Short version: the problem with Israel and the occupied territories is that they're not enough like Lebanon or Bosnia. If you're going to advocate for a one state solution it seems like your task is to explain why it wouldn't devolve into a sectarian disaster; it's not like this is some novel idea that you're the first to suggest. The PLO spent 20 years demanding a unitary, secular, democratic state without success. If seven years of negotiations and 5+ years of terrorism couldn't deliver a satisfactory two-state deal, how is the Palestinian leadership going to achieve a goal that is much more objectionable to Israeli Jews? In practice what you're advocating for is indefinite occupation and editorial-writing, but I guess this isn't a problem since only an insignificant fraction of Palestinians live in occupied territory.

Sorry pal (no pun intended). Good, surprisingly objective piece except for two paragraphs and they happened to be the most substantive. It is absolutely inconceivable for any Israeli administration to allow demographic factors destroy the Jewish State of Israel. There can always be a peaceful Israeli-Arab population in Israel; they are welcome to say. But a two-state solution is the only solution.

A two-state solution is necessary as a political solution because of the necessary legitimacy and resources/infrastructure to create a new state. Israel will certainly not abrogate any of the pre-requisites of Israel as a nation: A (1) Jewish (2) Democratic (3) in the land of Israel. That is what was envisioned and its the reality that no sane Israeli leader would back-peddle from in final-status negotiations, which MUST occur for the status quo to be altered. Otherwise, its just a bunch of non-binding resolutions telling a country who has tried to make unilateral compromises (2005 Gaza Withdrawal, 2000 Lebanon) to only see a manifestation of evil, rather than a cessation of violence. That Israel withdrew in 2005 as an act of good faith, receiving nothing in return and that it only facilitated Hamas's consolidation of power is objectively beyond reproach. In sum, a one state solution isn't palatable to either side and your being silly if you say otherwise, Professor. So lets just hope something can good can come from the resignation from Abbas. I'm pullin for Salam Fayyad. Barghouti would be the best of a few evils.
.

Since the Six-Day War of June 1967, the two-state solution, based on the concept of "land for peace," has been the central focus of almost all diplomatic efforts to resolve this tragedy. But because of Israel's unrelenting occupation and settlement project in the West Bank, the long-fought-for two-state solution has finally, tragically, become unworkable. Consider:

•In 1993, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat famously shook hands on the White House lawn, there were 109,000 Israelis living in settlements across the West Bank (not including Jerusalem). Today there are 275,000, in more than 230 settlements and strategically placed "outposts" designed to cement a permanent Jewish presence on Palestinian land.

•The biggest Israeli settlement outside East Jerusalem, Ariel, is now home to nearly 20,000 settlers. Their home lies one third of the way inside the West Bank, yet the Israeli "security barrier" veers well inside the occupied territory to wrap Ariel in its embrace. The settlement's leaders proclaim confidently that they are "here to stay," and embark on frequent missions to seek new waves of American Jews to move to the settlement.

•A massive Israeli infrastructure to serve and protect the settlements – military posts, surveillance towers, and settlers-only "bypass roads" that allow Israelis easy access to prayer in Jerusalem or the seaside in Tel Aviv – has cut the West Bank into tiny pieces, fragmenting Palestinian life.

•To maintain separation between West Bank Arabs and West Bank Jews, Israel has erected more than 625 roadblocks, checkpoints, and other barriers – a 70 percent increase since 2005 in a land the size of Delaware, the second-smallest state. Israelis rarely encounter such obstacles, but Palestinians seeking to travel between villages and towns must seek permits, and even then, a short journey can take hours.

•Israel's "suburbs" in Arab East Jerusalem, home now to nearly 200,000 Jews, form a concrete ring, isolating the would-be Palestinian capital from the rest of the West Bank. It is therefore increasingly difficult to imagine how a Palestinian president would govern from a capital that is sealed off from the people of his nation.

