Zionist pressure.] Not a hundred people around the globe accepted that. [Not so, as I just said.] Now there is a world-wide consensus. [Which is rapidly being lost and only survives because good guys like you are unwittingly playing the game of the bad guys.] The great majority of both Israelis and Palestinian, as well as the members of the Arab League and all the great powers, are convinced that this is the only viable way to achieve a lasting peace. [You have become a victim of enemy propaganda; it can happen to the best of us.] Qaddafi is quite right about the shortcomings of this solution and the difficulties in achieving it, including those created by successive Israeli governments which have paid lip-service to it while doing everything in their power to obstruct it. But all these obstacles are nothing compared to those lying on the road to a One-State Illusion, which is no solution at all. (Those adopting this dream out of despair resemble a boxer who was unable to defeat a light-weight opponent, and therefore decides to take on a heavy-weight champion.) [My uncle, who was a great boxer of yesteryear, once told me he found that wherever he traveled to fight, he could not win by a decision, which usually favored the local fighter, so he went for a knock-out from the start. Better to go for a knock-out solution, because we shall never win the decisions you are hoping for.] We Israelis have a lot to do to mend our state. We must turn it into a truly democratic, progressive and secular society, with full equality for all its citizens. We must put an end to the occupation, make peace with the Palestinian people, return to the 1967 borders (perhaps with some mutually agreed minor swaps of territory), dismantle the settlements and hold out our hands to the State of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem. We must find a practical, decent solution to the refugee problem, based on mutual agreement. All that is difficult but possible.) [Exactly what I have just said, so let's go for a total sudden solution.] The Two-State Solution is achievable right now, in 2009, if President Barack Obama is determined to implement it “aggressively”, as he says. He will find many allies in Israel. [These allies, like your group, have suffered for the cause through the many years, with hardly any effect, but rather in fact experiencing a worsening situation climaxed by the semi-holocaust in these past days of Gaza.] [In sum, then, the two-state solution is both deadly and hopeless, anti-humane as well. The union of the two peoples has a much better chance at realization, with great overall benefits. The Palestinians of Israel, 20% of Israel's people, do better under the oppressor's heel than the Palestinians of the independent West Bank and Gaza Strip and the refugees. By attaching the two peoples to a united State of Canaan, belonging to the United States of America, as the 51st State, the least violent, least costly, most enduring, and internationally beneficial solution would occur for all three parties, Israel, Palestine, and America.]

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