The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is arguably the most contentious in the world. On Thursday, the Arbor was converted into an ideological battleground between the two sides. A large wooden gate, bearing the slogan “Palestine, an Invisible Nation,” was built by the group Students for Justice in Palestine to commemorate Palestinian Awareness Week. The gate was supposed to represent the Israeli military checkpoints that are a part of daily life for many Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Another UCSB student group, American Students for Israel, quickly mobilized against what one of their members characterized as a gate “inciting hate.” They set up their own informational kiosk under the slogan “It Takes Two for Peace.” Some intense arguments ensued, with plenty of blaming and finger-pointing.
If a bunch of college students half a world away in a laid-back beach town can’t find common ground, is it reasonable to expect it from those in the middle of the conflict? I’ve come to believe that with each passing day a peaceful resolution becomes less and less likely. While both sides have argued the history until they are blue in the face, nobody seems to be able to come up with a solution that actually has a chance of being implemented.
The most popular potential solution is the “two-state solution,” which would end the Israeli military presence in the West Bank and create an independent Palestinian state. The idea is officially endorsed by the Palestinian Authority, the United States and even Israel. But while everyone agrees on the general idea, nobody agrees on the specifics. Here are a few of the reasons why I’ve started to doubt that we will ever see an independent Palestinian state come into being as a result of peaceful negotiations.
The Settlements: According to a study by the Israeli information center B’Tselem, over half a million Israeli citizens live in the West Bank and annexed portions of East Jerusalem. There are over 121 Israeli settlements peppered throughout the West Bank, and they account for 42 percent of the total land area in the West Bank. No land swap deal could ever hope to cover a significant portion of the settlements, so any peace agreement would result in the Israeli military forcefully evicting hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens from homes that they bought legally under Israeli law. No Israeli politician will want their name attached to that.
The Refugees: There are currently over 4 million Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon. These people are mostly Palestinians who lost their homes as a result of war and want the right to return to their homelands, which U.N. Resolution 194 endorses. The problem is, most of their homes have since been demolished or are currently being occupied by Israelis. For the U.N. Resolution to be carried out, Israeli families would have to be kicked out of their homes to accommodate the returning Palestinian refugees. Furthermore, allowing all Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands within Israel would threaten the legitimacy of Judaism as the state’s official religion, since Arab Muslims already account for around 20 percent of Israel’s population.
The Gaza Strip: Just the physical separation between Gaza and the West Bank would be problematic for effective governance. Throw in the fact that 87 percent of Palestinians in Gaza live in poverty, and you have an administrative nightmare. Furthermore, Gaza is not even governed by the same political entity that governs the Palestinian West Bank. How can the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis legitimately broker a peace deal when over a third of future Palestinian citizens aren’t represented at the negotiating table?
Jerusalem: The city is considered sacred by Palestinians and Israelis alike and is of huge economic value. No matter the final agreement in a two-state solution, the issue of Jerusalem would leave at least one of the sides disappointed.
For these reasons and others, I’ve begun to think that a two-state solution isn’t politically possible.
Even if a political miracle occurs and a two-state solution is adopted, then what? There will be extremists on both sides that won’t be satisfied, and you can be sure that if Hamas (who have historically rejected all peace negotiations) starts shooting rockets into Israel from within the newly created Palestinian state, right-wing hawks in Israel will have their nation invade faster than you can say “two-state solution.” We would be back to square one, and hatred and animosity between the two neighboring nations would likely just increase.
As crazy as it sounds, I have concluded that the most practical solution would be to create a single secular liberal democracy with no official religion, where all citizens could move freely about the nation and visit whichever holy sites they choose. The country would be majority Muslim, so Israeli fears about reprisals and Sharia law would be legitimate. However, the alternative would mean increased international and economic isolation for the State of Israel, a situation that will definitely result in more conflict and war. At the moment, a single-state solution may be even less politically viable than a two-state solution. Unfortunately, this cycle of conflict, violence and war is clearly at a stalemate.
Riley Schenck is a fourth year political science major.
