The One-State Solution

For some years, most people sympathetic to Palestinian national aspirations - or simply alert to their durability and the political dangers they pose - have assumed that a stable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would require the formation of a Palestinian state in the (dwindling) areas not yet annexed by Israel, in what is left of British Mandate territory. This old staple of the Palestinian national movement was even belatedly approved by Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush. The Palestinian Authority itself was set up by the Oslo process as a pre-statal entity, intended to establish by stages an independent Palestinian cabinet and parliament, as a prelude to sovereignty over (a disarmed, landlocked, dependent) Palestine. Most recently, a courageous coalition of Israeli and Palestinian professionals has tried to imbue the two-state solution with new energy by formulating a detailed agreement - the so-called Geneva Accords. All these efforts have referred, vaguely or specifically, to the withdrawal of Jewish settlements, without which a Palestinian state would make no territorial sense. Yet at some point in the past decade, this foundational precept became an obfuscating fiction. As many people privately acknowledge, and as Tony Judt has now proposed in the New York Review of Books, the conditions for an independent Palestinian state have been killed off by the inexorable and irreversible advance of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an idea, and a possibility, whose time has passed, its death obscured (as was perhaps intended) by daily spectacle: the hoopla of a useless 'road map', the cycles of Israeli gunship assassinations and Palestinian suicide bombings, the dismal internal Palestinian power struggles, the house demolitions and death counts - all the visible expressions of a conflict which has always been over control of land.

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'One Man, One Vote: And Then What Will We Do?'
By Anne Gwynne

And next the reiteration of the song of the perpetual victims - Zionism must continue 'in the face of violent Arab opposition'. Did I miss something here? Violence? Whose 50,000 soldiers have been brutally and illegally occupying whose Land? Answer - Israel, in violation of over 350 UN Resolutions. Not a misprint. The UN has passed more than 350 Resolutions against Israel, though it failed on some 850 more, vetoed by the USA. Which army has slaughtered over 3,000 Palestinians, including more than 600 children since September 2000? Again the answer is Israel. Destroyed some 7,000 buildings and homes? Designated every road to be Jewish-only? Injured and disabled some 55,000 innocent people overwhelmingly, with live ammunition? Bombed and rocketed whole populations and areas from the most modern warplanes and attack helicopters of a military, which has recently overtaken that of the UK in size and capability? Taken prisoner 25% of a whole population? Killed 190 prisoners through torture? Holds 8,000 prisoners without lawful cause or trial? Regularly snatches patients from Intensive Care Units and flings them into Army vehicles? Has killed nearly 100 ambulance patients, 20 medical staff, injured many hundreds, destroyed 100 ambulances, damaged hundreds more, denies access every day to Ambulances and to Hospitals? Too much to absorb isn't it? OK, I will halt the list there. The answer in every case is Israel. This entire partial list happened over the last three years - though even bigger massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide were perpetrated earlier by the Jewish colonial land-grab from the 1940's onwards. [...] It is not the Palestinians who refuse to make peace. Far from it. In 1948 Count Bernadotte formatted a partition agreement, which was accepted by the Palestinian leaders and rejected by the state of Israel - Israel then murdered Count Bernadotte for his efforts. In 1976 the Palestinians again accepted the de facto existence of Israel on the Western part of historic Palestine and within the 1967 borders. It was the Israelis who scuppered the deal - remember that they cannot have Jordan without first taking the Land of Palestine. It looks as though Zionism has established itself well and truly on this Palestinian 'Land of Love and Peace' (Constitution of Palestine, 1988) However, the crux of Spyer's article is the expression of Zionist racist horror at the idea of the Palestinians achieving equality in population and (in Ehud Olmert's words), 'demand[ing] "one man, one vote"[!] 'And then what will we do?' he asks. Only a few lines earlier Israel was a 'western and liberal democratic' state! If it were a democracy that would be the normal voting structure! There are already some 1.5 million Palestinians living in Israel, without any of the human rights which even fledgling democracies deem essential. They 'are not, and never will become Israeli citizens'. Israel - a democracy? Is there another democracy where every man and woman (except the lunatic fringe) is conscripted into the military for three years, and remain soldiers for the rest of their working life?

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The above piece was written by a remarkable Welch grandmother — Anne Gwynne.

WELSH NURSE LIVE AUDIO UNDER FIRE IN NABLUS

WHO IS ANNE GWYNNE? Anne Gwynne is a sixty five year old grandmother and retired bank manager from Wales, Great Britain, who now lives in the ancient city of Nablus, in the illegally occupied West Bank in Palestine. She has long been an advocate of the rights of the oppressed, and of their struggle for self-determination. She worked with the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, and has volunteered with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA. As an independent humanitarian worker in Palestine, Anne has worked with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC), and is a regular contributor to such sites as Counterpunch, Media Monitors, The Palestine Chronicle, and the Palestine Media Center. She has given interviews on Canadian radio, as well as for Flashpoints and other Pacifica programs. As Anne herself has written "I am here in the beautiful but suffering city of Nablus where I am every day taking details of Israeli war crimes because no one, to the knowledge of the people here, has taken any interest in Nablus."

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There are links to articles she has written as well as radio interviews such as...

5/16 Anne Watches Palestinian Fighters Resisting an Israeli Attack at Night

Her articles have also appeared at Ramallah Online. This is a very good selection of her eyewitness reports.