When things get desperate, solutions come to hand more readily. The same might be true of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, writes John Whitbeck* In the wake of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public praise for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's "unprecedented" attitude towards continued Israeli settlement expansion, Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, calmly rolled out a verbal bombshell at a 4 November press conference in Ramallah. Erekat noted that now may be "the moment of truth" for the Palestinian leadership and raised the possibility that "the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians and Jews live as equals." This statement just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine. Throughout the long years of the perpetual "peace process", deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequence other than a continuation of the status quo (which, for all Israeli governments, has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realisable alternative). For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success", permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building Jews-only bypass roads and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible. In everyone's interests, this must change. For there to be any chance of success in any new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences which Israelis would find unappealing -- indeed nightmarish. The Palestinian leadership, with or without Mahmoud Abbas, should now announce its willingness to resume negotiations with Israel but only on the express and irrevocable understanding that if a definitive peace agreement on a "two-state basis" has not been reached and signed by the end of 2010, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy and full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of Israel/ Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion. The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which since March 2002 has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law, will be "off the table" by the end of 2010. At this point -- but not before -- serious and meaningful negotiations can begin. It may already be too late to achieve a decent two-state solution (as opposed to an indecent, Bantustan one), but a decent two- state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is, indeed, too late, then Israelis, Palestinians and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative. It is even possible that, if forced to focus during the coming year on the prospect of living in a democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens (which, after all, is what the United States and the European Union hold up, in all other instances, as the ideal form of political life), many Israelis might come to view this "threat" as less nightmarish than they traditionally have. In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa's racial-supremacist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremacist ideology and political system, and imposing fragmented and dependent "independent states" on the natives, could never have achieved. This is not a precedent to dismiss. It could and should inspire. * The writer is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.
