Two-state solution at the crossroads

Against the backdrop of Israeli occupation and settlements and Palestinian resistance, the two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict is being increasingly questioned. Michael Slackman reported this week in the New York Times that Arab leaders see little future in the plan. “The way events have evolved, there is no likelihood that a real Palestinian state would be formed. A truncated entity, one dotted with Israeli settlements and divided by internal Palestinian conflict, would in the end be no state at all, and would serve only to empower radicals and fuel the conflict in perpetuity, Arab political analysts and government officials said.... [M]omentum is moving in favor of the more radical players, like Hamas and its patron state, Iran.”

Akiva Eldar writes in Ha'aretz that “if the ‘Annapolis process’ goes the way of the ‘Camp David process’...the Palestinian Authority will fall.” He quotes a moderate Fatah official as saying, "’Instead of talking about occupation, we will recognize that we are living in an apartheid state… Instead of fighting for independence, we will fight for equal rights.’”

A real two-state solution -- in which a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem would enjoy full sovereignty and independence in a contiguous territory not segmented and not totally surrounded by Israel -- is now a forlorn dream from which the international consensus has yet to awaken,” argued Kathleen Christison in CounterPunch last month.

Possible alternatives to the two-state model include indefinite military occupation; the binational or unitary secular state proposed by Edward Said and others; and absorption of Gaza by Egypt and of the West Bank by Jordan, a prospect discussed in the Slackman article.

A unitary state featuring equal rights of Jews and Arabs in Palestine remains anathema to the Israeli majority. “Most Israelis have come to recognize that the consequence of failing to reach a two-state solution is either a bi-national state, which could not be Jewish, or an undemocratic regime where Palestinian residents could not enjoy equal rights,”
wrote Ori Nir, spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. “In an interview with Israel's daily Ha'aretz last November, [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert warned that if the two-state solution collapsed, Israel would ‘face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.’”

Most progressive U.S. Jews also still regard a Jewish majority state as essential to defend the interests of the Jewish people. "Justice demands a negotiated two-state solution. Nothing else will provide real, lasting peace and security for Israel and the Palestinians,” writes
Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. Describing Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, Diane Balser of Brit Tzedek seeks to “advance the principle of two states for two people, and help progressive Jews develop greater confidence in their Jewish identity, from which to reach out to potential allies among Muslims, Arabs, African Americans and all peoples of color.”

The Tikkun network of Rabbi Michael Lerner and Dr. Cornel West writes, “we understand why, in this historical moment, the Jewish people need a state of our own. With memories of the murder and genocide of our people still fresh… we affirm preserving ‘the Jewish character’ of Israel.”

A minority of U.S. progressive Jews are not committed to the two-state strategy. Jewish Voice for Peace insists on “the right of the Israeli people to self-determination” alongside “a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis [recognizing] a right of return for all refugees,” but does not demand a two state solution: "...[W]hen the Occupation ends, it will then become possible to consider all the different ideas for a permanent and sustainable peace in the Middle East. We believe that an open dialogue that includes all different formulations of such a permanent solution are legitimate, as long as they each respect the individual and collective rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.” Tikkun’s statement indicates that it contains a minority who favor a bi-national state.

The history and identity of Israel cannot be separated from the settler state's role as an outpost of Western imperialism in the Middle East. As Balser correctly notes, Jews have played a progressive role in both the U.S. and Europe, growing out of their struggle against anti-Semitism and for full equality in society. But the founding of Israel after the Holocaust was not an outgrowth of that struggle. Building Israel meant survival, but it also meant denying another people’s rights and allying with imperialism as part of the bargain. In the context of the global struggle, Israel functions today as an integral part of the U.S. imperial project. It acts as a regional proxy for U.S. power, with its nuclear arsenal, assistance to the U.S. military, and worldwide arms sales, including to regimes the U.S. cannot deal with openly.

Thus there has always been a contradiction at the heart of the two-state solution. While its liberal proponents hope that Israel will evolve into an ordinary nation living in peace with its neighbors, the reality is that to do that, it would have to forfeit its role as imperialist outpost.

If Palestinians won't accept a vitiated mini-state, and Israelis will neither accept a binational state nor enable a true Palestinian state by withdrawing to the 1967 borders, then the only options that remain are continued occupation and resistance, or absorption of the Palestinian territories by Egypt and Jordan, which, according to Slackman, may only intensify the struggle: "absorption would make permanent the fight over the land Israel is on, giving radical groups a cause to rally around, and moderates nothing to point to."

A 'Concert of Powers'?

Writing in the current New Left Review, Marxist historian Perry Anderson assesses the world situation seven years into the 21st century, evaluating the current balance of forces, the results of the Iraq war, and the forces of opposition to hegemony. He also comments on the optimistic, post-capitalist visions of several theorists.

Economically, the past twenty years have extended capitalism greatly, with its penetration into Russia and China and rapid development of India and Brazil. "Regardless of the parties in power—Communist, Liberal-Democratic, Gaullist, New Labour, United Russia, Congress, Workers or Republican—the same basic bundle of property rights and policies has rolled forward, at varying speeds and in differing stages, but with no significant counter-marches in the opposite direction. Rather, with world trade still racing ahead of world growth, there has been a steady increase in the interlocking of all the major capitalist economies in a common dependence on each other."