These massive changes on the ground – the majority made since the initiation of the Oslo "peace process" – have, after 41 years, rendered the two-state solution all but impossible. Workaround "fixes"– land swaps, consolidated settlements, and networks of roads and bridges to funnel Palestinians under and around the Jewish West Bank presence – have become increasingly hard to imagine. The goal, after all, is a "viable, contiguous" Palestine, not one cut up by the visions of Israeli engineers in order to maintain an everlasting Jewish presence on Arab land.

Adding to the increasing impracticality of a two-state solution is the stubborn presence of the settlers themselves, some of whom have pledged violence should soldiers come to evict them. Their religious fervor, and their formidable numbers – dozens of times that of the Gaza settlers removed in 2005 – suggest such threats are not idle.

Israeli President Shimon Peres warned in London recently that such an "evacuation" could trigger a civil war in Israel. Weakening the two-state option even further has been the rain of Hamas rockets from Gaza, and Israel's outsized response, which have placed basic necessities and reconstruction well above peacemaking on the list of priorities.

Mr. Mitchell would do well to listen to people who are thinking beyond two-state options, and foster an openness and creativity absent from American diplomacy since the beginning of this tragedy 60 years ago.

He will continue to hear from former US negotiators, such as Aaron Miller, author of "The Much Too Promised Land," that two states represent "the least bad alternative." Indeed, some of the nightmare futures – the continuation of the status quo, which is growing inexorably into apartheid; or, expulsion of West Bank Palestinians to Jordan, which is already being seriously discussed among Israelis – are completely unacceptable. So is a one-state solution, to Israelis, which they insist would mean the end of the Jewish state.

Yet it was no less a man than Albert Einstein who believed in "sympathetic cooperation" between "the two great Semitic peoples" and who insisted that "no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." A relative handful of Israelis and Palestinians are beginning to survey the proverbial new ground, considering what Einstein's theories would mean in practice. They might take heart from Einstein's friend Martin Buber, the great philosopher who advocated a binational state of "joint sovereignty," with "complete equality of rights between the two partners," based on "the love of their homeland that the two peoples share."

The two-state approach is flawed on two major counts. First, Israel's extensive colonization of the territories it seized in the 1967 war has made the creation of a Palestinian state there impossible. Israel was offering nothing more than "a mini-state of cantons," as Palestinian Authority negotiators recently complained. This leaves Israel in control of more than half of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem. With the Israeli position largely unchallenged by the international community, the only route to a two-state settlement will be through pressure on the weaker Palestinian side.

This leads to the second flaw: The two-state solution reflects only Israeli interests. It proposes to partition historic Palestine – an area that includes present-day Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem – massively and inequitably in favor of Israel as a Jewish state.

By definition, this rules out possibility of Palestinian return except to the tiny, segmented West Bank territory that Israeli colonization has created, and to an overcrowded Gaza, which cannot accommodate the returnees. Thus the "peace process" is really about making the Palestinians concede their basic rights to accommodate Israel's demands.

It also panders to Israel's paranoia over "demography," an ambiguous term that refers to the morally repugnant wish to preserve Israel's Jewish ethnic purity.

But the two-state solution's biggest flaw is that it ignores the main cause of the conflict: the Palestinian dispossession of 1948.

Today more than 5 million dispersed refugees and exiles long to return. It is fashionable to ignore this, as if Palestinians have less right to repatriation than the displaced Kosovars so ardently championed by NATO in 1999. As recognized by the Western powers then, the right to return was fundamental to peacemaking in the Bosnian crisis. It should be no less so in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet the present peace process aims to preserve a colonialist Israel and make Palestinian dispossession permanent. This is not only illegal and unjust, it is also short-sighted. As the early Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky warned in 1923, native resistance to dispossession is irrepressible and Zionism would only survive with constant force to quell it.

