Israeli settlement expansion may bring one-state solution closer

As Israel announced plans to expand settlements in the West Bank in anticipation of a settlement "freeze", the former US president, Jimmy Carter, who recently returned from a trip to the Holy Land, suggested that the implementation of a two-state solution is becoming increasingly unlikely. 'A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state,' said Mr Carter.

As Israel announced plans to expand settlements in the West Bank in anticipation of a settlement "freeze", the former US president, Jimmy Carter, who recently returned from a trip to the Holy Land, suggested that the implementation of a two-state solution is becoming increasingly unlikely. "A more likely alternative to the present debacle is one state, which is obviously the goal of Israeli leaders who insist on colonising the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbours and then demand equal rights within a democracy. In this nonviolent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela." Mr Carter belongs to a group of veteran world leaders, known as the Elders, who recently visited Israel and the West Bank. Another member of the group, former Irish president and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson told The Jerusalem Post last month that if Israel does not freeze settlement construction, a two-state solution may no longer be possible. "The balance is tipping and if it tips, there will not be a two-state solution and how would that make Israel safer?" asked Mrs Robinson. Haaretz reported on Sunday: "[the Israeli] Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai called the planned freeze in settlement construction a 'strategic delay,' implying the move would not be a long-term Israeli policy. " 'The postponement in construction is a strategic delay,' said Yishai at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. 'We won't give up on building in Jerusalem and will still build hundreds of construction units. We are looking ahead, here.' "Yishai, who is also the interior minister and the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, added: 'Over the past two decades, the Palestinians violated all the agreements. We don't see Abu Mazen leading toward a peace deal.' "The minister was using the nom de guerre of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who said last week that he would not engage in peace talks with Netanyahu unless Israel completely halt settlement construction." While Mr Carter said a "two-state solution is clearly preferable and has been embraced at the grass roots," the one-state solution is no longer confined to the margins of political debate. Tony Judt recently wrote: "Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities - with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water - will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or centre, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbour illusions on this score. "To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise - to point to the 2003 'road map' and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise. "There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call 'the facts on the ground.' "Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state - on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression - he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won't build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand 'legal' ones according to their natural rate of growth." Last year, Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University wrote in Newsweek: "It is important to remember that the Palestinian national movement only began to endorse the idea of a two-state solution 20 or 30 years ago, as a practical compromise. Realising that Israel wasn't going anywhere, moderates decided that their best hope for a state was one alongside Israel, not one that sought to replace it. Yet the 15 years of negotiations that have followed have produced little, and thus it's no surprise that faith in this supposedly pragmatic option is waning. The lack of progress, as well as the unmistakably expansionist reality on the ground and the growth in popularity of Hamas, have left little room for anyone seeking a positive future for Palestine. Except, that is, to rejuvenate the old idea of one binational, secular and democratic state where Jewish and Arab citizens live side by side in equality. "For some, such as the intellectuals and activists who make up the Palestinian Strategy Group (which recently made this case in Arabic newspapers), talk of a one-state scenario is meant to warn Israel of the dangers posed by its expansionist policies. This group would still prefer a two-state solution to emerge. Others, however, are returning to the one-state vision first espoused by Fatah (the mainstream Palestinian nationalist movement) back in the late '60s. The first group believes that one-state talk might help knock some sense into the heads of Israeli decision-makers. The second prefers a one-state solution because it would create a government they would eventually control as a demographic majority." Meanwhile, The National reported on the latest efforts by the Israeli government to buttress the Jewish state by trying to rescue Jews in the diaspora who are at risk of becoming "lost" by marrying non-Jews. "The Israeli government has launched a television and internet advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews. "The advertisements, employing what the Israeli media described as 'scare tactics', are designed to stop assimilation through intermarriage among young diaspora Jews by encouraging them to move to Israel. "The campaign, which cost US$800,000 (Dh2.9 million), was created in response to reports that half of all Jews outside Israel marry non-Jews. It is just one of several initiatives by the Israeli state and private organisations to try to increase the size of Israel's Jewish population. "According to one of the advertisements, voiced over by one of the country's leading news anchors, assimilation is 'a strategic national threat' and warns that 'more than 50 per cent of Diaspora youth assimilate and are lost to us.' "