Israeli iconoclast Meron Benvenisti says negotiations for a Palestinian state are an illusion that perpetuates the status quo
Ian Black, Middle East editor, in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 April 2010
"Meron Benvenisti has been talking, writing and arguing about the Israel-Palestinian conflict for much of the last 40 years. Now aged 76 he is as forceful, articulate and unconventional as ever – and convinced that President Barack Obama is doomed to fail in his attempt to cajole the two sides to hammer out a solution at the negotiating table....
"The whole notion of a Palestinian state now, in 2010, is a sham," he told the Guardian at his Jerusalem home as the US intensified efforts to get the long-stalled peace process moving again. "The entire discourse is wrong. By continuing that discourse you perpetuate the status quo. The struggle for the two-state solution is obsolete."....
Benvenisti's book, Sacred Landscapes, is one of the very best written on the conflict, interweaving the personal and the political. It is also deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians and their attachment to the land. He defines the Zionist enterprise bluntly as a "supplanting settler society" but also warns that using labels is a way of shutting down debate....
In this situation, the concept of two states is misleading. "What does it mean, a state? It's a solution for less than one quarter of the Palestinian people on an area that is less than 10% of historic Palestine." Palestinian leaders who are ready to accept this "are a bunch of traitors to their own cause". Ramallah, prosperous headquarters of Abbas's Palestinian Authority and the recipient of millions of dollars in foreign aid, is a "bubble in which those who steal the money can enjoy themselves".....
"The peace process," Benvenisti concludes, "is more than a waste of time. It is an illusion and it perpetuates an illusion. You can engage in a peace process and have negotiations and conferences - which have no connection whatsoever to reality on the ground.""
Ian Black, Middle East editor, in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 April 2010
"Meron Benvenisti has been talking, writing and arguing about the Israel-Palestinian conflict for much of the last 40 years. Now aged 76 he is as forceful, articulate and unconventional as ever – and convinced that President Barack Obama is doomed to fail in his attempt to cajole the two sides to hammer out a solution at the negotiating table....
"The whole notion of a Palestinian state now, in 2010, is a sham," he told the Guardian at his Jerusalem home as the US intensified efforts to get the long-stalled peace process moving again. "The entire discourse is wrong. By continuing that discourse you perpetuate the status quo. The struggle for the two-state solution is obsolete."....
Benvenisti's book, Sacred Landscapes, is one of the very best written on the conflict, interweaving the personal and the political. It is also deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians and their attachment to the land. He defines the Zionist enterprise bluntly as a "supplanting settler society" but also warns that using labels is a way of shutting down debate....
In this situation, the concept of two states is misleading. "What does it mean, a state? It's a solution for less than one quarter of the Palestinian people on an area that is less than 10% of historic Palestine." Palestinian leaders who are ready to accept this "are a bunch of traitors to their own cause". Ramallah, prosperous headquarters of Abbas's Palestinian Authority and the recipient of millions of dollars in foreign aid, is a "bubble in which those who steal the money can enjoy themselves".....
"The peace process," Benvenisti concludes, "is more than a waste of time. It is an illusion and it perpetuates an illusion. You can engage in a peace process and have negotiations and conferences - which have no connection whatsoever to reality on the ground.""
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