Israel has heeded the lesson well. With an oppressive military occupation ruling over the West Bank and Gaza, it has herded Palestinians into ghettoes and prisons, aiming to paralyze any resistance. The response to this brutality is misery, expressed by some in violence against Israelis, and continuing instability in the region. American collusion with Israel has led to growing anti-Americanism among Arabs and Muslims.

If the aim of the peace process is to resolve the conflict properly, then we must tackle the root of the problem: the creation of an exclusive state for one people in another people's territory. The strife this caused will end only when the Palestinian rights to repatriation and compensation are addressed. This cannot happen in a situation of Israeli hegemony.

A different approach that puts the principles of equity and sharing above dominance and oppression is needed: a one-state solution. In such a state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation. Resources could be shared, rather than hoarded by Israel. Jerusalem could be a city for both. Above all, the dispossessed Palestinians could finally return home.

Indulging Israel is a dangerous folly that postpones solution. It harms Palestinians, the region, and long-term Western interests. It even harms Israelis, who are less secure in Israel than anywhere else. Palestinian and Arab support for the two-state proposal only reflects resignation to Israel's superior power and fear of US reprisal, not conviction. The two-state proposal is unstable and cannot replace a durable solution based on equity, justice, and dignity.

A decade ago, the unitary state idea was ridiculed. Today, as the two-state solution recedes, a one-state solution is the stuff of mainstream discussion. Now it must become mainstream policy, too.

Salee Makdisi proposes " creation of a single, democratic, and secular state in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians live as equals." He's right that the two-stater's been a non-starter from pretty much the (non-)start. Edward Said thought that way. The problem here is that Makdisi's vision is too rosy and Said's too loaded against the Israelis. The way things have been standing these past decades is that there eventually transpire the one-state solution. The question is only whether the one state will Israeli or Arab. Any bets?

Oddly enough, the Palestinian's best hope at this point is to play the waiting game. Israel's ultra right ultra orthodox are fast out-growing secular and there is growing friction bordering on violence. At this point the internal threats to Israel are far more ominous than the external and it may well come to pass that the ultra orthodox drive out secular jews. If that happens, the Israel experiment is over.

Scenes from US history if Hillary were helping Martin Luther King with the civil rights movement:

Hillary: "And I would just like to commend the good people of Selma for graciously allowing black people to ride an unprecedented one seat closer to the front of the bus (as long as all of the white people on the bus agree) for at least the next month".

The one state solution is the only one that will ever work

A different approach that puts the principles of equity and sharing above dominance and oppression is needed: a one-state solution. In such a state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation. Resources could be shared, rather than hoarded by Israel. Jerusalem could be a city for both. Above all, the dispossessed Palestinians could finally return home.

Indulging Israel is a dangerous folly that postpones solution. It harms Palestinians, the region, and long-term Western interests. It even harms Israelis, who are less secure in Israel than anywhere else. Palestinian and Arab support for the two-state proposal only reflects resignation to Israel's superior power and fear of US reprisal, not conviction. The two-state proposal is unstable and cannot replace a durable solution based on equity, justice, and dignity.

A decade ago, the unitary state idea was ridiculed. Today, as the two-state solution recedes, a one-state solution is the stuff of mainstream discussion. Now it must become mainstream policy, too.

http://nyunews.com/opinion/2009/oct/21/leonard/

Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand recently spoke at NYU about his newly translated book "The Invention of the Jewish People," a book that challenges conventional wisdom and deeply entrenched myths about the foundations of the state of Israel.

Among the revelations in the book is the fact that the ancient kingdoms of Solomon and David did not exist as the Bible describes. He also challenges the myth of the Exodus of ancient Jews from Egypt, noting "the Ancient Egyptians kept meticulous records of every event ... yet there is not a single mention of any 'children of Israel' who lived in Egypt." He further points out that an exodus from Egypt would have involved moving across the Sinai peninsula into lands Egypt ruled over — thus escaping from Egypt to ... Egypt.

