"There is a solution. Everyone knows it: divide the land. There are two peoples - the Palestinians and the Israelis. Let them live in two states, with 1967 borders, with full compensation for the victims of 1948. Although it is painful to accept swathes of your own dispossession, the Palestinian leadership has supported this programme since 1978, and even Hamas - the ugly fundamentalist group - tacitly accepts it. Yet it has not been offered to the Palestinians. Every time they have sat down to negotiate, even more has been stolen from them: settler numbers doubled during the Oslo "peace process". It culminated in an offer of a series of broken Batustans controlled forever by Israel - one no Palestinian leader could accept."

Hari is proposing that Palestine declare itself an independent state with the 1967 borders. This may be a very good idea, unlike the idea of a Palestinian "state" that would be nothing but some isolated bantustans controlled by Israel.

Israel has clearly been using the "two state solution" idea as a figleaf to hide behind as Israel continued its ruthless ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and so the "one state" solution, of the replacement of Israel with a state with equal rights for all citizens regardless of religion or race, has come to seem the only acceptable solution.

If the Palestinians declare independence, with the 1967 borders, as a two-state solution, they will have justice on their side, but Israel will still have all the bombs, jets, white phosphorus, etc., as well as the vicious racism that motivates them to seek ever higher levels of cruelty. The Israelis will no doubt "punish" the Palestinians for declaring independence, killing and wounding more innocent people, but on the other hand, Israel continues to kill and wound Palestinians anyway, no matter what the Palestinians do.

In our corporate media, we don't hear much about the day-to-day life of Palestinians under the Israeli occupation, and it can be easy to imagine that after Israel's murderous rampage in Gaza last year, life for the Palestinians has been improving slowly as wounds heal.

However, "normal" life under Israeli occupation consists of "incursions" by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), whose goal is to create so much terror for Palestinian families that they will leave their land. This week commondreams posted the story of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy who was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by IDF forces and brutally beaten for no reason other than to create terror. Terrorizing Palestinians through targeting their children is one of the IDF's favorite tactics.

Similarly, the IDF routinely, almost daily, destroys the fields, orchards, and homes of Palestinian farmers, as in the incidents related by Eva Bartlett, "Homes and livelihoods gone in an instant," by Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, 11 March 2010:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11125.shtml

The story begins:

"Radia Abu Sbaih, 47, lives with her sister and one niece on family land roughly 700 meters from the "green line" boundary between Israel and Gaza. Until 18 February 2010, they had nearly 600 olive, fruit, date and nut trees, an agricultural cistern, a water well, various vegetables and a house.

"Theirs was one of three homes demolished by Israeli military bulldozers that day in al-Mossadar, eastern Gaza. Around 8am that morning, approximately five Israeli military bulldozers and upwards of 10 Israeli tanks, accompanied by more than 50 foot soldiers, invaded the farming region, according to locals. ..."

The story, with photos, goes on to describe the destruction of these homes, bulldozed without even giving the Palestinian families a chance to get their clothes and belongings out. The IDF even bulldozed to death a donkey in a pen, and a flock of pigeons in a coop. What is the point of such wanton cruelty? The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis could tell you.

To preempt apologists' comments on CD of the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing Palestinians, I'll post the following so I don't need to respond to their comments.

Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:
1 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
2 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
3 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier
4 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
5 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
6 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
7 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
8 – Defend the occupation and ethnic cleansing without mentioning the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
9 – Make so illegitimate arguments or use inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
10 – Switch between tactics 1-9 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
11 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic.
12 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.

Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like the above to try and win public opinion.

This is another good article documenting the US/Israel policy of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from their land into open air prisons. The only thing that it is missing are the words "ethnically cleansing". However, as Israel's cleansing campaign become more and more egregious, its public marketing campaign becomes less and less effective. With the internet and electronic technology, Israel's actions are being recorded for history.

I don't think this tactic will solve the issue given that: Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (over 1/4 of Israel population) will still live in a state of Apartheid and second-class citizenship and endure racism and discrimination.

There would be no right of return for Palestinians driven from their homes and lands in 1948.

It would not solve the problem of citizenship based on religion and ethnicity, rather than equal rights for all.

Besides, the US Empire will continue to shield Israel from international law, and cheerlead and fund Israeli crimes.

Now with that said, the right-wing racist imperialist trolls will show up any minute to hi-jack any discussion, as a good neo-Fascist would.

It is really sickening the rhetorical acrobatics they employ to justify war crimes, torture, ethnic cleansing and slow genocide. It seems they, like the Israeli right wing, want to get rid of the Palestinians once and for all. They have a problem and they need "lebensraum" for their Jewish white supremacist state.

"Netanyahu...has angrily declared that the Palestinians will face "consequences" if they choose this path [independence]."

Sounds like a replay of East Timor and Indonesia.

While Israel continues to steal Palestinian land, the US does nothing but 'condemn' - worthless posturing. The Palestinians were right to pull out of the 'negotiations'.

I support freedom fighters like Hamas. If Mexico or Canada started building settlements in Texas or Minnesota, would we call attacks on those settlements by Americans terrorist attacks?

