Palestinian rejection of the Partition Plan was rational - it was never a traumatic event.
By Joseph Massad
Al-Jazeera
".....The pragmatists' compulsion to declare a state yet again and to partition Palestine one more time is another attempt to defeat the struggle for one state, or effective decolonisation in any form. Whether a Palestinian "state" is admitted to the General Assembly or not, this compulsion to re-enact and repeat the partition plan is doomed to the same fate as its predecessors, as it will not lead to the "two-state solution". Its failure, however, will be nothing short of another boon for the goal of a decolonised and democratic one state and for Palestinian liberation."
1 comment:
The ongoing arguments of the one-state vs the two state solution are beginning to get divisive with all this ridiculous talk of ‘madness’. My own view is that we need a ‘staged strategy’ with the two state concept posited as the primary stage but certainly not the end game and with the ultimate aim of an eventual one state solution. Once the two-state ‘stage’ scenario has been reached it is far simpler then to let the twin processes of democracy and demography take their course in Israel over the next few decades. At the point where the Palestinians are an effective majority in Israel then I can envisage a seamless transition to a one state scenario by consent between the two democracies. But to get to the primary stage it is clear that we need a comprehensive strategy combining a robust ‘core’ resistance on the ground, a continuation of an equally robust BDS-like presence internationally and a tough negotiating strategy with the Israelis. It is precisely this type of strategy that drove Rabin, by his own admission, to the negotiating table in the early 1990s although Arafat threw away all the advantages by curtailing the resistance and adopting a supine negotiating strategy. Quite apart from that success, the vast literature on asymmetric conflicts in general over the last century shows that the success rate is far higher for weaker parties than one might suppose. Instead of pursuing the obvious, we have a resistance strategy that is not fit for purpose and delicious polemics to match. There is no difference between a two state and the one state approach, it’s a question of sequence.
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