He also describes the process of proselytizing and conversion that led to whole populations converting to Judaism, thus explaining the dispersal of the religion throughout Europe and Asia.

Sand writes in his introduction, "I don't think books can change the world, but when the world begins to change it looks for different books." This book is an important contribution to the debate on the future of the Middle East. I sat down with professor Sand last Friday to talk about "Invention" while he was in New York.

What moved you to write this book?

I wrote the book because something in me wanted to look through things toward the truth — knowing that I cannot arrive at absolute truth. As a historian, I have an obligation to discover the truth of the past — I am paid for it. I remember being shocked the first time I heard that the Exile from Egypt was not true. Hearing that David and Solomon's kingdoms didn't exist. It shocked me so much that I decided in some way, when I have time, I will need to focus on Jewish history.

In Israel, in every university, there are two departments of history. There is the department of general history and the department of Jewish history. Because I work in the department of general history, I have no right to occupy myself with Jewish history. When I got a full professorship, I decided I had nothing to lose. Before that, I did write articles that were critical of the Israeli attitude toward Palestinians, but I never really took on Jewish history as a subject. As I explain in the preface to the book, living near all these archives, leaving this history only to the Zionist historians, was too much. I decided after I got my full professorship to write what I wanted to write.

You open with an examination of nationalism and the various ways it is defined. Can you talk about how that applies to what has come to be called the "Jewish people"?

If I use the phrase "French people", if I use the phrase "Italian people," if I use the phrase "American people" — I cannot, by the same criteria, use the phrase "Jewish people" because thinking about Jews in history, I thought that Jews did not have any secular practical norms in common culturally. They didn't speak the same language, they didn't eat the same foods, they didn't have the same songs. The thing that bound Jews was something more important. It was religion, which in pre-modern time was the most important thing in some levels of life.

If you use the word American people, and you know it is something constructed in the last 200 years, slowly with a cultural basis common to all Americans — more or less — or the Italians, or the French, how can you, by the same criteria, apply the word Jewish people?

The tendency of most of the people is to say that — speaking of the Jewish people — they have the same origin. This is not a reason to call a human group a people. This is a mistake because there is not a human group that has the same origin in the world. But we are lazy. So we think if a human group had a similar origin, it is a people.

You make the point that the Bible "was transferred from the shelf of theological tracts to the history section. The more nationalistic the author, the more he treats the Bible as history — as the birth certificate attesting to the common origin of the 'people.' " Could you talk about that?

The Bible is in fact a library — it is a number of books — that you can separate completely. It's as though you have come up to a shelf with a lot of books and you call it "a book."

It is astonishing to think about the fact that the Jews [historically] did not read the Bible. In the Yeshivas — the rabbinical schools — they did not work with the text of the Bible. They can only read interpretations.

The real Jews in history took the Pentateuch — the Torah — and they read it Saturday morning in the synagogue. Three categories of human beings seriously read the Bible. The Karaist [a Jewish sect of the eighth, ninth and 10th centuries], the Protestants — who are the first to treat the Bible as a historical book, more so than Catholics — and the Zionists.

The Zionists were the last ones to transform a very important theological work into a historical book. In Israel, a child, before he starts learning history, learns the Bible — and I'm speaking of the non-religious schools in Israel. I was introduced to the Bible when I was seven years old. In every school, for a few hours — not religious schools, secular schools — you are taught the Bible as history.

When I was younger I was sure that the Exile had occurred; Jews were expelled from their land, began wandering around the world, they arrived in Moscow, did a U-turn and came back to their land. It's not just me as a historian that had internalized this view; most people believed this.

By chance I read a very short article that took on the question of the Exile by a historian, Israel Jacob Yuval, who said the Exile is a Christian notion. He thought that the reason there are populations of Jews throughout the world is because, at some point, they started to emigrate. But it was only one article.

