Guest post by redbedhead:

It may seem crass to talk about winning and losing in the face of the Gaza slaughter, as though it were a football game. But there is good reason when one considers that the final tally of a battle or a war shapes key future events, determining the likelihood of future victories or even whether other battles will be entered into by those involved. And it is not only those directly involved who must be considered, for a victory or defeat by the army of choice will determine future actions. It is a truism about the Middle East, for instance, that Israel's 3-day, smashing victory over three Arab armies in 1967 secured them the sponsorship of the United States, which has sustained their superior position viz. their regional competitors.

Based upon a body count it would seem that Israel is the definite winner. There are, after all, something like 1300 dead Palestinians, plus another 5400 wounded, with well over half of the total being accounted for by civilians, even with only women and children being counted as such. This compares to 3 dead Israeli civilians and another 10 dead soldiers, most of them killed by friendly fire, apparently. But we can't look at the present invasion in terms of crude - and deadly - numbers. Israel has a massive military superiority over Hamas and its allied militias, like Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and DFLP. They have F-16s, guided bombs and missiles, Merkava tanks, phosphorous shells, unmanned surveillance drones, a navy, all the latest techno gizmos, access to US satellite intelligence - not to mention, apparently, the intelligence support of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's favourite Palestinian collaborator, and leader of Fatah. All of this ensured that a Hamas military victory over Israel was utterly impossible and Hamas seems to have been smart enough to avoid direct confrontations in the open.

Israeli political leaders had set themselves a series of goals prior to and during the operation. Since Israel initiated the present conflict, planning it far in advance, prior even to the 6 months ceasefire negotiated with Hamas, and set the terms for its victory, it must be measured against those goals. In addition, other, unintended consequences must be looked at. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, along with Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have argued that the primary goal of the Gaza invasion was to stop Hamas lobbing rockets and mortars into southern Israel. If this were really the purpose of the attack, then certainly Israel has failed miserably, as demonstrated by the ceaseless firing of rockets throughout the invasion and even immediately following Israel's unilateral ceasefire. What's more, if the Israeli government wanted to end Gazan rocket fire the answer was very simple - meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had, after all, met its terms - not only discontinuing Hamas' firing of rockets but putting a lid on rocket fire by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively nil (see attached pdf,p.6). It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and which repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings.

The second stated goal was to prevent Hamas from re-arming. However, again, actions speak louder than words. If this were Israel's sole goal, they could have negotiated a deal with their pliant Egyptian ally or focused bombing strictly in the border region, where the smuggling tunnels exist. Nonetheless, even the head of Israel's intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, reports that the tunnel network hasn't been destroyed and that it will be up and running again in short order if Egypt doesn't clamp down. In other words, stopping smuggling was never dependent upon bombing the hell out of Gaza - it couldn't even be effective. What was required was Egyptian cooperation. But Egypt is now less likely, not more, to agree to a politically unpopular clampdown against the Palestinians, after hundreds of thousands demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza and against the Egyptian dictatorship. That was made clear after Israel and the US signed an agreement - without telling the Egyptians - to tackle the tunnels on Egyptian soil. The Egyptian Foreign Minister responded saying that Israel and the US can "do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people and Egypt's ability to protect its borders." President-for-life Mubarak went on television to specifically state that foreign monitors would not be allowed in Egypt. But even if Egypt agrees to more American Army Engineers to help it police the border, or an increase in police numbers IDF officials don't believe that this will stop the smuggling. So, Israel's second policy goal is clearly a failure. The real key for Israel was the need to restore its deterrent capability" - basically to instill fear in any and all Arabs who might think to challenge the occupation or any other Israeli strategic goals. New York Times billionaire columnist Thomas Friedman supportively referred to this as "educating" Hamas by "inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." This was, in other words, according to Israeli supporters and critics, a terrorist operation by the state of Israel. As Norman Finklestein pointed out in a recent interview: "The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism."

