When I ask this question, I really would like hopeful and positive answers. I know this is some doomerist bullshit but I'm in a bad mood and I can't stop thinking about it. The Israeli state is too militarily and diplomatically superior to Palestine for the Palestinian people to ever regain territorial sovereignty. The Arab nations that once guaranteed Palestine and fought for its independence have either given up or fallen to pieces. All of the world's major powers -the US, the EU, China, Russia, NATO- are allied with or maintain close relations with Israel. So what route remains for Palestinian sovereignty? While there is a Palestinian state, a state without complete control of its land cannot enforce its own laws, and if a state cannot enforce its laws then it is not a state at all. In its current status, Israel uses the current Palestinian state as an excuse, saying that it is accomplishing its end of the 2 state solution. However, everyone knows that the Israeli government has sole control over the land supposedly in the sole hands of the Palestinian state, and the only reason it doesn't annex the land formally is because that would challenge the ethnic dominance of the Jewish people in the Israeli state. All this diplomatic bullshit with raising a flag at the UN and being designated a "non-member observer state" is just an excuse for the crimes the state of Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. Note that I am referring to the State of Israel rather than Israelis themselves. It is disingenuous to say that the nation of Israel is unilaterally opposed to the rights of the nation of Palestine, however, a state is not a nation. People united by a singular identity are a nation, and a state is a military structure which enforces rules in the name of that identity. As such, the Palestinian nation will never go away, but its state hardly exists at all. At any moment the Israeli state could annex Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately no one could or would do anything about it. In fact, I'm sure that stocks in the GCC would rise dramatically because of all the new luxury condo development opportunities. Every day the world adjusts more to a stateless Palestine, and a nation of people trapped in their own land by a colonial state whose very structure is threatened by the native peoples' existence. I can't help but recognize that the Israeli state won long ago, and that there is no longer a Palestine to free while the Israeli state exists. Please tell me I'm wrong.
The two state solution has been dead for almost two decades. I agree with @comi, a one state solution with voting rights and the disbanding of the apartheid state for Arabs is the "best" outcome we can hope for. The Return of Palestine is only a realistic outcome with a global communist revolution. Granted, this involves Israel realizing it can no longer be a Jewish ethno-state, which is uh, unlikely.
This is what's so frustrating to me. Most Jewish Israelis support a two state solution specifically because it allows them to keep their ethnostate. The US, EU and UN also support this. In fact, as far as I can find one of the only countries to call out the two state solution as a total farce is Eritrea in an address at the UN.
Yup, the status quo allows Israel to have the best of both worlds. It's fascinating that Israel is a 19th century ethnostate holdover conception of what a "nation" is, and for a "modern state" it's strikingly out of tune with modern conceptions of nationalism. Like despite what some reactionaries want to claim, "Americanness," "Frenchness," "Britishness," etc are no longer based on race, and it's widely understand that one can be like, Asian and French or Indian and American or whatever. But a non-Jewish Israeli?! The very foundations of the state are threatened! We cannot allow this!!!
All support for Maki, the Israeli communist party primarily composed of far-left Jews and Arabs, self described as an anti-Zionist party within the Israeli state. :sankara-salute:
How strong in numbers and power is it? The material reality is that the "Occupied Territories" are day-to-day controlled not by Israel, which does control exchange (together with Egypt etc.) tightly and bombs stuff outside of day-to-day control.
Extremely small. I think they've got like two seats in the Knesset.
It's impossible to call this out either because of the thing we all know. The elephant in the room is that you can't critique Israel without being called antisemitic, and you can't bring up the fact that people will call you antisemitic without them calling you antisemitic but trying to make an excuse. Even if you qualify all of your statements with the fact that the Shoah was one of the most horrifying atrocities in human history, you cannot make any civil critique of Israel without someone saying you're doing an "I'm not racist but..." argument. It's almost as if the Global North uses Israel's identity as the Jewish nation to deflect the centuries of abuse Western countries wrought upon the Jewish people, because now they support the Jews because they support Israel.
Even all of that comes off antisemitic, or could be framed as such.
In practice, a democratic one-state solution means that Israel just becomes Palestine. This is why Israel will never allow it.
I think a one state solution is at this point the only solution. One thing that's unclear to me is that it seems that a lot of anti-Israel people seem to suggest that Jewish people should "go back" to some place. Back to where? Where we were pogrommed?
Even though a one state solution is really the only remotely viable option, it's still not great. You still would have a massively impoverished and dispossessed population. I don't think all those settlers are going to willingly give up what they took.
It sucks that the immigrants from the USSR tricked off as they started realizing that Israel was becoming an apartheid state.