I went to the library. I was sure I would find thousands of books about the subject, because we have so many books about what has happened to the Jewish community. The Exile is inscribed on our money. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, a very great Israeli writer, is quoted on a 50 shekel note saying that we were exiled by [the Roman emperor] Titus after the destruction of the Second Temple.

In the end I found only one book on the historical exile. There was not one serious historical work about the act of Romans that dispersed the Jews [after the fall of the Second Temple]. They took prisoners, they killed a lot of people, but they did not exile the Jews.

Two questions jumped to my mind. What happened to the people if they weren't expelled? And how come there ended up being so many Jews in the world, especially in Eastern Europe?

I am a modernist, a contemporary historian, but I forced myself to read a lot of material from antiquity. Like a lot of readers of the Bible, I was shocked by this sudden discovery. What shocked me much more was that all of this was known. I had not discovered anything new. I was only organizing the knowledge differently.

What was your first thought on that realization? That you've discovered something in total contrast to everything you thought?

I was afraid of myself. I remember hesitating, even if I was a full professor, and don't have to be afraid of anything [about my job]. I wasn't sure about myself. I went to historians of Jewish antiquity and asked them what happened? Was there an exile or wasn't there an exile?

They answered me saying, Shlomo, it was 'not exactly an exile ... but you know we never said it was an exile. You see, after the revolt, people left, they were upset ... they said many different things,' but they repeated, 'We never said it was an exile.'

From the point of view of diffusion of knowledge in society it struck me that you have an elite, a very small elite, of specialists that know the Exile didn't exist, but no historians are working on the subject.

Then I understood that this has something to do with collective memory. Once upon a time in the United States there were very few people that knew there was a genocide against the Indians. A few historians knew details, but it wasn't diffused in the collective memory. Sixty years ago in the U.S., I don't think most people knew about the genocide of Indians. Similarly, 60 years ago, French people believed their ancestors were Gauls.

What is tragic with our history is that today Americans know they are composed from a lot of things; they are not only an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant, white nation. It's deeper now. Some people may want that, but most people understand that the country is made up of a very rich, very large gamut of origins. In the U.S. it's clear. In the 19th century, a lot of people believed that the real American nation had to be Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and white. Today your president, while Protestant, is not white.

What happened with us is that most people believed the Exile happened and they believed they are the direct descendants of their Hebrew ancestors.

So if the Judeans — it's not Jew because a Jew is someone that believes in the Jewish god. I'm speaking of the Judeans — were not expelled, what happened to them?

They become proselytizers. First they do it by force like all the other monarchies, forced their neighbors to become Jews or to leave the land. Some were already circumcised. Josephus Flavius [Jewish Roman historian] writes about this. When Judea stopped being an independent kingdom the proselytism continued. The proselytizing began with Hellenisation; I give the metaphor that Judaism mounted the Hellenistic eagle.

Then the Roman world destroyed boundaries and borders between tribes, between cities and created a circulation of culture and created conditions for diffusing Jewishness all over the Mediterranean.

Monotheism has a few advantages over paganism. Without getting into a long explanation, it did propose paradise as well as other moral aspects. As a result Judaism became very popular in the Roman world, it started to be diffused among all the classes, from slaves to masters. And every master that became a Jew forced his slaves to become Jews.

It was not only the conversion of individuals and families, there was also a big conversion of kingdoms, like the Himyar kingdom, in what is Saudi Arabia and Yemen today. Like the Berber kingdom before the Arabs arrived. And like the Khazar kingdom, which no one doubts, that in the 8th Century became a Jewish kingdom.

The Khazars were not a people. Before modern times I am very careful not to use the word people. Under the kingdom of the Khazars lived a lot of tribes: Turks, Slavs, etc. I think that more or less a big part of them accepted Judaism and became the demographic base of the spread of Judaism in East European countries.

You make the point that there was no push for archaeology in these areas.

Not at all, no pursuing of linguistics or archaeology, because they are afraid to prove that Jews are composed of so many origins, that they are so rich in color, they are so different in origins than the anti-Semitic caricature.

