Joseph Dana writes that the destruction of the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem confirms that the two-state solution is finished and that it is time to start fighting for democratic rights for all of the residents of the land under Israeli military rule.
Israel and Palestine are under full Israeli military control. Everything going in and out of the Palestinian areas, West Bank and Gaza, passes through Israeli control. Every baby born in Gaza is registered in an Israeli controlled census. Instead of thinking about what would be in the future perhaps we should start from what is in the present. We live in one state.
So what does this state look like? It is a state in which eighty percent of the population, the Jewish population, enjoys full democratic, civil and human rights. The remaining residents of Israel within the 1948 green line borders are the Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in a system of institutionalized discrimination much like the Jim Crow South of the 1950′s.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live in an apartheid-like system where the term ‘separate and unequal’ reaches its full potential. Different infrastructure, different and unequal court systems, unequal access to resources such as water and lack of freedom of movement constitute their lifestyle. That leaves us with Gaza, which is basically an open air prison, fenced in and controlled by Israel. These are the current parameters of the one state which is known as ‘Israel and Palestine’ or ‘Israel and its occupied territories’.
The people of Gaza are their own worst enemy. Israel forcably removed all Jewish people from the entire area called Gaza and returned the land to the local Gazans. For a VERY short time, there was hope that this would be the beginning of a peaceful coexistance between these two peoples. Instead, Gaza became a launching pad for rockets fired into Israel. It is hard to be sympathetic towards the Gazans who feel their lives are controlled by Israel, which has no choice but to continue to try to prevent more arms from entering what the Gazans have chosen to be enemy territory rather than peaceful neighbors,
I read your joke ‘dprosenthal’ but I didn’t get the punch line. Are you from another planet?