Published: 10 August 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
THE “TWO-STATE SOLUTION” is a misnomer because “partition does not solve the issue of Palestinian refugees … and it doesn’t respond to the very deep yearning that Palestinians have for return to their home,” said US journalist Peter Beinart.
“How can we be so dismissive of their yearning to return?” he said in a conversation with Mark Baker, hosted by The Jewish Independent on Sunday night, when this same desire for Jews has been so comprehensively acknowledged?
When European Jewish refugees moved to the Middle-East to live in a Jewish state, it was “with significant backing from European powers”, Beinart said, in an acknowledgement that “the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is very deep, profound.”
“But as a Palestinian writer once put it: Looking backwards from Europe, Jews were seen as refugees, but to the Palestinians, seen from the front, they were seen as colonisers.”
Beinart was in conversation with Australian academic Mark Baker, talking about the future of Israel and Palestine, in the wake of his recent, controversial essay that advocates a single, binational state, based on equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. His essay has generated robust debate within the Jewish world, and criticism from both conservative and progressive positions.
Over the past year I have found that the arguments I have been making in favour of the traditional two-state solution were becoming less convincing to me.
Beinart explained that he shifted from his previous advocacy of a two-state solution because the reality of life on the ground in Israel and Palestinian territories had made that idea seem increasingly obsolete and unachievable.
“Over the past year I have found that the arguments I have been making in favour of the traditional two-state solution were becoming less convincing to me. You can’t say things that don’t feel right to you. My arguments were becoming less and less convincing to my own ear.
“I had no credible way of imagining the two-state solution being possible. The only way to keep it alive was to imagine that the Palestinians would have less and less territory and sovereignty. That was the only way to keep that idea alive.
“And I began to worry that by keeping it alive, I was maintaining a paradigm that would foreclose other ways of thinking.
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While Baker agreed with him that “occupation as a permanent structure is not the Israel we would like to see”, he took issue with Beinart’s vision of a single binational state.
Baker said he could not find any examples of binationalism. “You see something that is so far from being realised.”
Beinart countered that “Israel has [already] created a binational reality one way or another; there are already two nations within the one territory. We need to ask a question: which is more dangerous – a binational state where not everyone has a voice, or one where they do have a voice? History has shown the latter tend to be more stable.
“Although a binational state would be difficult in many ways,” he conceded, “I think it would be more peaceful than one in which Palestinians don’t have political rights.”
Although a binational state would be difficult in many ways, I think it would be more peaceful than one in which Palestinians don’t have political rights.
In response to Baker’s criticism that his argument “conflates binationalism with a confederation,” Beinart said he saw binationalism “as a kind of spectrum”. He cited the examples of Belgium - “a binational state with confederation”, and also Europe in general. “In a confederation you have states that are theoretically sovereign but have handed over some sovereign powers to a supra-national entity
Then there is a federation, “where you have one state that is divested of power to local elements, for example Northern Ireland”.
Baker put it to Beinart that “your [binational] reality doesn’t reflect a structure that people on the ground will accept. When Palestinians – whether they live in Gaza, the West Bank are asked whether they want to live in Israel, the Palestinians say they still want their own homeland, a state that is theirs.”
Baker: What about Israelis giving up the apparatus of statehood with no guarantees [about the future]? Beinart: It would be difficult.
Baker then applied an Israeli lens to the argument. “What about Israelis giving up the apparatus of statehood with no guarantees [about the future]?”
Beinart conceded it would be difficult: “I start from the assumption there is no real reason that they would consider a change to the status quo. Most Israelis are comfortable with the status quo. Most of the recent Israeli elections haven’t been fought on this issue.
“When you have one group that enjoys basic rights, very rarely do they change course simply because they wake one morning and decide ‘this isn’t right’.”
He underscored that point elegantly, adding change does not occur without a demand by one side.
“It’s only when [Israelis] see that the status quo is not sustainable because they see a mass movement from those who don’t have these basic rights, that causes non-violent pressure on Israel, to show that the status quo is not sustainable, that you will see change.”
