Time to address the context of the Israeli-Paletinian Conflict

Middle East peace activists, reviving the Palestinian left's 25 year old proposal for a secular democratic state, have engaged in numerous current debates on the one state (Israel/Palestine) versus two state (Israel and Palestine) "solutions" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others are more ambitious, arguing that there preferred solution brings more more than a peace settlement, that a one state solution would be a more egalitarian society. The "no state" solution, unfortunately, plays no role in these discussions.

These debates, despite the passion and precision of both sides, are quite irrelevant for two reasons most Israelis, Palestinians, and their partisans often ignore.

First, neither political arrangement addresses the actual context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. That context, as Avi Shlaim so elegantly describes in his wonderful War and Peace in the Middle East - A Concise History, is the role of outside imperialist powers in the Middle East, beginning in the late 19th century with their concerted efforts to displace the Ottomans -- straight through to the present.

These outside great powers developed and nurtured all of the region's nationalisms, not just Zionism, for their own agenda, which was and is the control of international shipping lanes and of oil. To ignore all of this, especially when the US government subsidizes Israel by $3-5 billion per year, has trained and paid for all of the Palestinian Authority's dozen police and intelligence agencies, has constructed or leased over 200 military installations in the region, is fighting two wars there (Iraq and Afghanistan), is threatening two more (Iran and Pakistan), gives the Egyptian government about $2 billion per year, keeps many corrupt elites in power though out the Middle East, and is pumping $65 billion in news arms into the region is not being realistic. And, it certainly does not allow any egalitarian societies to emerge in this region.

Second, to assume that either a two state or one state solution, without ending the same class structure which now exists and evicting the same meddling outsiders, can create an egalitarian economic environment for their residents is also not being realistic.

The widespread Jewish poverty throughout Israel should make it clear that Zionism has left many Israeli Jews economically behind and that their ethnic privileges don't add up to much . In fact, within the green line, Israel is one of the world's most unequal industrialized countries.

Likewise, it is hard to see what most Palestinians have gotten from their nationalism, or what they would get with a mini-state controlled by their own elites, in collusion with the US or the Europeans. But, a still capitalist one state solution would not be much different. The world has many multi-ethnic states, and they all have wide disparities of wealth and power. The poor and powerless Jews and Palestinians would hardly disappear because a one state solution could pull the plug on the right of return, the Jewish Agency, and the Jewish National Fund.

The thrust of these debates, especially if they are part of 60th anniversary events for the Nakbaindependence should, therefore, follow the lead of Jeff Halper, leader of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions and film maker Ronit Avni. Their focus is is on average people who work across ethnic and geographic boundaries, whether they are Israeli Jews or Palestinians.

More on this option in future posts, especially how we can eventually arrive at the "no state" solution.