If you’ve ever had a discussion with a liberal, and by liberal I mean the Robert Frost definition of liberal, someone who is too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel, or the Theodore White definition, someone who believes that water can be made to run uphill. And the conservative as someone who believes everybody should pay for the water. I well am neither, I believe water should be free, and that water flows downhill – and in fact bottled water and insurance is the biggest shams to date (however I won’t be getting into that today).
The Israeli Mind
First of all the ‘peace process’ is an Israeli concept. It is an Israeli ideology based on Zionist supremacy of ‘we will have peace in return that you be quiet and live under our rule, our policies and our boots and agree to our demands – which includes your inevitable exile’. That essentially is what the peace process stands for, and I’m certain there is nothing anyone could produce, including a Knesset member to prove otherwise. And to talk about a genuine peace process, the one understood to be settling the ‘conflict‘ as a liberal would describe, is like kicking a dead horse rather than acknowledging that its dead. And that its not a horse, it’s a unicorn. Doesn’t exist.
The peace process – the two-state solution, is farce because, yes Israel doesn’t want two states. Israel has never in the course of history supported two states. When the current Likud party in power happens to be founded by the terrorist Menachem Begin in 1973 who was part of the Irgun terrorist group responsible for the King David Hotel bombing (of British Forces) as well as Dier Yassin Massacre, and miraculously becomes prime minister and then awarded the noble peace prize jointly with Anwar Sadat, there was never the intention of a two-state solution. Israel was founded based on one principle and one principle only. An established homeland for the Jews. And to this day, they still dream of the ‘Great Land of (all) Israel’. They believe they made the ‘desert bloom’, because Palestine was ‘a land without a people, for people without a land’. There is no West Bank, it is ‘Judea and Samaria’. There are no ‘Palestinians’, they are only Arabs and Arabs have 23 states.
Deir Yassin, 1948
Now when a country emerges and builds upon the history of another history written by peoples of different creed and colour in harmony, and declares it sacred for themselves, when a country emerges based on the ideology that they are superior to every other human being based not on a race, but scriptural belief, when a country establishes its existence on stolen geography, stolen history and undrying blood, the word peace is as invalid as US being in Afghanistan for a feminist cause. It is just beyond absurd.
Once we understand that Israel has never been a supporter of co-existing and sharing what they had came to claim for themselves and themselves only, it becomes clear as day that obviously the Palestinians do not want a two state solution. The Palestinians do not want a two state solution, just as you wouldn’t if you had your home ransacked by a foreign group, settling in your fields, in your houses, treated you like a 4th class citizen, shot your mother and cut her stomach open to kill your unborn sister leaving her skirt hoisted by her waist, dragged your father by the head to execute him with your brother against a wall, shot your grandmother in the chest, made you beg for your life, forced you to escape into a neighbouring land after half of your population was exiled and killed, and now you remain ousted for the remaining of your existence, because they have forbidden your return, whilst your people still inhabiting parts of the land undergo daily humiliation and degradation, imprisoning the men, beating the women, kidnapping the children, bombing sleeping families, uprooting your trees, building their homes, erasing your history, rebuilding your geography, swallowing your culture. You too, would not want two states. You would want it all – back.
Illegal White Phosphorus shells fired by Israel exploding in air during the Gaza Massacre of 08/09
Of course, whenever I engage in a discussion with a liberal of some kind, or someone who isn’t entirely informed on the issue but is an apologist, but do happen to accept the points made above they ask, “well realistically, the only solution is to have two states. You can’t drive the Jews into the sea or push the Arabs off the land, so it wouldn’t it make sense to have two states?”
The answer is yes, it would make sense.
It would make sense to have two states (if we’re talking about realistic terms), no settlements, no checkpoints, no military presence in Palestine, the right of return for Palestinians in exile, a formal apology by the state (just for the sake of it), Israel’s apartheid laws abolished, the physical and economic siege on Gaza lifted, the apartheid wall and settlements demolished, freeing of all prisoners, giving back land to uphold the UN partition, basically the terminating the concept of Zionism. But how is that possible when the entire existence of Israel is solely based on Zionism? To expect a Palestinian-Israeli confederation wherein the two peoples share joint political and economic institutions while maintaining a sense of semi-autonomy and preserving their cultural and religious distinctions based on the peace process, on Israeli terms, is far-fetched. The two state solution becomes a floating paradox. It is here where the dead horse or unicorn, becomes a cloud of dust.
However I must insert here, Palestine isn’t based on the 1947 partition plan issued by the UN (they were useless even then). Palestine is Haifa, Palestine is Yaffa, Palestine is Jerusalem. So I will want it all back. And if you were Hanifa al-Najjar that lost her husband after a settler that cracked open his skull, and an Israeli soldier paralysed her 5 year old daughter, and indefinitely imprisoned her brother, I believe you would too.
~ Sofia Smith
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