I see no alternative but suicide bombing and aimless Qassam rocket attacks by Palestinians. Since the Israeli IDF is so intertwined within the Israeli civilian community, those attacks, which would kill Israeli civilians, should be viewed the same as the American attacks that killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan except for one thing - the Palestinian attacks would be to defend their homeland and would be just.

God, what horrible decisions the Palestinians are forced to make.

Hmmm, another article on declaring independance? A very powerful article. I'm not convinced about this tactic now though. I think there are multiple other positions that the Hamas government together with whatever can be salvaged from the US backed "Palestinian Authority" can take. They really aren't making their case to the fullest.

This step would be a stunt, done in isolation. I think rather that time is on the side of the non-Jewish majority in the region, even as dark as things seem to be. The Israelis, as hard as they try, can't improve their position. New immigrants from Jersey in new condos in the west bank aren't going to save them. It's sad but true. Let the Israelis panic, attack Lebanon again, Gaza, maybe Iran...then we will start seeing some real interest in compromise.

At this point in the situation a two state solution will not work, even IF the Israeli government agreed. The only equitable solution would be one state with control shared equally by Palestinians and Israelis. However so long as the US continues to provide $3Bn per year, no strings attached, Israel will never consider anything other than the complete take over of the entire area. When is this topic going to be allowed to be discussed on other than "progressive" sites here in the US? Even in Israel there are many who do not agree with their government's actions but we hear nothing but pro Zionist stories here in the US.

The cease settlements and peace agreements should be done and policed by the United Nations with Middle East participation.

The UN started this so they should get it done.

And the US people keep payin for all of this.

Oh Well, we still export a lot of weapons... and some good music.

They should go for it. See where it gets them. Can't be worse than where they are now.

The British owe the Palestinians big-time. For it was they who in 1919 at the end of WWI were mandated the responsibility of establishing a Palestinian State by the Versailles Treaties. But instead, for a price they entered into an illegal agreement with a few European Jews, to allow immigration of European Jews into Palestine for the purpose of establishing a “Homeland” . The Immigration got out of hand and became a land-grabbing spectacle uprooting Palestinians and forcing them into exile. When the British tried to get control of the situation, war broke out. When the Jews won control of the land they wanted and threw the British out, declared, not a homeland, but a Statehood. The US was the first to recognize the new State of Israel in 1948. Ninety years later, there is still no Statehood for Palestinians.

State of Palestine should lay claim to Tel Aviv, just for starters.
Boundaries can be negotiated and enforced by UN missile strikes.
Let's roll.

We should support Hamas. Hold your 'liberal' noses and support Hamas. And Hezbollah. And ANY organization that unequivocally supports a free Palestinian State. The racist, genocidal Israelis need to suffer the consequences of an armed unrest that makes the recent Gaza onlsaught walk in the park. The Israeli pigs dont understand any other language. And yeah stfup ... i am not an anti-semite.

Arguing for a two state solution has never worked. The original U.N. division was a two state solution that started off giving Palestinian land to Israel. Palestinians protested and the strife escalated to civil war. When Israel declared independence the surrounding Arab states entered the war and the result was that Israel took more land that had been designated by the U.N. to Palestinans. Then in 1967 Israel occupied the rest and has been unofficially annexing the rest for 43 years.

The two state solution has been a failure from the start. It will never happen. Israel will not allow it.

The ultimate solution to all this will be one state. The only question is whether it will be a Palestinian one (Israel will go the way of the Crusader States, which lasted longer than Israel has, and its people will have to return to Europe & North America where they came from,) a Jewish one (I don't want to think about what will happen to the Palestinians in that scenario,) or the one state will be a multicultural democracy where the Jewish minority is safe and has full rights (like what South Africa has done.)

I want the latter. Let's stop advocating a two state solution and start working our tails off for a Multicultural One State solution with peace and justice for all. Otherwise the only route to the other two versions of one state is bloody war that will make the previous ones look like chidren's war games in comparision.

They are considering a unilateral declaration of independence, and an appeal for the world to recognise them as a state. It wouldn't cause the occupation to vanish - but it would make the situation plain for all to see.

Lets just break it down to the lowest level.

If this happened Israel would react in such away as to make the last military action look like two school yard boys in a scuffle.

For any one to advise this is to advise the Palestinians to commit communal suicide.

Is it right what happens to them? No, but advising them to fly in the face of reason is a guarantee of retaliation that no one wants to see.

Johann Hari, don't be 'stupid'

how is it that a country of 7 millon can keep the whole world on pins and needles all the time? there are how many arabs with how much oil? and are we so mesmerised by the biblical texts that we allow the self-proclaimed chosen people to have their way in a territory where they are but an extreme minority? one of the countries most steeped in religious superstition is ours. more people believe in the virgin birth and a second coming than just about anywhere else, so it's easy to see why the same folk would be duped by aipac sponsored propoganda that promotes the sanctity of israel. get on the internet and read why the leading american statesman of the last century, george marshall, opposed truman's recognition of the state of israel and nearly resigned from the cabinet because of what truman did.

won't be long..We The People of the USA will be in the same mess the palestinians have endured for 60 years. I'm thinking anti-semitism just might be called for! They have too much influence in our government. I'm gonna die for lack of insurance, yet American arms & bulldozers are paid for by our government & supplied to Israel to kill Palestinians.

