Bielefeld Sept 2010

A two state solution

So Obama is trying his hand at sorting out the Israel-Palestine issue.

The preferred solution (preferred by everyone who wants the problem to go away) is a two-state solution. This has been talked about as though it is the obvious solution and the only one that will work. The history of two-state solutions is not encouraging. They tend to be applied when one group claiming a piece of land thinks that it has won and, since the other group won't go away, decides to offer the other group the cruddy land that it figures it can manage without.

In North America, the European settlers had a problem with the Injuns. The Injuns figured that they had lived in the country for a pretty long time and that they had a right to continue doing so. The settlers didn't like this idea but they did like the idea of a "two state" solution - the settlers get whatever they want and the Injuns get the barren land that is left where they can enjoy full rights as an independent people. Arguably, this has worked, at least from the standpoint of the incoming population. Whether the Injuns think it is a good idea doesn't really seem to matter. Great casinos, though.

In South Africa the incoming population didn't think much of the indigenous black inhabitants. The apartheid government came up with the idea of "equal but separate development". This means that I will live in this beautiful house over here and you can live in that shack over there but only because you choose not to be as rich as I am. As the Blacks became more irritating, the government came up with a two-state solution - the Bantustans. These were independent, self-governing states within the borders of South Africa where the Blacks could enjoy full rights as an independent, self governing people. I actually visited Sun City in one of the Bantustans. It wasn't like visiting Germany or France. It was more like, well, an Indian Reservation. Great Casinos, though.

Unlike the situation in North America, the sheer numbers of the indigenous population meant that this was never going to work. And, as we all know, the attempt at a two state solution failed and we now have the only stable and sensible outcome - a one state solution.

In Ireland, the incoming Scottish and English Protestants didn't think much of the indigenous Catholic population. For a few hundred years they found the answer was to sit on the locals - hard. However, when the locals made it clear that they were not going to be sat upon indefinitely, the incoming population came up with the idea of a "two-state" solution. They would take an area of the country where they were in the majority and call this bit a separate province and thereby solve the problem of being in a minority in the island as a whole. But this solution isn't working. After decades of bloodshed and violence we are in a hiatus caused by an outbreak of reasonableness all round. However, I think we all know that we are headed for the only long-term stable solution which is a one-state solution encompassing the whole of Ireland. It is just taking a little time for the protestants to get used to this idea - fifty years or so is my guess, but they will get there eventually.

Now we have Israel/Palestine. Your view on this is undoubtedly affected by whether you believe in the Bible. If you do, you may believe that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews and that is that. It is difficult to argue against this proposition other than by pointing out that the same God also promised it to the Muslims in another book. If, like me, you believe that this is an nonsensical as the Mormon belief that the Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel then you are left with the conclusion that a large group of mostly Europeans moved into country that had been the home of the Palestinian people for centuries. The did this whilst under the protection of the British Empire which had promised to create a homeland for the members of one religion in the occupied territory of another.

For some reason, we in the West, who would never accept the proposition that members of one religion should be given superior rights to members of another, seem to accept that this is OK in Israel. But this cannot be right. What the Israeli government seems to be hoping for is a "two-state"solution in which one group (theirs) get the good land and the other group get the stuff they can manage without. And we in the West seem to be acquiescing in this aim. To me, it is clear that there will only be one long-term stable solution and that is a one-state solution. This will be one in which the whole of the land that was Palestine becomes a single, secular state in which the religious practices of all groups are protected by law but in which no one religion is given special status. Within this secular state Jew, Muslim and Christian (and anyone else) could live in peace and harmony together. Anything else may hold for a time but will just lead to more trouble before the people living there finally get it. And they will, but probably not in my lifetime.