The One-State Solution – Why Not? 

The New York Times editorial page has been publishing pieces advocating a one-state solution in Israel and the West Bank for some time.  Recently, Saree Makdisi and Joseph Levine graced the Times’s Op-Ed pages, and perhaps most infamously, in 2009, an OpEd by Muammar Qaddafi put forth the same proposition.  (You can read Qaddafi’s column here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/opinion/22qaddafi.html?_r=0.)  

To Americans, Jews and non-Jews, who were raised with the American ideal of the “melting pot,” or, in other metaphors, the “tossed salad,” or “beautiful mosaic” this may sound like the perfect solution.  Two peoples want the same land, why shouldn’t they share it?  Why can’t they live together, the way that the different ethnic groups that make up the United States do?  Ms. Makdisi asserted in her Times piece that in a single, binational state, “what [Jews] will gain . . .  is the right to live in peace.”

The fact that this proposal was advocated by Qaddafi ought to be enough to give one pause.  But setting that point aside, one way that we can assess the possibility of success for this proposal is by turning to history.  Throughout history, as long as Jews have lived in Muslim majority states, we, like any other religious minority in those states, were forced to live with so-called dhimmi status.  This was a second-class status, mandated by Islamic law, that allowed religious minorities to live in Muslim majority countries, but with many political restrictions, subject to a special dhimmi tax, and always subject to persecution.  

“But that is the past,” the melting-pot advocates will cry. “In the current times, we have all moved beyond that.  Modern Muslims would live in equality with Jews in this binational state.”  To see how preposterous this suggestion is, one only has to look at the current situation of Egypt’s Coptic Christians. 

Egypt is a U.S. ally, perhaps one of our closest Muslim allies.  After the overthrow of Mubarak, it held ostensibly democratic elections, the product of which was the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  Since that time, the persecution of women has increased and religious minorities have come under fire.  In October of 2011, between 25 and 35 Coptic Christians were killed by Egyptian police attempting to disperse a peaceful protest against religious suppression.  (You can read about it here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279657/situation-worsens-egypts-coptic-christians-kurt-j-werthmuller.)  Just last Friday, four more Christians were killed in sectarian violence, and on Sunday, the police attacked mourners at the funeral for those killed.  (You can read about it here: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/04/07/funeral-for-killed-copts/ and here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/07/us-egypt-clashes-idUSBRE93503A20130407.)  And, of course, let’s not forget the reaction of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to the recent Declaration from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.  The Brotherhood denounced the statement for advocating, among other things, to raise the minimum age of marriage, grant equality to gays and lesbians, and provide contraception.  (You can read the official brotherhood response here: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=30731.) 

A bi-national state would mean a return to dhimmi status, and persecution, as soon as the Muslim population outnumbered the Jewish population (or possibly sooner, due to the fractionalized political system).  Anyone who is familiar with the history of the region knows this, that is why it is not being advanced as a serious solution by anyone of any sense.  But no one wants to articulate it, because to do so would appear bigoted.  U.S. liberals need to understand that co-existence in “Israstine,” as Qaddafi put it, is simply not an option.  

UPDATE: Just today, 4/18/13,  the Times has published an Op-Ed by Marci Shore, which seems at first to be about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and pretends that its topic is a hero of that uprising, but ends with this line: "a single-nation state is never a good thing.”  This transparent advocacy for a bi-national state, with all that that entails, now under the guise of Holocaust Rememberance, is completely revolting.  Just when I did not think the Times could top its past antisemitism, sadly, I was wrong.  

UPDATE: 5/11/13.  This morning I said to my husband something I never thought I would say: "there was a good editorial in the Times yesterday. . . ."  I was referring to Manan Ahmed Asif's editorial on Pakistan.  If one wants to know what a bi-national state in Israel will look like by the end of this century, just read Asif's description of what is happening now in Pakistan.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/opinion/pakistans-tyrannical-majority.html?_r=1&