Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
There have been no formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in more than a year, but Barak was speaking at a rare joint event with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as part of an annual national security conference in the Israeli city of Herzliya. The pair shook hands and both were warmly applauded.
Barak, a former general and Israel's most decorated soldier, sought to appeal to Israelis on both right and left by saying a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel's future as a "Zionist, Jewish, democratic state".Israel is faced with three options:
Like a child with his hand stuck in a sweet jar, Israel wants three sweets but can only have two.
Option 1: The One State SolutionIsrael can annex the Occupied Territories and give all Palestinians the same civil rights as Jewish Israelis. To do so, however, it would have to amend its constitution and cease being a Zionist State. Its important to distinguish between Judaism which is a religion and Zionism which is a political system – the two are not synonymous. This is not going to happen in the short term but it is possible in the long term by mutual agreement some kind of ‘federation’ might emerge between Israel, Palestine and Jordan, for example, of the kind that has occurred in the European Community.
Option 2: The Two State Solution
Israel can remain a Zionist State and a democracy but to enjoy both it must give up the aspirations of Eretz Israel – the ‘greater’ Israel and withdraw from the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank to the internationally recognized borders (The 1949 Armistice line, aka the green Line assumed in UN Resolution 242). This is the position favoured by the international community as expressed in the Roadmap for Peace, Annapolis Agreement and latest Quartet Statement and UN Resolution 1850.
Option 3: The No State Solution
Israel can remain a Zionist state and annex and settle more land in the Occupied Territories and Golan. To do so, however, it must also continue to control the lives of Palestinians by military force. This is the option favoured by many within Netanyahu’s Likud party, (Netanyahu, for example opposed the withdrawal from Gaza). Livni, his main opponent in the last election also believes the national aspirations of Israeli Arabs lies in a Palestinian homeland, not Israel. But accepting or justifying the present status quo is incompatable with Western-styled democracy, something Jimmy Carter has already warned of.
Read more of the Guardian article here
See also Jeff Halper, Dismantling the Matrix of Control
