Wednesday 6 February 2013

who wants a two-state solution?

in Israel/Palestine? Not Hamas, we knew that. Fatah? Israel? The Muslim Brotherhood? The USA? Well, you tell me. It's what I would like to see. I was struck by this eminently sensible comment by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, reporoduced below, on another post over at Harry's Place. btw it is usually when I post about the Middle East that the queeny behaviour, flouncing and foot-stamping ensues. Bovvered?

I am sadly convinced, now, that the goal of creating a Palestinian State is not that of either Fatah or Hamas. It never has been. That is why there was explicitly a rejection of sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank until 1967 in the PLO Charter. That is also why the PLO has made it very clear indeed, repeatedly, that Palestinians will not have a right of citizenship in any future Palestinian state, unless they happen to live - as "non-refugees" - within that state already.
The definition of Palestine is "Wherever Israel Is" at any particular moment.
Fatah - fearful of defeat by the Islamist tide sweeping the Middle East - is beginning to talk about union with Jordan. Gaza is run by the same party as Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood. That party does not believe in national boundaries, and expects to re-establish a trans-national Caliphate. Irrespective of Israel's existence, the goal of an independent Palestine is not that of Hamas and functionally is not that of Fatah.
I suspect that at some point, we'll return to the situation, as it was after 1948, with a belligerent (but weak) Egypt and Jordan (who knows how it will develop) on Israel's borders in Egyptian Gaza and the Jordanian-Palestinian federation of the West Bank.

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