What have been the various reactions to the book?

This morning I was on the Internet and this guy said I want to eliminate Israel because I'm criticizing the nation. I don't accept that. I knew some people would behave like this. I have also gotten death threats.

The reception has been varied. In Israel, the reception in the media was wonderful.

The Zionist historians reacted very badly. They are right, because I questioned all of what they are doing. I understand their emotions, their attacks, their aggressiveness, much more than I accept this stuff on the Internet sites that accuse me of anti-Semitism, or negation, of denial and all this.

There has also been a positive reaction that has somewhat surprised me. I've gotten hundreds of letters, most of them are very positive. I think most people who hate me — who hate the book — do not write letters.

I have to agree with Makdisi's argument. Under the Oslo accords, the establishment of the PA made it look like a Palestinian state was a near certainty. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bait-and-switch. The PA assumed responsibility for the Israeli occupation, whereas before the Israelis had to devote time and resources to maintaining the West Bank. All the while, the Israelis poured more and more settlers into the West Bank, rendering the PA effectively toothless. Now, while the effort to build the PA as a democracy is a noble one, that too is fundamentally flawed. When Hamas won the parliamentary elections, in what was deemed a fair and free election, the Israelis and the West (as well as a good number of Arab states) refused to accept the outcome. So really, what was the point of the PA? They are a non-government that rules over a non-state with limited authority. Yet the Israelis have managed to pin all of the failings of the peace process on the PA.

So what's going to come of this? Will the PA evaporate with Abbas's departure? This would almost certainly signal the march toward a one-state solution. As much as I do admire Aaron David Miller and others who argue that this is the least bad, I do agree with Chris_T that it fails to address the root of the problem. It's always seemed too much of a temporary solution, and disregards the legitimate claims of both people to the same piece of land. I also find it ironic that the people who fear the one-state solution the most, the Israelis, are trying to do everything possible to derail the two-state solution. They haven't even been able to stop settlement construction, let alone consider the possibility that they must then evacuate and give that land back to the Palestinians under any final status agreement. They must think they can have their cake and eat it, too.

I don't want to engage with this despicable story-teller who signs this article. There are some - fortunately - who see through his devious dhimmi-status-peddling "alternative" which of course means the demise of the Jewish state. Try again, looser. I would however, for all intents and purposes turn to the editors at Foreign Policy, since just for this occasion I registered here: can we actually expect a counter-opinion here in the very near future from a pro-Israeli source who makes plain for all to see the failure of the never-existed Palestinians to build their state and takes them to task? Or will this online paper consigned to the fate of the hundreds of other sorry ideologically-driven agitpropaganda manifestos by missing their highest obligation to offer us a balanced and reasoned debate? One that is hopefully free of genocidal rejectionism that is so masterfully peddled by this individual here.

Why are you not sincere and honest and tell for the whole world who listen that you are a devious little anti-Semite who want to genocide-away of Israel's Jews by the "Palestinians" who would subjugate them in the future by their sheer rabbit-like multiplying and demographic "victory"? Why the devious pseudo-intellectual lies of a negationist of an anti-Semite? And we all know, anti-Semitism is racism. There are people who see through bored and less-than-sufficiently original extremists even if they might come from Ivy League?

Yes, and they {native Americans; Indians} would be perfectly right. You are an interloper - just the same as many of the so-called Palestinians are. Immigrants from neighbouring lands and states during the Mandate times just as many Jews are).Study some history!

And we don't have to witness the slaughtering of trees to promote re-runs of failed ideas.

You would think that at the very least, someone would have something original to say.

But from professor Makdisi on downward, I've read nothing more than a rehash of stale Arab demands on Israel.

One state solution? Sure, why not. Jordan is right across the river, with plenty of space and a Palestinian demographic majority. Knock yourselves out.

