Ali Abunimah in conversation with Antony Loewenstein
Israel and Palestine: one state or two?
May 15 marks the birth of Israel 60 years ago but it also marks the partition of Palestine. The carve-up left the indigenous Palestinians with 22 percent of their homeland. Most Palestinians were forced out of their land and ended in UN refugee camps. In 1967, Israel occupied the 22 percent left for the Palestinians and have been building settlements every year since. Ali Abunimah, a Research Fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington DC, Editor of the famous Electronic Intifada website and now author of One Country: a bold proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, argues only one solution remains: a secular, democratic state in which Israelis and Palestinians have equal human rights, including one person/one vote.
Ali Abunimah will be in conversation with Antony Loewenstein, the author of the bestseller My Israel Question which dissected the role of the Zionist lobby and skewered the mainstream narrative of Israel/Palestine. He is also the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.
One Country
It is by now a commonplace that the only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian violence is to divide the territory in two. All efforts at resolving the conflict have come down to haggling over who gets what: Will Israel hand over 90 percent of the West Bank or only 60 percent? Will a Palestinian state include any part of Jerusalem?
Clear-eyed, sharply reasoned, and compassionate, One Country proposes a radical alternative: to revive the neglected idea of one state shared by two peoples. Ali Abunimah shows how the two are by now so intertwined-geographically and economically-that separation cannot lead to the security Israelis need or the rights Palestinians must have.
Taking on the objections and taboos that stand in the way of a binational solution, he demonstrates that sharing the territory will bring benefits for all. The absence of other workable options has only led to ever- greater extremism. It is time, Abunimah argues, for Palestinians and Israelis to imagine a different future and a different relationship.
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Re: Ali Abunimah in conversation with Antony Loewenstein
“Anti Semitism” is growing in the world as more and more people resent the manipulations of Zionists putting defence of Israels expansionism onto arab lands as the most important thing in the world.
At the expense of the Palestinians and other Arabs.Christian and Muslims.
E.G.there is a concern by many over the manipulating influence of the “neo-con” Israeli lobby in the US as being behind Americas current wars in the middle east and not the needs of Americas own imperialist oil empire.
This concern is reflected by many conspiracy theorists on 911.
And there is a real concern about the propaganda of the neo-cons to attack Iran Syria and Lebanon –the fear that the west will be sucked into endless wars in the ”defence” of Israel e.g .Clinton threat that she would “obliterate” 71 million Iranian people.
Humanitarian Sympathy for Zionism that was once great is running thin as the big ”Ghetto” in today’s world is now Gaza ,with nearly a million and a half Arab Semites locked up in a walled colonialist run prison zone along racial and religious lines.
Although anti Semitism used to be defined as racist and religious attitudes to Jews.
these days ”anti Semitism” is increasingly defined by the Zionists themselves as anybody they hate , because they say ,if they anyone who opposes the expansionism of the “Jewish” state of Israel must be anti-Semite, or even “self hating” Jews.
The time for a two state solution in the face of Israelis refusal to come to the table for a just two states solution is increasingly running out and is simply seen as a bush roadmap to fraud ,a cover for further settler colonialist expansionism .
As with Isrealis recent refusal to seek a two state solution with Hamas the elected representative of the Palestinians.
The belief of the Zionists that they can continue manipulate the US with its “lobby” for continued military protectionist wars and billion dollar military aid is no longer realistic as the US is already facing military defeat on two fronts already and the out of control deficit spending for war is helping to send the US into economic crisis and military impotence.
If the Zionists really want to preserve a Jewish state capable of living in peace with its neighbours for generations to come ,they better get serious about a just two state solution –real fast.
What would Isreal do if instead of simply breaking down the ghettos walls at the checkpoint to Egypt. Hamas broke the wall separating Gaza from Israel ,in order to exercise the currently half starved refugees right of return to their own land and homes non-violently ?
Get out the machine guns for a mass holocaust final solution ?
There of course are many fine Jewish people ,educated with jewish religious and secular humanitarian ideals and traditions that of course are not Zionist expansionists .
They say Shalom..