Two-State Solution Dead?Time for One Person/One Vote

Prime minister netanyahu and President Trump have finally achieved together what both of them sought for Israel-Palestine: namely the death of the two-state option that would have created a politically and economically viable Palestinian state.

The primary victory belongs to Netanyahu and the policies he pursued as prime minister of Israel. Through his persistent encouragement of the expanding settlements in the West Bank, he managed to encourage hundreds of thousands of new settlers to create a reality in which Israeli Jews would ignore the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people and settle on land often stolen from neighboring Palestinian villages.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which once prided itself on being the most ethical in the world, and the Israeli judicial system have together transformed themselves into instruments of occupation and oppression. The Israeli Human Rights organization B'tselem has documented this process over the course of several decades. In a B'tselem report in January 2018 documenting how two new settlement outposts in the northern Jordan Valley are being created, B'tselem reflects on how these particular settlements are typical of the way the current Israeli government manages to expel local Palestinian communities through a combination of military orders, administrative and planning measures, and military activity. In this context, the settlers function as the long arm of the state:

"The impact of the settlement outposts far exceeds their built-up areas. The settlers living in them put a great deal of effort into blocking Palestinian shepherds from accessing their land. To this end, they use intimidation tactics, such as patrolling the area on horseback or driving ATV's, armed with guns and clubs, and driving away Palestinian shepherds. B'Tselem has documented incidents in which settlers rode into a herd of sheep to disperse them, ran over livestock or threw stones at them. We have also documented threats and violence against the shepherds themselves."

Settlers take over pastureland and use it to pasture their own cattle and flocks, while keeping Palestinian shepherds from using the land. In doing so, they seriously harm the Palestinian shepherds' main source of income.

"Members of the affected communities have complained to the Israeli military and police about the routine of violence they have been subjected to, but Israeli law enforcement agencies systematically avoid taking any measures against settlers. Palestinian residents report that even when soldiers are on the scene during attacks by settlers, they stand by, taking the part of the settlers.

"The establishment of these settlement outposts and the violence perpetrated by their residents against local Palestinians do not take place in a vacuum. They form an inseparable part of Israel's policy in the Jordan Valley ever since 1967, which includes a variety of official and unofficial measures designed to minimize Palestinian presence in the area and further establish Israeli control of it. As part of this general policy, Israel denies Palestinians use of 85% of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea, using this area for its own needs: Palestinians may not build in these areas, live there, graze their livestock there, or cultivate their land. Palestinian access is denied based on various legal pretexts: as early as 1967, a few short months after the Occupation began, Israel declared all the land that had been registered as government property under Jordanian rule—an area that covers 53% of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea—as closed zones. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the military declared 45.7% of the Jordan Valley as firing zones and barred all Palestinians access to these areas, including living there. . . .

"Added to all this is the blanket ban Israel has placed on construction in these Palestinian communities, whether for public or residential purposes, its refusal to connect the communities to basic water and electricity services and to build access roads to the communities. When, having no other choice, residents build without permits, the Civil Administration issues demolition orders. Whether executed or not, the threat of these orders constantly looms over the residents. In some of these communities, the Civil Administration repeatedly demolished homes belonging to...