Back when I read Counterpunch, I became a fan of a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seemed the only way to honor the legitimate religious and historical claims of both parties to the land and its sacred sites.
But I soured on it because some of its advocates sounded frankly anti-Semitic. Plus, given the fact that peaceful and prosperous Canada and Belgium have nearly split recently along ethnic and linguistic lines, putting Israelis and Palestinians together in one, happy, multi-ethnic nation-state seemed like a pipe dream.
But I wonder if a two state solution is any more realistic. I think that there are something like 150,000 Israelis living in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It took the TVA forty years to move only a third of that number for the lakes that they created. Moving that number of people seems like an impossible task, especially given the trauma Israelis experienced over evacuating the paltry sum of settlers from Gaza a few years ago.
Not to be trivial, but this stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reminds me of season three of Battlestar Galactica. After the attacks and the failed experiment on New Caprica, each side has perpetrated so much evil on the other that reconciliation seems impossible. But given the fact that the Cylon-Human offspring Hera lives, and that Baltar's sleeping his way through the female Cylon skin jobs, and that the mysterious final five may well be lurking in the fleet, each side's dream of getting shed of the other looks increasingly unlikely.
That's where Israelis and Palestinians are, locked in a death grip that neither party can disengage from. The Cylons and the humans managed to turn that death grip into an embrace. It's easy to do that with a TV show. But as hard as it would be to do in the real world of the Holy Land, it may be the only viable option.
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