The Christian Science Monitor gave op-ed space to Ali Abunimah who calls for a bi-national state made up of Jews and Palestinians. Abunimah makes a curious argument:
Palestine/Israel is as unpartitionable as was South Africa and Northern Ireland, where similar ethnic conflicts had also defied resolution for generations. In both places, it was only when the dominant group dropped its insistence on supremacy that a political settlement could be reached. What was once unimaginable happened: Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and F.W. de Klerk’s National Party joined hands in a national unity government in 1994. Leaders in Northern Ireland made similar progress this year.
This raises three questions:
* The whole world, including Israel, already recognizes Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Why does this now nullify aspirations for a specifically Jewish state?
* How can Abunimah expect Israelis to contemplate a bi-national solution when the Palestinian leadership of Hamas hasn’t dropped it’s ideology of an Islamic state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean?
* Is a bi-national solution just a cover to make eventually make the holy land Judenrein?