Has Israel restored its deterrent capability, so badly damaged by its failed war in Lebanon in 2006, and its withdrawal under duress from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000? Certainly every Israeli politician, journalist and military leader is claiming this. However, if the goal was simply to impress upon Hamas that they couldn't defeat Israel militarily, this was already known. Hamas has been trying since at least 2002 to agree a long term truce with Israel, only to face Israeli bombs and targeted assassinations. Certainly by now, any Palestinian knows that it doesn't matter what you do, Israel will try to kill you:

"it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days."

The irony is that this pattern almost ensures the continuation of violent resistance since even non-violence is met by Israeli attacks. At a certain point, Israel's deterrent capability is undermined by the fact that only utter defeat and an acceptance of genocide would prevent Palestinians from resisting Israel's aggression. Certainly Hamas was suitably unbowed to fire off nearly two dozen rockets after Israel's unilateral ceasefire and to demand a withdrawal within one week or they would restart hostilities. What's more, everyone can see, as they did in Lebanon in 2006, that while Israel could defeat three Arab armies in six days in 1967, after three weeks fighting a starved, blockaded, disarmed population in Gaza, the IDF didn't take more than a corner of Gaza City.

Ultimately, of course, it will be in the coming days that the interpretation of events will unfold, depending upon the actual state of Hamas and other resistance organizations. It is likely that while Arabs throughout the region will of course remember that Israel can, in fact, destroy unarmed populations, that it is possible to resist and survive. What's more, Hamas will likely be strengthened politically, while Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization will be fatally weakened. Israel, the US, EU and their Arab client regimes may try to hold him up but everyone knows that they are now dead as a resistance movement and thus in the eyes of the Palestinian people. This makes it more likely that Israel will, as a result of this onslaught, be forced to recognize Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, as will the international community. The 18 month campaign to destroy the results of the democratic election of Hamas, first by arming Fatah and fomenting a civil war and now with a direct intervention, have utterly failed. And outside of the Middle East, Israel has managed to discredit itself even further, spurring into being a massive movement in solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel. They have shattered the myth that Israel is the victim and the Palestinians the aggressors. This movement, the heroic resistance of the Palestinians and the images of Israel's utter brutality, which they were unable to hide, though they barred all journalists from entering Gaza, has pushed even Israel's staunchest allies to criticize them. Turkey, Israel's only Muslim ally, strongly rebuked Israel, demanding their exclusion from the UN until they implemented the Security Council resolution. Egypt, the biggest Arab nation and paid billions by the US to play with Israel, has been made even more unstable by the slaughter, creating concern for the US' major Arab bulwark in the region. Jordan recalled their ambassador in protest. And there is even suggestion in a fascinating article by Justin Raimondo that the US ruling class is growing tired of Israel's mad dog routine, which threatens US hegemony in the region by alienating Arab allies and threatening others with domestic political upheaval because of Israel's penchant for killing Arab civilians.

It's unclear how all this will pan out over the medium term. But it is clear that the Gaza operation, which Israel was forced to end before Obama's inauguration, has not all gone the way Israel hoped. It may not even go the way that Livni and Barak hoped it would in terms of their electoral prospects, with the ultra-war mongers in Likud making most of the gains from the invasion. Hamas and the Palestinian people will live to fight another day, with a much larger international movement, one in which the call for boycott and divestment may get a major hearing. And the whole region has been destabilized thanks to Israel's compulsive need to avoid peace at any costs. The blowback is looking to be much worse than what they started out fighting, as they have internationalized the conflict.

Zizek describing Hezbollah and Hamas as "fascist" is no surprise - the flip side to his contrarianism is that, when in doubt, he just repeats liberal banalities because that's what he essentially believes. However, I encounter this sort of nonsense from people who ought to know better, and I think we all do. And after seeing this resentful "yeah, well..." sort of reply from Alan Johnson to the Hamas minister Bassem Naeem, one starts to realise how the liberal theodicy of the Middle East conflict relies upon this canard. After all, Johnson is not the sort of nasty person to deny the Palestinians their rights (those being constrained to what is deemed compatible with the continuation of Israel's existence as a Zionist state). And since he is the sort of person who thinks Israel would as soon have peace as perpetual war, there must be some reason why it has so far failed to materialise. Extremists 'on both sides' obviously contribute to the impasse, but the real story is that Hamas plots genocide against the Jews. Can't trust 'em - not 'partners for peace'.