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One of your claims here is misleading, the built up areas of the settlements make up only around 2% of the West Bank (according to B’Tselem). Not only that, the biggest settlement blocks would become part of Israel in any peace deal. When B’Tselem says “42% of the total land area” the almost all of what they are referring to is open space. The real issue here is that Israel’s leaders will never make concessions on settlements until they sure the Palestinian leadership is serious about a peace deal. The hardline settlers and their allies, though they are a minority… Read more »
Look at this map of RECENT settlement construction from The Economist:
http://media.economist.com/images/20081018/CMA980.gif
The vast majority of these settlements would have to become part of Palestine in any peacefully brokered peace deal. That means forcefully evicting A LOT of Israeli citizens. You think that’s going to happen?
You didn’t really address my main point, which is that the number you threw out there – 42% – is very misleading. The built up areas, which make up only around 2% of the West Bank, are the ones that are mostly non-negotiable, most of the surrounding land is relatively straight forward to give up in a peace deal. A 2 state solution would only entail forcefully evicting Israeli citizens if the Palestinians insist on their state being Jew-free and/or the remaining Jews refuse to be Palestinian citizens. Either way, the great majority of the settlers live along the Green… Read more »
honestly your point only helps my argument. If 42% of the West Bank is owned by the settlers, but only 2% is developed, that’s going to complicate land swaps even further, cuz the Israelis are just going to try and swap all that arid land for the 2% that’s developed. The Palestinians aren’t going to except that. And what about the fact that many of the settlements are built on hilltops, connected to israel by freeways that Palestinians can’t access, freeways that choke farmland and create physical barriers. You can’t have a Palestinian state that has all these little Israeli… Read more »
You’re mistaken, in 2008 Israeli PM Ehud Olmert offered Abbas the following deal: 93-94% of the West Bank+ 5-6% of land INSIDE the green line. The idea of the land swaps has always been that Israel gives land inside the green line in return for land outside it. As far as the freeways Palestinians can’t use currently- that isn’t a permanent thing, if there was a peace deal the Palestinians would be able to access them. As I’ve said, the settlements that aren’t near the green line will either become part of the Palestinian state or be evacuated. Israeli officials… Read more »
And another thing, the main thing wrong with allowing the Palestinian refugees to return has nothing to do with Judaism as a religion. It has to do with self-determination for the Jewish people. You can be secular, as a very large percentage of Jews are, and still have a strong Jewish identity. Most Israeli Jews (and most Jews in general) don’t want to let the Palestinians become a majority in Israel simply because they’ve learned the hard lessons of Jewish history. You don’t live as an oppressed minority for 1900 years on three different continents and just forget about it/learn… Read more »
So the lesson is to turn the former majority population into a minority by force of arms, for your own illusory protection?
I’m Jewish, but say “no thanks” to a “lesson” bearing such strong resemblance to National Socialist ideology.
Xanadu,
You’re lost in Xanadu. It is the Muslims who both supported Nazism and whose governmental modus operandi – and this dates back to the way Mohammed led – is akin to what you write about.
Israelis, in stark contrast to this, practice democracy with all its flaws AND with all its many freedoms and greatness.
Nice perversion of history there Xanadu. The lesson is to work to end the oppression of your people, achieve self-determination, hold on to it until the world becomes a less brutal place, and built a successful state at the same time. Before 1947 Jews peacefully built the institutions necessary for a state in the Palestine mandate. They bought the land they lived on, often for grossly inflated prices. The Zionist leadership accepted the 1947 partition plan (55% of the land, most of it desert, with a population breakdown of 55% Jews and 45% Arabs) and planned to ensure a Jewish… Read more »
A nice potted history.
The goal was ALWAYS to drive out the Arab majority. Zionists of all stripes were clear on that, from Ben-Gurion to Begin to Jabotinsky.
It’s nice to cling to contrary feel-good stories, however. Sort of like the US fighting for “democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can convince yourself of that all day long, but that’s about as far as it goes.
(Would Americans accept a partition plan imposed from outside, by the world’s leading imperialist nations?)