But if you think that Israeli Jews are going to accept a state where Israel dissapears, and Jews no longer have a right and ability to determine their own destiny, well, I think someone has been feeding you some Qat.

As of now, the Arab and Muslim world have a piss poor track record in playground sharing and playing nicely with others.

22 Arab states currently exist, and the largest Jewish population now is the several thousand in the aging community of Morocco (which has its own ethnic cleansing issue and 'Berlin Wall', the berm, in Western Sahara). Similar circumstances for the slightly larger populations of Turkey and Iran.

Sadly, its not just a "Jewish problem". Christians have been fleeing the Middle east for decades, whether its Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq as a result of anti-Christian violence.

Meanwhile, Shia have fought Sunni in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria and are repressed in Saudia Arabia.

The Muslim Kurds, still yearn for a state and have been repeatedly been told to shove off from Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

India and Pakistan . . . 20 million person swap... nuff said.

But for some reason, its all going to work out wonderfully in Israel. Even though Jews felt they needed to dig up their dead when they left Gaza because of the threat to the remains in the cemeteries.

Meanwhile, taking Scottgoose's thesis one step further about how the Palestinians don't have a unified leadership. let's remember how the last political issue was solved, by throwing political opponents off roofs in Gaza.

Just to leave with one final thought. When Israel brought up the idea of a land swap, in which some of the key settlement blocks would be tranferred to Israel, and the Arab Triangle of towns and villages would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli Arabs, those supposedly repressed citizens, were the ones who rejected the proposal. Remember, they weren't giong to lose their homes or lands, only a transfer of citizenship. They wanted no parts of it, even though they would be free Palestinian citizens.

Why not negotiate an exchange of Gilad Shalit for Marwan Barghouti so that the latter can run for PA president, unite the West Bank and Gaza (but not exclude Hamas), and negotiate a good solution for Palestinians that they themselves want, not the Americans.

http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/

Converts to Colonizers?

By Gabriel Piterberg, in New Left Review 59 Sept/Oct 2009

The foundational myths of the state of Israel rest on the notion that, throughout history, the Jews have been descended from a single ethno-biological core of Judean exiles who had been removed from their ancestral lands in the first two centuries CE. Shlomo Sand’s [The Invention of the Jewish People] sets out to refute such claims of organic ethnic continuity, arguing that the idea that the Jews had been exiled across the Mediterranean world was a creation of the Christian Church—mass displacement as punishment and constant reminder of who is Israel Veritas—which was conveniently embraced by 19th-century Jewish scholars. Their narratives of a centuries-long Galut, ‘exile’, and by extension the Zionist project of ‘returning’ to reclaim ancient territories, are based on historical fictions.

Against these, Sand offers an alternative history in which the striking demographic growth of the Jews in the Hellenistic Mediterranean was the product not of mass exile, but of an energetic drive of proselytism and conversion that had begun under the Hasmonean Kingdom in the second century BCE and lasted till the fourth century CE. Conversions were also, Sand holds, the source of the large Jewish populations at the margins of the Hellenistic world—Arabia, North Africa and the area between the Black and Caspian Seas—as Judaizing currents met repression in Christian territories and fanned out into the largely pagan lands beyond. Sand offers a cautious endorsement to the thesis, earlier popularized by Arthur Koestler, that East European Jewry—what he and others call the Yiddish Nation—originated not from any eastward migration of ‘German’ Jews, themselves supposedly descended from pure Judean exiles, but from the Khazars, Jewish converts whose empire on the Volga–Don steppe disappears from the historical record in the 13th century. This contention has far-reaching implications, for it is the Yiddish Nation that is in many ways the real foundation for the two largest and most vociferous Jewish communities of the past half-century—the Israeli and the American. [click to read full article]

Scottgoose writes:"a two-state solution is absolutely necessary, because a one-state solution is a formula that guarantees chaos. " He may well be right. But if the Arabs "lose out" it would provide a chance to solve the attendant problem in ways temporarily forseen by the entente during World War I, namely the fomation of a Hashemite kingdom conisting of the Hashemite parts of what's now Saudi Arabia, central (ie.Sunni) Iraq Syria/Lebanon, and Jordan. The new composite needn't turn out to be a monarchy--but, why not? If the Jews lose, they could either elect to form a millet within Hashemitistan or take over Canada. The two Canadians could then emigrate to Venezuela or Cuba.