The ideology of Hamas is not obscure. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main goal of the organisation is to eventually replace Israel with an Islamic Republic on the whole of historic Palestine. Its most vociferously expressed conviction in its early years was the belief that Israel could not be won over through negotiations and concessions, and that only a military jihad could succeed. This in fact constituted a departure for the historically quietist Muslim Brothers, but in truth it was the first intifada and the way in which it was crushed that galvanised the organisation. Two key figures inspire Hamas' ideological orientation. The first is Sayyid Qutb, whose doctrinal contribution became a staple of Brotherhood ideology in the course of struggle with the Nasserist state. Qutb articulated a right-wing variant of Third Worldist discourse, rejecting both socialism and American-style capitalism. Like ideological confederates such as Mawdudi, he sought to renew Muslim societies from the weakness that had allowed them to be overwhelmed by colonial powers by resuscitating their moral power. Reacting against the chimera of a distinctly Western weltanschauung, comprising nationalism, secularism and liberal democracy (cf Mawdudi), Qutb regarded the unconditional sovereignty of God as the basis for such renewal. If you're an Anglo-American writer in need of a justification for perpetual war, the technical term for this doctrine is "Islamofascism".

Still, as Zizek himself has pointed out (on Haider v Blair), fascism is not just a bundle of elements (anti-socialism, anti-modern reflux, patriarchy, corporatism, etc), it is a particular articulation of those elements. In my view, it is far better to see Qutb's doctrine as a conservative form of anti-colonial nationalism, in which the plane of nationhood is transferred to the Umma. Realistically, Qutb's ideal state would probably not have differed that much from Nasser's, except for added religious trappings. Were it not for the failure of the Free Officers to accomodate the Muslim Brothers in the corporatist Egyptian state, indeed, Qutb would have been happy to support that state - he had himself been a supporter of the Free Officer rebellion. Mind you, the British had no problem deeming even Nasser a "fascist" when he nationalized the Suez Canal, because only a fascist would do something to annoy a declining empire. The second key figure for Hamas, is 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam, an important figure in the Palestinian resistance to the British occupation who was killed in the build-up to the 1936-9 uprising. In fact, Qassam had form as an anti-colonial fighter, which career he began when Italy invaded Libya in 1911, and continued with the Syrian revolt against the French Mandate. His contribution to the Palestinian struggle was to form 'Black Hand', an underground resistance movement which - of course - the British Empire considered a 'terrorist' outfit. The anti-colonial lineage is crucial, and this is recognised in Hamas ideology.

The Muslim Brothers emerged as a serious force in Palestine particularly after the 1967 war and during the Israeli occupation. In this time, the rising profile of religion in politics and daily life saw the number of mosques soar, particularly in Gaza, where the number rose over the first twenty years of occupation from 200 to 600. This was the main vector through which the Brothers established a presence, aside from using zakat to supply alms to the needy and so forth. When the first riots of the incipient intifada erupted in December 1987, several of the Brothers based at the Islamic Centre in Gaza met to discuss a response. They started to publish propaganda leaflets calling for action against the Israeli occupation, and formed the original nucleus for what would become known as Hamas (short for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or "Islamic Resistance Movement") in 1988. For nice liberals, this is the moment of disaster, but I actually think that hitherto quietest bourgeois Islamic nationalists throwing themselves into the resistance is a good development, not least since the PLO was increasingly bankrupt politically and militarily since its expulsion from Lebanon in 1982. In fact, it should be said that older members of the Brotherhood were quite trepidatious about getting involved in the uprising, since they still maintained that Palestinians needed to be educated in Islam before they could be ready for a full-scale rebellion - it was the younger generation who drove the evolution of Hamas into a serious organisation of resistance.

