After Zionism | Saqi Books. Bean Counting States. After 9/11 more private contractors took over security responsibilities on military bases as troops headed overseas. Recent veterans weigh in on the impact of that shift. The most recent catastrophe at Fort Hood has Congress asking questions: how can we prevent this from happening again? Along with talk about treating and screening for service members with mental health issues, the focus has been on the security procedures at military bases and how it might be improved. As CNN reported April 6th, lawmakers are examining how the military secure its installations, and whether current controls are sufficient.
Along with looking at physical security measures to prevent the transport of illegal firearms on base another issue being reviewed is whether the military should return to using troops to guard checkpoints, rather than the private security contractors common today. Potential changes also need to consider the impact that invasive security measures would have on morale. No Easy Answers. For Syrians displaced by their country’s war, homeless in their own land, life inside refugee camps is a desperate existence.
The refugee camp in the Turkish city of Kilis has been called “a five-star hotel.” Residents have access to electricity, playgrounds, and schools. They receive money for food, and satellite dishes adorn many of the housing units. Crime is low, and gratitude is high. Indeed, for the approximately 14,000 people living there, the Turkish government has built—in the words of the New York Times—the “perfect refugee camp.” Ever since the uprisings against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad exploded into civil war in 2011, the UN estimates (PDF) that over 9 million people have been displaced from their homes. Yet for the vast majority—including the 6.5 million still inside Syria—the relative stability of a Turkish camp remains an illusion, far removed from the harsh reality of their current lives.
For those still inside Syria, the situation is even worse. “Similarities?” Netanyahu says “no” to the two-states solution. Netanyahu’s response to Obama expose his, and the Israeli’s center-right, true face For years, Israeli politicians used to say their actions were intended to “expose the true face of the Palestinians”; this used to be a specialty of Ehud Barak. Senior pundits spent lakes of ink on the proposition that Israel should agree to peace proposals, or even present some of its own, even though they thought there was no point in them: Doing so would expose the “true face” of the Palestinians/Arabs as peace refuseniks. This game is over. The two days following Obama’s Middle East speech made it clear who is the real peace refusnenik, exposing the true face of the Israeli center-right.
Unlike the howl from the Fox Complex, combining the right wing of Israel and the US, there was nothing particularly new about Obama’s speech: He was speaking of a Palestinian state, based on the 1949 borders, with some corrections. That was also the position of the Bush administration. So what was all the noise about? Netanyahu and the one-state solution. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address US legislators on Tuesday. He will, no doubt, tell members of Congress that he supports a two-state solution, but his support will be predicated on four negative principles: no to Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 borders; no to the division of Jerusalem; no to the right of return for Palestinian refugees; and no to a Palestinian military presence in the new state.
The problem with Netanyahu's approach is not so much that it is informed by a rejectionist worldview. The problem is not even Netanyahu's distorted conception of Palestine's future sovereignty, which Meron Benvenisti aptly described as "scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world, and limited to the height of its residential buildings and the depth of its graves. The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control... " At this new intersection, there are two signs. 1. 2. 3. At the UN, the funeral of the two-state solution. We are all going to be invited to the funeral of the two-state solution if and when the UN General Assembly announces the acceptance of Palestine as a member state.
The support of the vast majority of the organization’s members would complete a cycle that began in 1967 and which granted the ill-advised two-state solution the backing of every powerful and less powerful actor on the international and regional stages. Even inside Israel, the support engulfed eventually the right as well as the left and center of Zionist politics. And yet despite the previous and future support, everybody inside and outside Palestine seems to concede that the occupation will continue and that even in the best of all scenarios, there will be a greater and racist Israel next to a fragmented and useless bantustan. The charade will end in September or October — when the Palestinian Authority plans to submit its request for UN membership as a full member — in one of two ways.
A substitute dictionary for Zionism. Israel must understand it cannot be like America. Why the United States needs to press for a "two-state" solution NOW. Lots of smart people have been focusing on the Israeli elections and trying to make sense of their immediate implications for the peace process. I can’t improve on the analyses provided by Glenn Greenwald, Yossi Alpher, Bernard Avishai, or Uri Avnery, who explain why there is little reason to be optimistic and many reasons to be worried. I want to focus on a different issue, which is likely to be more important in the long run. It's this: What do we do if a "two-state solution" becomes impossible? During the past 10 years, the "two-state solution" has been the mantra of most moderates involved in the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Interestingly, this moderate consensus in favor of two states is itself a fairly new development. Today, invoking the "two-state" mantra allows moderates to sound reasonable and true to the ideals of democracy and self-determination; but it doesn't force them to actually do anything to bring that goal about. AFP/Getty Images. Moment of Truth for Liberal Zionism | Shalom Rav. For the last ten plus years, advocates of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine have been warning that the “window of opportunity” for a two-state solution is closing fast.
Here’s Jordan’s King Abdullah II using the image in a 2005 speech: Israelis and Palestinians must take advantage of a “small window of opportunity” for peacemaking, he warned. “If we don’t do it, I think the Middle East will be doomed, unfortunately, to many more decades of violence.” From a 2007 Boston Globe report: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that a “two-state solution” in the Middle East is in jeopardy and described a narrow window of opportunity to push Israel and the Palestinians toward peace.
