Meron Benvenisti presents the case for a bi-national state once again.
“The road map won’t lead anywhere because a solution based on the connection between territory and ethnic identity – which was applicable up to about 20 years ago – cannot be implemented and any attempt to implement it will only complicate the problem instead of solving it. The key is now to be found elsewhere; in an area that does not regard the geopolitical division as a national ideal.”
I should, perhaps, stress that those of us who are proponents of a bi-national state are not re-treading the PLO’s version of the 1960s and 70s, which called for the creation of a “secular democratic state of Palestine.” This idea was the reverse side of the coin of a Jewish state, for it called on the Jewish residents of this state who came after 1948, to leave. In other words it had a component of an ethnic cleansing. And of course, one injustice does not justify another.
A truly bi-national state would cut the Gordian knot of so many of the conflict’s most complex issues. For example, there would be no reason that a Jew who wanted to, couldn’t live in Hebron. The key difference is that, unlike now, a Jew living in Hebron wouldn’t be accorded any more rights and resources than his Arab neighbor. Similarly, Palestinians who wanted to live anywhere inside the old ‘67 borders could do so. Just doing so would not be at the expense of uprooting his Jewish neighbors who already live there.
Unfortunately, the mutual hate and distrust is so deep, that it is probably necessary for an interim period of separating the two warring parties in separate “states,” before such a permanent solution could be contemplated.
