I wrote this in November 2007 on the hope for a solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
The solution essentially comes down to understanding the most and
least that each side can accept.
We could argue forever
whether the State of Israel should have been created the way it was
but, as most Palestinians have come to accept, that is a historical
fact that is simply not going to change. It has been a huge and
difficult step for the Palestinians to accept that, after all it was
their land that was stolen from them. But come to accept it they
have. That is the most they can be expected to accept. The least they
can be expected to accept is to have their own Palestinian State and
have Israel give back the land they stole since the creation of the
State of Israel with no exceptions. The original boundaries must be
restored, including the status of Jerusalem at the time Israel was
created.
The least that Israel can be expected to accept
is to have their right to exist accepted by the international
community, including Palestinians and Arab states. The most they can
be expected to give up is all the land they stole after the creation
of the state of Israel, a not unreasonable expectation. (Source)
Considering the
current circumstances, conventional wisdom would suggest hope for any
solution may have been set back for decades, or centuries, unless the
backlash from the rest of the world (apart from the United States),
along with that of the Israeli people leads to the establishment of a
progressive pro-Palestinian Israeli government, and by Pro
Palestinian I mean one committed to the right of Palestinians to live
and a Palestinian state to exist. Then maybe such a two state
solution can become reality. After enough time to build trust it
would ideally lead to a European Union type alliance between peoples
that are natural partners, having lived peacefully together in the
past and being genetically related .
My preference, but who am I to say, would be for a single
multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious secular state, because
I believe religious based states are always a bad idea.
One might wonder
if Hamas’s actions were based on a strategy of desperation,
thinking that a massive terrorist attack would result in the expected
disproportionate genocidal Israeli response, and hoping for a
backlash from the rest of the world and the Israeli people, leading
to change of government and policy in Israel. In effect, a
sacrificing thousands of Palestinian lives (as Hamas certainly
understands the power imbalance) in the hope of creating the
conditions for the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state
as a result.
It has been
difficult for people to say out loud one of the statements above, not
because the facts do not justify it, but because most of the world
does not want to believe it