Analysis

I've written a lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the past few weeks. There are a thousand reasons why it's worthy of interest, study and thought, but my reasons are very specific.

Looking at both Israeli and American politics, I see a real potential for the erosion of democracy and individual liberties. Indeed, it has already begun. For sure, there are many countries across the globe that are much worse. They are ruled by dictators and oppress their people. This is indeed horrible. I choose to focus on Israel and America because both countries are backward-sliding democracies. In a previous post today, I mentioned that a poll done in Israel showed that almost half of respondents thought that Israeli Arabs should be denied voting rights. In America, we don't have to look beyond the USA PATRIOT act to see individual liberties and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms being diminished.

Virtually every serious proposal for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict centers on the creation of two independent and sovereign states -- an Israeli state and a Palestinian one. I have done a lot of thinking about this idea, and I came to the conclusion a long time ago that it was neither possible nor desirable.

The first problem with the two-state solution is that the Palestinian state would be totally inviable. Gaza and the West Bank, which would become the Palestinian state, are too small, too densely populated and they aren't even contiguous. If it were possible for Palestinians to maintain a state on that territory, they would have done so by now. They have no industry, abject poverty, scarce water and almost universal unemployment. These are not conditions under which it is possible to establish a state. Poverty and unemployment create an atmosphere of civil unrest. The Palestinian Authority is powerless to correct the problems, and the resulting power vacuum makes it possible for groups like Hamas to grow in power.

In Part II of this series, I tried to explain how I think of the Palestinians. In this part, I'll try to do something similar explaining how I think of Israel, the Jewish state. I should mention that in this issue, I summarily reject all religious claims to land on all sides. They are simply nonsensical, unconstructive and irrelevant. Similarly, I reject all claims of who was in the land "first." People lived in what is presently Israel before both Judaism and Islam existed. Borders change over time -- through war, the rise and fall of empires and so forth. A serious proposal to return every land to its "original" inhabitants cannot be constructed. I consider both the "here first" and religious arguments to be illogical and irrelevant and won't discuss them here.

In Part I of this series, I described why criticism of Israel neither can, nor should be construed as anti-semitism. I think it's important to define terms and assumptions before embarking on this kind of examination of the Middle East that has the potential to be controversial. This brings me to this segment, in which I try to figure out exactly who we're referring to when we say "Palestinians" in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is one of the points where the power differential between the Israelis and the Palestinians is most evident. Israel is a sovereign nation, and it has elected leaders who make decisions and act in the name of the state. In contrast, there is no Palestinian state. There is very little organization or communication between distant groups of people, and there are many active leadership heirarchies. Some of these groups are terrorist in nature (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.) and some are not. However, because of the lack of a sovereign state with an official government, none of these groups including the Palestinian Authority can claim to act as representatives for all Palestinians.

I haven't waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a while, mostly because in relative terms, not much has been happening. Sharon's government is looking mighty shaky with today's resignation of two ministers which eliminates Sharon's majority (New York Times). I have written in the past about what I see as the failures of the so called "two-state" solution and why I don't believe it's desirable, practical or even possible. Until recently, I had never read or heard anyone else agree with that assessment. However, listening to Air America this past week, I discovered a scholar who agrees with me. This entry begins a series of entries I will be writing about this subject over the next few days. I don't feel that I can do it justice without taking a long time to think about everything, and in any case if I were to do it in a single entry it would be far too long. In order to engage in this discussion it is necessary to be critical of all sides. While it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the Palestinian Authority/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Hiz B'Allah/etc., critics of Israel have found themselves unfairly labeled as either a) anti-semites or b) "self-hating" depending on whether they are Jewish or not. This first part of the series addresses this serious problem in the discourse.