Palestinian leaders have responded to Sharon’s threats to unilaterally impose the boundaries of a Palestinian ‘Homeland’ with the promise to call for a “single Arab-Jewish state.” Colin Powell dismissed the idea of a one-state solution (although he opposes a two-state solution for Iraq), saying:
“We’re committed to a two-state solution,” Powell said in Washington. “I believe that’s the only solution that will work: a state for the Palestinian people called Palestine and a Jewish state, state of Israel, which exists.”
What a cunundrum! The Sharon alternative, potentially featuring a torturously gerrymandered and discontinuous Palestinian state similar to the Bantustans of Apartheid, or a single country where extremists on both sides could continue to use acts of terror to advance their ‘no compromise’ positions.
Personally, I don’t see how the Bantustan solution would really stop the violence. A reactionary-dominated Israeli government would most likely choose to keep many of the older settlements in place, along with their water sources. Denied water, numerous Palestinian villages and towns would not be economically viable. With no access to ports (except in Gaza, where goods would have to pass through a foreign country to get to the West Bank), the Palestinian Homelands would not be an attractive manufacturing center. Who would invest in such a place? Where would its inhabitants work? How would they feed their families? Pushing the Arabs farther into the corner at a time when extremists are on the verge of acquiring dirty bombs and potentially even nuclear weapons strikes me as a recipe for disaster.
The linked article goes on to point out the ‘demographic’ issue; the Jewish population of the country, at 5.5 million, would hold only a slight majority over the theoretical Arab population of a unified state – 4.7 million. With a higher Arab birthrate, along with limited ‘right-of-return’ legislation that future ‘coalition’ governments might pass, Israel would be quickly looking at Jews returning to the minority in the region.
Along with sticky issues such as ‘right-of-return’ or compensation for lost property, the new, presumably secular state would need to deal with the extreme poverty of its new citizens, major infrastructure development and water rights. Security and crackdown on extremist elements of both sides would be another major challenge.