The sephardic Jews (the only Jews with some viable claim to land in the Levant -- the rest were converts -- see above), are genetically the same as Arabs.

There are no chosen people.

Jewish women and Arab men and Arab women and Jewish men have been cross breading to such an extent that they are the same people.

Thus the one state solution is sensible.

Don't believe me? Read the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics

Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians

* Robin McKie, science editor

A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal.

Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away.

Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma.

'I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.'

British geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer added: 'If the journal didn't like the paper, they shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has appeared before acting like this?'

The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been written to libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'. Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked from the journal's editorial board.

Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told subscribers that the society is 'offended and embarrassed'.

The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East.

In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited.

Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude.

But the journal, having accepted the paper earlier this year, now claims the article was politically biased and was written using 'inappropriate' remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its editor told the journal Nature last week that she was threatened by mass resignations from members if she did not retract the article.

Arnaiz-Villena says he has not seen a single one of the accusations made against him, despite being promised the opportunity to look at the letters sent to the journal.

He accepts he used terms in the article that laid him open to criticism. There is one reference to Jewish 'colonists' living in the Gaza strip, and another that refers to Palestinian people living in 'concentration' camps.

'Perhaps I should have used the words settlers instead of colonists, but really, what is the difference?' he said.

'And clearly, I should have said refugee, not concentration, camps, but given that I was referring to settlements outside of Israel - in Syria and Lebanon - that scarcely makes me anti-Jewish. References to the history of the region, the ones that are supposed to be politically offensive, were taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other text books.'

In the wake of the journal's actions, and claims of mass protests about the article, several scientists have now written to the society to support Arnaiz-Villena and to protest about their heavy-handedness.

One of them said: 'If Arnaiz-Villena had found evidence that Jewish people were genetically very special, instead of ordinary, you can be sure no one would have objected to the phrases he used in his article. This is a very sad business.'

I find it mind boggling that right now, with a huge international push to take negotiations for a two state solution seriously - including "Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194." The Arab Peace Initiative http://www.al-bab.com/Arab/docs/league/peace02.htm that pro-Palestinian academics here in America opt to bash Abbas and swat away support for a two state solution.

Yes Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land, bulldoze Palestinian homes, and build exclusively Jewish settlements in violation of international law... so how exactly is a one state solution which erases the illegal occupation aspect of Israel's Jews-preferred settlement projects and investments going to play out ?

Will a one state solution dominated by Zionists who know how to empower their leadership and how to play every story to get international support for their Jews-preferred plans really welcome home the Palestinians refugees? According to reports I've read many elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel live in dire poverty- and yet magical thinking convinces us that Palestinian refugees returning to what is now Israel will be better off?

Yes, I really do believe with every fiber of my being that the Palestinian refugees right of return to original homes and lands is an inalienable legal, moral and natural right- but I also believe in the importance of supporting an option called Palestine with all the positive energy and support we can muster: Not all Palestinian refugees will want to live as second class citizens in Israel and it simply is not fair to force them to become Israelis.

Thanks for confirming my reasonable assumption of you as a racist anti-Semitic loon. As such you have no credibility, the pathetic rubbish peddled here by equally despicable negationist anti-Semites (Jewish and non-Jewish) notwithstanding. Dream on, hater.

MG disagrees over on The Mantle and says Abbas bowing out is bad news, that Hamas will fill the vacuum, and that chances for peace look increasingly dim

http://www.mantlethought.org/content/mahmoud-abbas-all-or-nothing-peace-deal