Hamas' goals, as explained in its Charter, are congruent with those of the Brotherhood, but place far more emphasis on the specific Palestinian problem, and less on reforming society along Islamic lines. The organisation certainly considers the whole of historic Palestine an Islamic waqf, or trust, but this is really a religious form of Palestinian nationalism. In fact, what was distinctive about Hamas in the 1990s was that while the PLO were retreating from the mainstays of Palestinian nationalism and popular armed struggle, Hamas conspicuously held to them. Of course, simple tactical flexibility has ensured that it has always differentiated its long-term goals from short-term aims such as establishing a state on Gaza and the West Bank. So it wasn't that weird for it to declare a willingness to arrive at a ten year truce with Israel based on a two-state settlement. Although Hamas is usually equated with suicide attacks, it has always been pragmatic about the use of force, deploying it in much the same way as secular Palestinian groups such as Fatah and the PFLP. It cooperated with the PLO over the Oslo negotiations process, for example, despite its misgivings. And though Hamas has always rejected the PLO's inherent right to lead the Palestinians, it has also opposed intra-Palestinian bloodshed and sectarianism and has, even before its velocitous rise since 2000, sought to forge a coalition with the organisation on an agreed platform.

The key point that has animated liberal critique of Hamas, aside from violence, is antisemitism. Without question, the early Hamas doctrine held that the defense of Palestine was part of a resistance not only against imperialism or Zionism but against essentialised blocs of Judaism and Christianity, who they depicted as engaged in an existential battle with Islam. They drew on claims from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to interpret their struggle as one against Jewish world domination. In a reductionist way, you could see this as the result of 'false consciousness', or a simple lack of class analysis. True enough, if your oppressors tell you that they represent the world's Jews, that they are the Jewish state, and you lack the conceptual apparatus with which to disentangle such nationalist myths - because you are subject to your own variant of such mythology - then the antisemitic conspiracy theories might be alluring. And this reductionist interpretation is certainly better than the even more reductionist take, which is that Islam is inherently antisemitic because of its dangerous proximity to Judaism which produces a narcissistic recoil (actually, in that highly culturalist assessment, Zizek might well have drawn consciously from Huntington or even Michael Ignatieff). I think there is also an element of subverting the morality through which Israel asserts its dominance, namely its claim to represent the victims of the Nazi holocaust. If Israel were the culmination of a conspiracy, there would be no need to defer to the tragic recent history of a People of the Book. As Edward Said never tired of arguing, this style of denunciation is a hateful inversion of logic. The proper way to undermine the legitimacy of Israeli oppression is to point out the structural similarity between Israel's racism and European antisemitism, between its modes of domination and those of European states. I need hardly add that the antisemitism in the Covenant is, however inexcusable, in no way equivalent to European antisemitism, which was not even remotely a reaction to oppression. Such analysis will hopefully become passe, at any rate, if Bassem Naeem's simple and straightforward repudiation of antisemitism is representative of Hamas' current direction. And what then will be left for the defenders of Israel, as its ministers draw on the metaphors of the Shoah to describe its atrocities against Palestinians? As increasing numbers of Jewish people reject Israel's claim to represent their interests? As Hamas defends Palestinian democracy and Israel and its allies attack it and undermine it?

Would it be better if the Left were stronger than the Islamists in Palestine? Unquestionably, if it was a Left worth its salt. If, that is, it was a Left unlike any that people like Alan Johnson or his conferes would accept. By no means do I think Hamas has the answers. As things stand, much - not all - of the Palestinian Left is taking a sectarian approach to Hamas while broadly aligning with a decrepit and corrupt nationalism that will surely bring them down with it. One would hope in the minimum for a renewed spirit of Palestinian unity, but that of course depends upon the nationalist wing evacuating itself from the imperialist camp. In the meantime, I fear that Hamas are currently the only serious resistance movement in Palestine, for all their shortcomings. The libidinised appropriation of the language of anti-fascism by liberal apologists for Israel both disgraces that tradition and helps isolate and vilify the major obstacle to Israel's successful wiping of Palestine from the map.