The only way any historians have ever justified that view is by decontextualizing, distorting, and misinterpreting the importance of quotes. Ben Gurion is on record stating that there was room for both Arabs and Jews in the land. This changed when the Arabs attacked. End of story.
I’m sure you’re right.
Here’s a quote from Ilan Pappe, one of the historians who helped create the anti-Zionist narrative you seem to agree with:
“Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers.”
You sure you want to base your views on the work of historians who openly admit to being motivated by ideology rather than truthseeking?
I think Israel should become Hamasistan. The world needs one more Islamic country (56 of them is not nearly enough) and one state where Jews can live in safety is apparently one too many for the likes of our college mainstream geniuses. I’m betting it would take one year for Hamastainians to destroy everything it took Israel sixty years to build. How is that for productivity for ya? One instead of sixty is 60 times better according to my math. Plus, then the Hamastanians could whine, beg and grovel for MORE international aid and the US will pony up in… Read more »
I have plenty of Muslim friends here at UCSB, and they don’t want to impose sharia law on anyone. They all believe in secular, liberal democracy.
As I said in the article, “Israeli fears about reprisals and Sharia law would be legitimate.” But if Israel spent as much money on educating the youth in Palestine as they do on building walls and fancy fighter jets, I doubt you’d have to be so concerned about being oppressed.
Unfortunately, your sarcasm and aggression only serve to prove my point, that a solution is not going to be found any time soon.
• And why don’t you explain for us what will happen to the Jews of Israel under a one state solution. Will the Muslims treat them as they treat the Hindus in Pakistan, i.e., kill them or harass them into submission. Will they treat them as they treat the Copts of Egypt, i.e., kill them or harass them into submission. Will they treat them as they treat the gays of Iran, i.e., kill them. Will they treat them as they treat the black Africans of Sudan, i.e., kill them or harass them into submission? Will they treat them as the… Read more »
Jews enlighten the world. Muslims darken it. To the extent that one disagrees with this assessment, then I would vigorously argue that in direct proportion to the extent one disagrees with me here, then to that extent, on this particular issue, one is either ignorant or malevolent or both. One of the two intellectual cornerstones of Western Civilization is Jewish theological thought, the other being ancient Greek philosophical thought. The Islamic world, at best, preserved here and there a portion of these two great intellectual traditions, but really added nothing of substance to either (even Avicenna and Averroes, as Bertrand… Read more »
By golly gee Riley why shouldn’t Israel give up the settlements after what happened when they did this in Gaza.
After all the Palestinians could not have been more thankful or appreciative of the Israeli actions and even thanked Israel by sending them 6,000+ rockets.
Now that has got to be more than enough incentive for the Israelis to trust Palestinians going forward. Isn’t that so, Riley?
Sarc/off.
Riley, I’m hoping against hope that you will help me understand the following conundrum. Why is it Muslims are free to violently conquer lands anywhere and everywhere without a word of protest from American Muslims, or any Muslims for that matter, but if Jews have a legally established homeland Muslims will never stop protesting against it? Why is this do you suppose? What explanation can be given other than as the Qur’an states repeatedly that Islam’s goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate in which all non-Muslims are subjugated. For instance, Mohammed was born around 571 AD thousands and thousands… Read more »
How about during the golden age of Islamic culture when Cordoba was the capital, and when Muslims, Christians, and Jews all lived together in peace under Muslim rule? It was Los Reyes Catolicos that expelled all the Jews from Spain once they finally captured the last Muslim stronghold in Granada.
Seriously Arafat, get a life man, you are wasting a lot of time and energy arguing with yourself. You are not convincing anybody with your extremism.
Riley, The Mythical Age of Spain is what I think you’re referencing. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Yet the philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked, “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us….No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us… Read more »
Xanadu drank the University of California kool-aid.
America bad. Palestinians good.
Xanadu, you should immigrate to Gaza. You would be happier if you did. Plus you would have the honor of being the only person in the world who has ever chosen to immigrate to Gaza. Now that is something your parents, or grand-parents or great-grand-parents could no doubt be proud about. Tell us, though, why is it they chose to come to America instead of, say, Jordan back in the day.