What’s so scary about a One State Solution

By Ted Belman

What’s so scary about a one-state solution.

Gideon Levy in Haaretz entertains it positively:

    If Israelis truly want to maintain the settlements they established, and to remain in the Jordan Valley and on the mountain ridge, in Gush Etzion and in Maale Adumim, in East Jerusalem and leading in Beit El – let them do so, but then there won’t be two states. If there are no two states, there is only one state. If there is one state, then the discourse must change: equal rights for everyone.

    The problems are many and complicated, and like them so are the solutions: division into districts, federation, joint or separate governance. But there will be no demographic change here – because the state has long been binational – but rather just a democratic and conscious change. And then the question will arise in full force: Why is it so scary to live in an egalitarian state? Indeed, all other possibilities are much scarier.


He’s right. But citizenship would not be given to everyone immediately but to only qualified Palestinians and over time.

Ministers to mull bill annexing all West Bank settlements
The proposed legislation, to be discussed on Sunday, would bar restricting settlement construction due to diplomatic considerations.

By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz

    A bill calling for the application of Israeli law to all West Bank settlements and all roads leading to them will be discussed by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday.

    The bill, sponsored by MK Miri Regev (Likud), would also bar the government from restricting settlement construction due to diplomatic considerations, unless it received the Knesset’s explicit permission to do so.

    A similar bill that Regev submitted to the previous Knesset failed to pass.

    Regev said her bill is meant to prepare Israel to cope with the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood that would be recognized by most of the world’s countries. If that happened, she wrote in the bill’s explanatory notes, “It would be appropriate for Israel to divest itself of responsibility for and control over Palestinian communities in the territories of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], but at the same time, it shouldn’t abandon the communities in these territories that have a Jewish majority.

    “Unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state would have an immediate and fateful impact on the daily lives of Israeli citizens living in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” she continued. “In light of the fact that the position of [successive] Likud governments in Israel has been that under any future diplomatic agreement, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, including the security roads leading to them, will remain in territory under the State of Israel’s control, and Israeli sovereignty will be applied to them, we have an obligation to protect the lives of people living in these communities.”

February 5, 2014 | 65 Comments »

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15 Comments / 65 Comments

  1. @ the phoenix:

    “Actually, there is only ONE…..”

    “I am assuming that ONE dogs name would also start with a D?”

    “Actually, there is only ONE…..”

    “I am assuming that ONE dogs name would also start with a D?”

    “Not quite… But close… They seem to work as a team….”

    You mean like piling on?

    It is neither I nor CuriousAmerican that makes a practice of piling on. That’s something which YOU do, however

    — and with some regularity.

    “My problem was with the ugly barking dog that was getting too curious for my taste.”

    “Taste” had nothing to do with it, and you know it.

    “It seems though that inadvertently, I pissed off his owner….”

    I wasn’t aware that Curio had an ‘owner.’

    But if you’re trying to allude to ME, then I quite assure you, phoenix, you’ve NEVER pissed me off (inadvertently or otherwise).

    I don’t need to be pissed off to say what I think.

  3. @ honeybee:

    Don’t blame ya. Your weather is better too. Just got back from the park. We have a large park close by that we often go to because it has a lot of deer. Every once in awhile they stroll out of park and end up in yards. Saw one standing at a bus stop one day. Wish I had my camera with me!

  13. @ dove:
    Not quite… But close… 😉
    They seem to work as a team….
    My problem was with the ugly barking dog that was getting too curious for my taste. It seems though that inadvertently, I pissed off his owner…. 🙂