There is a growing argument in favour of a one-state settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict, largely as a result of the failure of Oslo and the intensifying occupation policies that accompanied it. In this vein, there was a brief 'to do' over the question of a one-state versus two-state settlement in Palestine over at the Democrats Diary. There is also a debate on Counterpunch beginning with a highly defensive and bitter attack on the one-state idea by the very sharp Michael Neumann, and now followed up with a counter-point by the former CIA analyst Kathy Christison. I think it's worth discharging some of the acrimony over this question, because our role as pro-Palestinian activists is not necessarily to work for one kind of settlement or the other: it is to strengthen the Palestinians as much as we can, in part by disabling Israel's major patron, so that they can decide what deal to accept and under what conditions. If the two-state argument is mistaken, as I think it is, there is no space for sectarian moralising about it. The fact that some in the pro-Palestinian movement - only a minority but loud enough to be damaging at times - take the view that all two-staters including Noam Chomsky are sell-outs and so on has made it more difficult to have a serious discussion. It also sets a massive elephant trap for activists to fall into. If we spend all our time anathematising others in the movement, we will achieve even less in the future than we have in the past despite what are undoubtedly improved prospects for mobilising opinion. So, I should say the following: to be a 'two-stater' is not the same thing necessarily as a liberal Zionist, since the latter acknowledges no injustice other than the 1967 war and is committed to the moral value of having a Jewish nationalist state, while the former need not be; to be a 'one-stater' is not to be ethereal, aloof and moralistic, neither to foreclose options nor foreswear temporary and unsatisfactory compromise, since a single Palestinian state is a long term goal, the road to which can be marked by many half-way houses; 'one-staters' do not have a monopoly on justice any more than 'two-staters' have a monopoly on political realism.

Well, from the above, it is clear that there are a number of concurrent and apparently incompatible criteria at work in this argument. Justice demands that what is a racist-nationalist state should be abolished by one means or another; that the effects of ethnic cleansing should be reversed as far as possible; and that Arabs and Jews should live together as brothers and sisters. Realism stipulates that such demands are incoherent, moralistic, historically disembodied, almost certainly unattainable, and a diversion from the one true settlement, which is that aimed at by the PLO since 1988, endorsed by the UN, the ICJ, and formally accepted by every actor including Israel - a Palestinian state based in Gaza and the West Bank, with some settlement for the refugees. The argument from justice has a set of historical facts, and an analysis, but no clout; the argument from realism has a concrete plan, a blueprint that Israel could accept and that would potentially stop the bloodshed and provide relief for the Palestinians. This is an alluring story, but there's something oddly disquieting about it. For a start, if 'realism' is so hostile to moralism, why does one detect its tincture in the claim (repeated in Neumann's piece) that 'realism' is a 'real world' solution aimed at ending 'real suffering' in the 'here and now', whereas pursuit of one-state would keep the slaughter in motion. Isn't this exactly the language of strident urgency that liberal imperialism activates in order to suppress rational discussion of the latest 'intervention'? Further, when an argument is raised against unwieldy utopianism and maximalism, there is usually straw flying amid the feathers. What if compromise and settlement turns out to be the utopian option? What if those who consider the long-term survival of the Israeli polity in its current Zionist form a viable option are the idle fantasists? If analogies to previous debates suggest themselves - those between sensible colonialism and anti-colonialism; those between abolitionists and ameliorists - it is because the terms of 'realism' are so familiar. Finally, the argument from 'realism' seems to overestimate the value of legal opinion and 'consensus', in part because it happens to be convenient in conventional arguments to say 'we have the legal consensus, all actors are committed to this in theory, the UN backs it, the PLO has gone out of its way to make it happen, conceding much and receiving little, and only America and Israel's refusenik stance thwarts it'. But diplomacy and law are the products of power, and the relevant centres of power do not at present support even a two-state settlement. How practicable, as opposed to utopian, is a two-state settlement?

