‘One state reality’ is now a liberal Zionist talking point
Israeli military vehicles are seen behind the apartheid wall in the West Bank city of Tulkarm on 5 June 2023
Phiilip Weiss writes in Mondoweiss:
Fifteen years ago pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. started talking about the “one-state reality.” Israel had put so many Jewish colonists in the West Bank that it had destroyed any possibility of creating a Palestinian state. In fact, it had established apartheid.
Since then, the number of Jewish colonists has nearly doubled –to about 700,000 — and finally, this spring, the “one state reality” became a talking point in the U.S. mainstream. The Council on Foreign Relations published a major piece with that title in its journal Foreign Affairs, burying the two-state solution and all but stating that Israel practices apartheid. Former UN head Ban Ki-moon said so yesterday after a visit to the region with the Elders.
I have seen and heard compelling evidence of a one-state reality, with systemic impunity for violators of international law and human rights.
And there’s been an echo. Liberal Zionists are also using the term “one-state reality.” They are deeply frustrated by 25 years of Israeli governments that have been dedicated to the settlement project. And they are frustrated by the U.S. government’s failure to do anything to stop the settlement project– including Joe Biden’s passivity as Benjamin Netanyahu plans yet more illegal Jewish colonies.
“Words are not enough to curb Israeli government policies,” Americans for Peace Now says. “The administration has numerous tools in its relationship with Israel which it could use to express its displeasure in consequential deeds rather than in ineffective rhetoric.”
In pushing for U.S. action to save Israel from itself, these pro-Israel advocates are finally naming the reality.
At the Israel Policy Forum, Michael Koplow fully endorses the Foreign Affairs article’s description of an “unequal one-state reality,” which he sees, fearfully, as leading to a bloody struggle for equal rights. Koplow says the U.S. must get “serious” about taking on the Netanyahu government. The thrust of his attack is on other American Jews, the rightwing Israel lobby, for enabling the Netanyahu government’s “growing prioritization of settlements before everything.”