Gaza. La barbarie des soldats israéliens filmée sur le vif. Par Silvia Cattori

Le 7 juillet 2007

Interview:  interview Prof. Mahmoud N. Musa by Mrs. Gladys Martines Lopez of the Spanish newspaper Diagonal July 2006.

Please click here to read the English , 

Frensh

The book of Virginia Tilley The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock. University of Michigan Press (May 15, 2005)
tilley@hws.edu

Reviewed by Professor Mahmoud N. Musa :

Few people are as qualified to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the author of this book. She is a professor of political science with a PhD from the university of Wisconsin with special emphasis on ethnic conflict. Further, Dr. Tilley has had twenty years direct experience with this conflict, including living there for two years. The book, is scholarly, well-documented, and illustrated with maps. It can serve as an excellent background for this conflict, and includes a discussion of the important international actors: the Zionist movement, the Arab States, the United States of America, Europe, and the United Nations.

Conflicts can be resolved by three ways: prevalence, compromise, and transcendence. The first alternative of prevalence, that is, of one party totally defeating the other has failed. Cleansing that land of historic Palestine of one ethnicity or the other has not been possible and is unthinkable, though some continue to advocate such a solution.

The second alternative is compromise: the two-state solution, one Jewish, the other Palestinian. This book convincingly argues that this is not a viable solution that will bring peace to the area and the world at large. Some of the reasons are:

1. The identity and mytho-history of both peoples are based on the total area of historic Palestine. Their collective consciousness will not rest with a fraction of the land.

2. Demographic mixture: Jews live in large numbers in the West Bank occupying 60% of the lad, and it has become unthinkable that they will vacate the area. Palestinians constitute 20% of the population of Israel. Any separation is tantamount to apartheid.

3. Natural resources, especially water, are impossible to divide, and will continue to be a source of tension. About two-thirds of the water Israel consumes comes from the aquifer under the West Bank.

4. Economic: the two economies and potentially the labor force are inextricably linked and interdependent.

5. Politico-legal legitimacy: basing a State on one ethnicity necessarily results with discrimination. Israel cannot be Jewish and also democratic.

A meta-conflict, such as this one, cannot be resolved with compromise and needs to be transcended by forming one democratic secular State for all concerned. After reading this book, I am left convinced of the statement at the end of Chapter 3: “Hence, the one-state solution is not an option to be argued. It is an inevitability to be faced.”

This is not to say that this will be an easy solution. Dr. Tilley discusses the potential difficulties and offers proposals for their resolution. Rather than endlessly arguing how to divide this small piece of land, as has been done over the past fifteen years, the energy should be directed towards forming one-State.

Such a State will open the Arab and Muslim worlds for cultural and economic exchange. It will also serve as a bridge between the Middle East on one side and Europe and North American on the other side; contributing to the peace and stability of the entire world.

With this solution the concept of the “Promised Land” will be transformed from the physical to the moral. Rather than warring over a piece real estate, the struggle will be for human rights, justice, and the well-being of the individual. Could it be this is what the God of Abraham really meant by the “Promised Land”?


musa@odspi.org