J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami, writing in a 2008 Forward op-ed: The window is closing on a two-state solution, and Israel’s prospects for a second, safer 60 years grow are growing ever dimmer. To be sure, with each passing day, the warning of a last chance opportunity appears increasingly toothless. Zionism - perspectives... Two Peoples...One Land - Elazar. Exile and Return | Lesch, Ann M. and Ian S. Lustick, Editors. 368 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Cloth 2005 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3874-7 | $55.00s | £36.00 | Add to cartPaper 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2052-0 | $26.50s | £17.50 | Add to cartView table of contents and excerpt "A rich resource both for scholars of migration and for anyone interested in the 'predicaments of Palestinians and Jews' because of the way it self-consciously draws parallels between the two peoples' destinies and relation to the same land.
"—Israel Studies Forum Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews is a bold attempt to understand constructively and build upon the terrible irony of two peoples, each with a searing memory of displacement and exile, struggling for a return to a land each remembers, each claims, and from which each has sought to exclude the other. The contributors' work is honest and often as inspiring as it is provocative. Contributors: Elazar Barkan, Michael R. Fischbach, Sari Hanafi, Amal Jamal, Laleh Khalili, Ze'ev Khanin, Ann M.
Ann M. United we stand. Now it's your turn. Why I’m Presenting at Harvard’s One-State Conference | Shalom Rav. The Harvard Kennedy School is hosting a “One State Conference” this weekend and already the usual suspects are crying foul. Since I’m going to be speaking on a panel at the conference on Sunday, I thought it might be a good idea to weigh in with some thoughts. I’ll begin with the stated vision/goals of the conference, according to student organizers: To date, the only Israel/Palestine solution that has received a fair rehearsal in mainstream forums has been the two-state solution. Our conference will help to expand the range of academic debate on this issue. Thus, our main goal is to educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization. Sound reasonable? Reading incendiary words such as these, I can’t help but be struck by the abject hysteria that gets regularly mistaken for public relations by the American Jewish establishment.
I look forward to reporting on my experiences at the conference. Like this: Mearsheimer: There will be no two-state solution, only a greater Israel, and Palestinians will need the int’l community in the coming fight against apartheid. Something you won’t see on American television: Al Jazeera ran a long piece on the peace talks (linked here at Pulse.). "Empire" host Marwan Bishara is incisive; he speaks of the "Zionist lobby" and the emergence of a state in Kosovo with far less rigmarole than the endless peace process. His guests, on barstools in a rooftop interview in view of the White House, are Nabil Shaath of the P.A., former negotiator Rob Malley, and John Mearsheimer.
Mearsheimer is unbound. He dispels Malley’s assertion that Israel can cobble together a Palestinian state. He helps to elicit from Shaath wonderful statements, including the description of Israelis as "control freaks" and the simple explanation of why Palestinians, even Fatah Palestinians, cannot recognize Israel as a Jewish state. "The talks are going to fail and who’s going to be blamed– the Palestinians. " Then this from Shaath: "The Israelis are control freaks. Bishara: "Will you recognize the Jewish state? " Shaath: "Of course not. " Reflections After the Harvard One State Conference. Palestinians in line for a Qalandiya checkpoint during Ramadan, 2011.
(Photo: Reuters) I attended the One State Conference at Harvard University on March 3-4, 2012, and was encouraged to continue working to bring peace and prosperity to all the people who live between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Nevertheless, I left the conference unsettled by several issues. Regime Change Lets face it, any resolution of the present conflict will require regime change in Israel and the Palestinian administration in the West Bank. The reason that negotiations for a Palestinian state alongside Israel (the two-state solution — TSS) have failed is that the Israeli government does not want a just, political resolution of the conflict. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, all Israeli governments talks have been opposed to allowing any meaningful Palestinian self-determination to emerge through Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Nature of one-state A path from here to there. The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners. John J. Mearsheimer This is the transcript of the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture delivered by John J. Mearsheimer at the The Palestine Center today. It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out to hear me speak this afternoon.
My topic is the future of Palestine, and by that I mean the future of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or what was long ago called Mandatory Palestine. Of course, I am not just talking about the fate of those lands; I am also talking about the future of the people who live there. The story I will tell is straightforward. Let me explain how I reached these conclusions. Given present circumstances there are four possible futures for Palestine. It seems clear to me that the two-state solution is the best of these alternative futures. Singular Legal Regime Necessitates One-State Solution. This weekend, the Harvard University community will host its conference, "One-State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One-State Solution".
The conference promises to be an invigorating discussion on the likelihood of the two-state solution, the benefits of the one-state solution, and the challenges to achieving either. In light of that discussion, I thought it useful to share the legal dimensions that demonstrate Israel’s discriminatory system both within its putative borders and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) as a singular Apartheid regime. The unitary nature of this legal system at once triggers proper legal remedies in international law and underscores the pragmatic thrust of the one-state solution. Since its establishment, Israel has bifurcated Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship.
Israel’s binary system facilitates the State’s stated goal of maintaining a significant Jewish majority even in the face of natural population growth.