Let me take my lead from the 'real world'. In the West Bank, Israel has imposed a "settlement grid", as Virginia Tilley puts it, a network of Jewish Only roads and settlements as well as a 'separation wall' which will eventually incorporate about half of the West Bank into Israel. The colonies and roads are protected by IDF troops, the separation wall by border guards. And the whole system from Jerusalem to Jericho populated by approximately half a million Israelis, many of them fanatics armed to the teeth. It contains 450 roadblocks, 70 manned checkpoints, and 300 kilometres of segregated highway. It is designed to be irreversible. It is designed to make 40% of the West Bank inaccessible to the Palestinians. It is designed to fragment its landscape and eliminate the basis for a viable polity. The settlements have not ceased to expand, and there is no reason to expect that they will in the prevailing circumstances. Israelis will have added motive to try and move into these frontier zones because it is one area where the Israeli state provides a real welfare system of sorts. On top of this, Israel goes to great lengths to frustrate any possible basis for economic development in the Palestinian areas. Not just by withholding tax revenues so that Palestinians can subsidise the occupation; not only by imposing a blockade; not only by stealing land and destroying olive groves; but also through its discriminatory water restrictions, which has had a devastating impact on agriculture and on domestic consumption. We can add to this the impact of movement restrictions on the right to work. This is a policy, as Sara Roy puts it, of de-development. B'Tselem's 2002 report on Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank concludded that Israel's aim was both to rule out the possibility of an independent sovereign state and "drastically restrict the possibilities ... for economic development, and for agriculture in particular". The result of economic restrictions and fragmentation is a system of disarticulated micro-economies attached to the Israeli one, not a potential national economy. The fact that Palestinian society has not completely collapsed in the face of this onslaught is a miracle of resilience. Aside from being a long-term and vitally important national project for Israel, pursued so far with great success, the occupation and colonisation of the remaining Palestinian territories provides the Israeli Defense Force, perhaps the most important power bloc in the Israeli state, with rentier motivations for continuing with the occupation.

As figures such as Virginia Tilley and Tony Judt have argued, even the mere fact of half a million armed colonists with a strong body of support within Israel proper militates strongly against a two-state settlement. This may not be 'irreversible', but any reversal would not originate in the Israeli power structure, which has no interest in it. Further, whatever supposed international 'consensus' exists, it is totally absent in the centres of US power, which are almost entirely supportive of the most aggressive wing of the Zionist movement. Gaza is an interesting case in point. Here, we were supposed to be witnessing a unilateral withdrawal, a peace gesture, and end to the occupation of that part of Palestine as the basis for a future settlement. At the initiative of Ariel Sharon, the settlements were taken apart and the settlers removed to their astonishment and grief. Tears flowed all the way from Gush Katif to the Jordan Valley. What next? Would Sharon really disengage from the West Bank that he was able to so triumphantly reinvade in 2002? Was he really a peacenik, despite all appearances? Dov Weisglass revealed all: it was an attempt to sidestep a peaceful settlement with an imposed Israeli one backed by the US, which would avert Palestinian statehood or any deal for the refugees. The new 'Kadima' coalition ('Avanti' in Italian) that Sharon helped to found has pursued this solution relentlessly: the growing settlements in the West Bank, especially those contiguous with the separation wall; the fostering of civil war and the destruction of Gaza; the planned reduction of Gaza's already heavily infringed territory through ethnic cleansing, and so on. The movement for a two-state settlement could once boast a coalition uniting the PLO with reform-minded Israelis, but that has been decisively defeated for the time being. Indeed, given the Israeli state's hostility, the Palestinian leadership's corruption and opportunism, and the absence of serious regional allies for the Palestinians, it is hard to see how it ever stood a chance. Israel, as Neumann acknowledges, will not accept such an outcome. So the criticism of the one-state solution, that it lacks a supporting agency capable of enforcing it, also happens to apply to the two-state solution.

