On this lazy, enervating Friday morning I wanted to flag your attention to this piece by Bernard Avishai over at TPMCafe. Over the years, as the Israelis and Palestinians prove themselves endlessly incapable of embracing the obvious, there are recurrent calls that the time for a ‘two state’ solution has passed and that now only a ‘one state’ solution is possible. This has always struck me as profoundly crazy. These two people are so angry, intractable, episodically violent to each other and unwilling to compromise that the only solution is to make them all live peacefully together in one pluralistic, compromise-based state. Truly a genius idea. As Avishai notes, the alternative to two states isn’t Belgium it’s Bosnia where you could have a pleasant bloodbath for a decade or so until you came out the other end with two states or something like you have now. In any case, this isn’t so much his point as his premise. And what he does describe are some provocative thoughts on what the two states will eventually look like. Definitely give it a read.