What utter garbage. If Palestine declared independence, Israel would seize the first real or fake opportunity to declare war against it, and not one country on the planet -- not even Iran, and certainly not a country run by Zionists like Sarkozy and the loathsome Kouchner -- would come to its aid.

Word to Clinton for taking a stance on this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100313/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_mideast

Much respect to Biden for bringing the issue up in the first place.

Perhaps, in the interest of fairness, the U.S. should now give the 3 billion a year to the Palestinians instead of Israel. I would prefer for my tax payer portion to go to those who are being attacked, starved, and treated as sub-human.

Jerusalem was a city of three religions: the real holy trinity is ( in alphabetical order, Christian, Islamic and Jewish.)

It is true that the history of any other religion ( than Jewish) is being rewritten, and the holy places of others are now claimed as solely Jewish. And you thought Bush/Cheney/ Rove were the only ones rewriting history!

Ah, Israel, what would Solomon or David do? All three religions claim Abraham....perhaps that would be a place to start....but I'm a Pagan, what do I know?

It would be a mistake to declare statehood at a time when the world is awakening to the fact that...

Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto

same place

different time

while the world stood by

genocide*

live...

a crime for which those responsible can look forward to being put on trial at the International Court of Criminal Justice...

"Members of the jury, on the charge of having committed crimes against humanity, what is your verdict?"

"Guilty as charged, your honor."

*according to Article 2 of the 1948 U.N. Convention On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (from Wikipedia), genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or IN PART** (caps are mine); a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups, as such, killing members of the group, causing serious bodly harm or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conidiions of life calculated to bring about its physica destruction in whole or IN PART, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

**emphasized because a few CD posters wrongly believe that genocide doesn't apply to what the Zionist settler-state is inflicting upon Gasa because the entire population there hasn't been annihilated as in the Warsaw Ghetto.

I used to agree with the majority of progressives in that Palestine should be an independent state. Not long ago, I listened to a cogent argument by a Jew, for a one-state solution.

Jews have to learn to live side by side with Palestinians. Of course, this would require the U.S. to turn off the $$$ spigot, and the continuation of the Israel boycott. Hit 'em in their pocketbooks. Motorola manufactures in Israel, for one. Israeli apartheid must end, just as it did in South Africa.

And it would require the U.N. to send in a peacekeeping force to enforce the rules at gunpoint, since Israel has broken U.N. laws and thus, is an outlaw state.

Get the thieves off of Palestinian land. Make them retire to the pre-1967 borders. And make them live in peace with Palestinians, and stop bombing and killing them. Tear down the Israeli walls. Now.

Of course, AIPAC, being one of the most influential and richest lobbies, the above scenario would be very difficult. Look what AIPAC did to Cynthia McKinney, the former Congresswoman from Georgia. AIPAC poured all sorts of money into her opponent's campaign, including placing negative stories in media about Ms. McKinney.

Read the 1947 U.N. resolution. It states clearly that the Palestinians have the right to an independent state. Why can't they implement it? Because they have no armed forces with tanks, aircraft, and nuclear bombs.

The Zionist state of Isreal is a Rogue State and should be declared so by the United Nations. Isreali arrogance is nauseating. Equally nauseating is the world's lack of courage in confronting Isreal the way it confronted the aparthied state of South Africa or the horrendous Berlin Wall in Germany.

The world once was outraged Berlin Wall and heralded its eventual removal. But there is hardly a peep about the apartheid wall that the Zionists continue to build.

The world admonishes every other country for racism within its borders. but once again the world is silent about Isreal's refusal to accept a One State "Palestine" solution for Jews and Palestinians alike.

The Zionist's recent decision to continue the building of illegal settlements in the occupied lands of Palestine, especially in full face of Vice President Biden's visit to Isreal should suggest the out of control rogue nature of the Zionist philosophy.

But even the United States feeble moans of protest by Hillary Clint is part and parcel of the phony theatre that constantly goes on between the Zionists and their supporters in the world.

If the United States was not doing method acting in this regard the would let their actions match their words by immediately stripping Isreal of the some 6 billion dollars of annual military aid that the U.S. gives the Zionists. The U.S. would immediately take steps within the U.N. Security Council to label Isreal a rogue state. The U.S. would also immediately make the United Nations aware of the intelligence it possesses regarding Isreal's guilt in the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai.

The Zionist are totally out of control.

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This week the Obama administration – which gives Israel $3bn a year, more than they dole out to any other nation on earth – made a meek and craven request for Israelis to simply have a pause in seizing even more land, and to sit down with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a big concrete slap: the announcement of 1,600 more homes to be built on occupied Palestinian land from which Arabs will be forcibly kept out. He has made it plain he will not loosen his grip by an inch, announcing: "Even if [Palestinian President] Abu Mazen comes along and says he's ready to sign a peace deal on the spot, we will restore settlement construction to its previous levels." No compromise. Never.
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