Let us suppose the increasingly improbable anyway. Suppose that with a two-state settlement in mind, based on UN resolutions 242 and 338 (both formulated when there was much more chance of their being successful), the Palestinian movement acquired reserves of strength and clout hitherto denied it. Let us say it acquired the ability to force an Israeli retreat from the West Bank, and end to the occupation of Gaza, the creation of a unified state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and some kind of settlement for the refugees. Such, the two-state argument says, is eminently possible, though most of its advocates acknowledge that it would not be justice. I agree that it is possible, at least, and that it would represent an improvement in the condition of Palestinians. It would go some small way to meeting the claims of justice, and by ending the war, it could undermine some of the key expansionist agents in Israeli society. It could even open up new possibilities for critical and post-Zionist thought to emerge in Israel, although there is no evidence from past partitions that this is likely to be the case. On the contrary, it would seem to bolster the logic of Zionism and potentially lead to the expulsion of Israeli Arabs who are already in an embattled position. And so long as the United States wished for a strong Israel, the latter would have the resources to defensively recuperate its military position. It would still have its nuclear weapons, a string of bought Arab regimes, a powerful intelligence service and an aggressive posture toward the region as a whole. It could easily formulate or provoke a pretext for re-invasion and annexation. Statehood is no protection from Israeli aggression as surrounding states have discovered. After all, the basis for present-day Palestine in the two-stare vision is territory taken from Jordanian and Egyptian occupation in 1967. And should Israel embroil itself in any regional war that could threaten its own existence, it is sworn to massive retalitatory attacks possibly using its nuclear weapons - the crazy Samson Option. So, the question is, without fundamentally altering the Zionist polity, would a two-state settlement be the basis for peace and stability, even if not for justice, that it is claimed to be? On the basis of the foregoing adumbrations it seems dubious.

At present, there is a de facto one-state solution of sorts in operation (not de jure in the areas of occupation). It is a state of segregation, pass laws, despotism for Palestinians and a thin veneer of democracy for Israelis. Most of those living in it lack the rights of citizenship, and many who do are essentially second-class citizens. It is a 'democracy' but a Herrenvolk democracy, a "Jewish and democratic state" which all political parties in Israel are prohibited from challenging. So, Israel is constitutionally committed to maintaining that formula - the majority of citizens within the state must be Jewish, even as it expands. To grant citizenship status to the Palestinian majority living in the territory controlled by Israel would violate that fundamental principle. The Law of Return, by allowing a massive level of immigration, including of those who aren't in fact Jewish, provides one source for a continued majority in an expanding Israel. Ethnic cleansing strategies and potentially genocide are logical outgrowths of that basic commitment, and we saw one such example in the recent attempted annexation of south Lebanon in which Israel tried to drive out the Lebanese population and take the territory under occupation. For some years, discussion of a one-state solution was seriously curbed in Palestine because the Fatah leadership saw it as being subversive of its diplomatic efforts. The rise of Hamas as the chief beneficiary of the second Intifada, coupled with Israel's policies designed to thwart a two-state settlement, may well have opened up discussion. Recent polling evidence suggests a much stronger level of support for a one-state solution among Palestinians than ever before (70%). It is acquiring support among leading Palestinians too. Ziad Abu-Amr, a former PA minister, and Sharif Elmusa have recently come out for such a settlement. But that would require abolishing the basic structures of the Israeli polity, and implementing Arab-majority rule. How could such a state of affairs be arrived at? I would point out, first of all, that the Palestinians alone lack the structural capacity to overthrow Zionism. They are not a labouring majority whom Israel tries to exploit, but a nationality that Israel is trying to destroy. No Palestinian COSATU will bring Israeli industry to its knees. The odd rocket or suicide attack isn't going to do it either. Secondly, and I am sorry to break this to some of the more naive sects, the Palestinians cannot rely on the solidarity of the Israeli working class, any more than they can rely on the ICJ or Fatah's diplomatic prowess. There is no movement from within to abandon Zionism: on the contrary, 94% of Israelis polled assert that Israel must maintain its Jewish majority. Thirdly, it seems obvious to me that the only contiguous population with an interest in solidarity with the Palestinians is the working population of the Middle East - but they have to free themselves of their mainly US-imposed dictators before they can really help free Palestine. In short, it would require a revolt across the entire region. This is a regional problem, and it must have a regional solution. There is nothing else coming down the pipeline, so far as I can see. Certainly, an international consensus, with regular chronicling of Israel's outrages by the UN or the ICJ, with diplomatic initiatives by those presently helping impose the misery, with international solidarity movements operating under increasing restrictions, and with marches in the street by those far removed from the action - all this can only go so far, and probably never as far as the supposedly very practical two-state settlement.