Palestine/Israel: The One State Solution

The United States fought a terrible civil war in order to preserve the Union. Citing cultural and economic differences the southern Confederate States demanded nothing less than a two state solution. Slavery was a coincidental aggravation, the union had survived with slavery for over 85 years. There was no room in the union for one industrialized state dependent on immigrant labor and one agricultural domain with a history of slave labor.

Lincoln did emancipate the slaves but did nothing to enculturate blacks or even offer advice as to how this would be possible. Of course, Abe was murdered before he had a chance to do any nation building. Would he have treated them as internal immigrants, sought to isolate them like the aboriginals, urged (or forced) a Diaspora back to Africa or offered some sort of non-citizen status with the carrot of assimilation in the offing. Lincoln may have been comfortable with the likes of citizen Frederick Douglas but would he have welcomed the idea of a newly freed field hand wielding a full compliment of rights and responsibilities. I guess we'll never know.

This is the impasse grinding the state of Israel to a 60 year stand still. Palestinians have always been treated as isolated aboriginals. They have been actually and virtually interred in Gaza and on the West Bank since the Jewish State came into existence in 1948. The premise causing this implacable divide is the seeming impossibility of a declared Jewish State existing within an area populated with Semitic Muslims. So for the longest time the Muslims were separated out and now the popular notion is that they somehow might exist in a separate second state within the same region. This is as unlikely as Lincoln allowing a Confederacy to exist. The possibility of two diametrically opposed sovereign states existing peacefully in close proximity will never happen as a new construct. That Israel is able to exist with historical Muslim nations like Egypt and Syria is at best a shaky proposition after years of conflict and several all out wars. Palestine exists only in a dream world, reality would require the annihilation of the Jewish State.

America coped poorly with the reconstruction after the civil war. Andrew Johnson was impeached, civil rights were forced upon the south, northern carpetbaggers and scallywags took advantage and the south responded with a century of segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and overt racism. Yet, now is the time for Israel to undergo reconstruction. Maybe the reaction will be less violent and the duration lessened. Revolutionary Islam and reactionary Judaism have no safe place on this planet.

Blacks and Hispanics in America are still marginalized. As long as the violence is contained in ghettos and committed within the race, we look the other way. The proffered carrot of assimilation applies to Obama, Patterson and Duval but not to the same majority of field hands that Lincoln distrusted.

We've come a long way but we are not there and the Israelis have yet to start. The long process of acceptance begins with an open mind, not retaliation. Hate will happen and the feud will become familiar. Integration implies proximity and intimacy. If this outrages separatists, then why did apartheid die such a quiet death?

The Israelis must drop the theocratic connotation insistent in the U.N. declaration allowing their existence. They must be a secular, sovereign state; governed by an understandable constitution, bill of rights and human acceptance of variation within.

We must not return to the medieval notion of assimilation. Jews in Spanish cities were rounded up and barricaded within the local synagogue. The temple was set on fire and those Jews willing to convert to Catholicism were invited to exit, the faithful were encouraged to die. Many millions of Muslims live within the Jewish State and they will not be easily be subjected to another holocaust. The Jews would never survive the bad press. The world has already spoken on the subject of segregation (South Africa), though remains slow to respond to genocide (Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur).

The challenge is that Israel become an independent democratic state and at least formally recognize and validate the existence and promise of variation, then adopt inclusive additions to the constitution and governmental mind set.

The One State Solution exists on the small hope that Israelis would evolve to become inclusive, slowly learn to be neighborly, forget old animosities and live in a world that is not totally defensive.

Before the terrible inquisition Jews, Christians and Moors (Muslims) existed in a relatively passive and happy state within the borders of the southern European country we now know as Spain. The Moors were the scientists, mathematicians and architects of the realm and the Jew's merchants, bankers, philanthropists and scholars. Truthfully, the early Christians were a bunch of dummies related to northern invading hordes. They sat by for centuries and learned and lived in a truly assimilated society, then reverted to their conquering dispositions at the insistence of the pope.

The world must insist that Israelis be polite. This is not negotiable, no army of mediators or host of Jimmy Carter's can verbalize a truce between the Montagues and Capulets. There will be fighting in the streets, Mercutio will be murdered and the adventurous lovers will succumb to misunderstanding. The world seems to understand that 'there is no military solution' but has it garnered the courage to step forward into the difficult process of peace? The surrender of Vietnam was the bravest moment in American history after our first attempts at integration.