The issue is that Israel doesn't need to annex the WB, it already has de facto control. Barring a huge shift towards secularized western nationalism or a marxist coup, I cannot see a world where Israel gives full citizenship and constitutional rights to all of the Palestinians within its current territorial control. There is no reason for the status quo to change because the Palestinian people are powerless to change their situation in any meaningful way and it is in no country's interest to support them. If things were to change, the cynic in me thinks that Israel would partner with GCC countries to make an "express immigration system" (deportation via economic warfare) for Palestinian Arabs to move to the Gulf as a replacement for the GCC's increasingly scrutinized and horribly abusive migrant labour system. I would say they'd try to deport them to the US or EU to join existing diaspora communities but fuck knows they don't want them. The fact of the matter is that the Israeli government would not allow a nation populated primarily by Arab Muslims, so they will not formally annex the land until those Muslims are gone one way or another.
It's an unfortunate fact that they are home. Israeli families are generations deep now. There is nowhere to "send them back" to.
There's a major difference in the Dutch who colonized South Africa and the first Israeli settlers. Israel was constructed as the final deportation site for Europe's Jews so the European powers could build ethnostates of their own.
The best they can do is continue to exist as a thorn in Israel's side. A generation from now things will be different. It's a sad situation. They're victims of apartheid and yet the world won't even ban Israeli athletes from international sport like they did South Africa. Talk about the mildest punishment ever.
Palestine/Palestinians is unfortunately one of those things where, barring a miracle, I just don't see how a happy ending is realistically possible for them. The deck is just too overwhelmingly stacked against them, and by the time it isn't it'll likely be too late. :deeper-sadness:
A two state solution is not happening imo. The only hope is a unified Jewish and Arab movement to create a single state (and really idk if that will happen without a global socialist movement moving towards state abolition), and that will require a resurgent socialist movement inside Israel.
I think rn 1 state solution with constitutional rights is the only non-shitty solution :sadness: or maybe bds will succeed, but considering american and european politics :sadness-abysmal:
Too bad the Israeli state would never allow a 1 state solution with constitutional rights ):
It's already 1 state now, why would they give the people they oppress rights? After all, some of them did car bombings 30 years ago.
With sponsor in the usa, yeah, probably. If they’ll implode financially, who knows. Which is why bds is important, that’s the only influencing mechanism in imperial core, maybe local elections as well :(
I can't imagine Palestine becoming fully independent as long as the imperial core stands unfortunately. It will probably be the most visible victim of imperialism. I just don't see any military or political action that would be approved by the USA to grant Palestine its right to existence back
When your hot take could be posted in /r/redscare :reddit-logo:, too.
It will take a South African style international campaign. Honestly the way Iran seems to be aligning with China and China with Russia, in a few decades maybe cracking Israeli Apartheid will be seen as a way to combat the west in the geopolitical area. Israel could probably survive still on just US+EU support, but by changing circumstances palestinians might find new allies in the east as the 2nd cold war gets going. Pretty cold and cynical for the palestinians but it is at least something.
Russia has deep diplomatic ties to Israel, and China has been cultivating similar relationships for years. Iran is not a strong enough force to sever Russia and China's ties to Israel. As far as diplomatic relations go, Israel is the Switzerland of the Middle East.
eh that's true now but only because Israel is so rich they have plenty to offer China and Russia through trade still. Across decades relationships between states can fluctuate, sometimes pretty drastically. If there is some major crisis in the middle east between Iran and Israel, and with how much they provoke one another that's not unlikely, other countries may be forced to pick a side. Wether they think its worth it to ditch Israel for Iran depends on what Israel can still offer them. Currently Israel is still rich af and Russia and China love trading with them, but a lot of things can change in the future with the unstable politics and climate-change sensitive climate.
Ali Kadri might be of interest to you (I know little about him and so it might be a really bad suggestion), but around 2000 he wrote a book about labour exploitation within palestine and did an upgrading of it a couple of years ago, lots of Marxist terms, though I disagree a lot from a theoretical framework.
Most of the books (except the China one) also got digital versions on some online library sites (remember to use your university logins if possible).
‘The Unmaking of Arab Socialism’,
A Theory of Forced Labour Migration - The Proletarianisation of the West Bank Under Occupation (1967-1992)
China's Path to Development. Against Neoliberalism (not yet in my library)
If they can be made to annex Palestine then they can slowly be pressured to take responsibility. that's the only idea I've heard lately. Ali abunimah has said this for a while now and I think B'Tselem and Norman Finkelstein now agree with this. It is the reality and groups like the ICC can probably recognize it.
If only the ICC wasn't a completely useless institution with no power to enforce anything because the US doesn't participate in it. In fact, instead of participating in the ICC the US government runs its own international criminal court based on its own laws and reserves the right to try anyone from any country for something the US perceives as breaking international law. Not Americans though.
that must be the same US 'court' that jails US sanction-breakers. Lol, Trump put sanctions on the fucking ICC members. bleak. maybe China will save us in thirty years! totally not bleak!