Though U.S. economic weight is declining as other power centers rise, Anderson sees continued U.S. hegemony. "With still the world’s largest economy, financial markets, reserve currency, armed forces, global bases, culture industry and international language, the U.S. combines assets that no other state can begin to match. " However, the U.S. role is now that of leader of a "densely interconnected universe of profit and privilege"-- a Concert of Powers, "still in its early stages," in which China, Japan, the EU, Russia, India and Brazil coordinate their actions to maintain the international order under the leadership of the U.S.

Against this backdrop, Anderson sees the war in Iraq as an irrational and destabilizing lunge, not justified by U.S. economic or strategic interests, and not necessary to tighten its already strong control over the Middle East. Following Mearsheimer and Walt, he sees the Israel lobby and U.S. ignorance of Islam as the drivers for an action dangerous to the U.S. and Europe, but one which, although a quagmire, is unlikely to lead to an unraveling of the U.S. position in the Mideast.

Anderson points out that popular resistance movements such as those in France, Venezuela, and Bolivia have continued to unfold in this period, given international scope for a time by the World Social Forum. But the popular conviction that there is no alternative to financial markets has been difficult to shake, and overall the motion has been to the right. Ecological and particularly financial problems remain likely to bring crisis to the system.

Unconvinced that popular opposition or the structural problems of capitalism will provide the motive force of change, Anderson assesses four authors or pairs of authors with non-Marxist views on globalization, nationalism, state, and capitalism. If I understand his summary, Anderson believes that Nairn; Hardt and Negri; Arrighi; and Bull all posit in different ways a transition to a future in which capitalism overcomes its contradictions and, through globalization, provides a relatively rational human existence. While Anderson says he is skeptical of these arguments, he indicates that they must be responded to with equivalent visions.

While it is superficially grounded in some events of recent years, I think Anderson's Concert of Powers is a gross misreading of the fierce competition currently underway among the major capitalist nations -- in this sense Khanna's analysis seems much closer to the mark. For the same reasons, and as I wrote last week, I disagree that the occupation of Iraq was an aberrant move by U.S. imperialism. Rather, it is struggling fiercely to maintain and deepen its control of the Middle East, both to discipline smaller nations and to keep its resources out of the hands of its imperialist competitors.

While I haven't looked into the post-capitalist authors Anderson mentions, my own sense is that the expansion of capitalism will generate more rather than fewer explosive contradictions in the coming years. As he says himself, the integration of China, India and Russia into the capitalist system, causing "doubling of the world’s working class to 3 billion in the space of a few years, in conditions often as harsh as in the early nineteenth century, is the largest structural change of the period. Its long-term consequences remain to be seen." I suggest that the future holds increased struggles of these workers for a fairer share of the rising incomes generated by global development, as well as of workers in the already advanced countries to maintain a decent life.

Yes, it's the oil - and not just Iraq's

As Jim Holt wrote in the London Review of Books last October, It's the Oil that drove the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its long-term plans for that country. "Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.... In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success," writes Holt. The massive size of Iraq's oil resources, the push to legalize U.S. companies' access to them through the draft oil law and separate Kurdish deals, and the construction of a giant U.S. embassy in Baghdad and five new super-bases to prepare for permanent military occupation (justified by sectarian friction and al Qaeda), support his assessment.

Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy defense secretary, had confirmed as much in 2003: "We just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." Ex-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence, published in September, that "the Iraq war is largely about oil".

Chanting "No Blood for Oil," the anti-war movement won wide support before and during the early stages of the war by exposing these aims. But after Sunni-Shi'a sectarian violence became rampant in 2006, many became disoriented, hoping that U.S. troops could keep the peace.

The opposite is true. While an immediate goal of U.S. policy is to take control of Iraq's oil resources, the bases and the Sunni-Shi'a struggle also are building blocks of the larger U.S. project of controlling the Middle East as a whole, as observed by Edward N. Luttwak in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January 2007. "It was the hugely ambitious project of the Bush administration to transform the entire Middle East by remaking Iraq into an irresistible model of prosperous democracy. Having failed in that worthy purpose, another, more prosaic result has inadvertently been achieved: divide and rule, the classic formula for imperial power on the cheap. The ancient antipathy between Sunni and Shiite has become a dynamic conflict, not just within Iraq but across the Middle East, and key protagonists on each side seek the support of American power.... Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S."

So, the U.S. is well positioned to continue its plunder of Iraq and to occupy the balance of power in the Middle East. The Iraqi nationalists who oppose the U.S. are still regrouping to overcome the secular divisions, and the U.S. antiwar movement remains peripheral. Under these conditions, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's promises to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq have remained vague. Look for them to renege if either becomes president.

Shrinking Superpower?

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Parag Khanna's recent essay argues that the brief era of the single superpower is over. He describes a world dominated by not one but three superpowers -- the U.S., the E.U., and China. The competition is not primarily military, but political and economic as well. Each of the three contenders represents a political style and a worldview.

America's model is a coalition style with itself as the leader. But American exceptionalism no longer provides a uniquely attractive version of democracy and progress. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplify its method, but in a world in which it is no longer dominant, they represent imperial overreach. "Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East, and has lost much of East Asia's confidence," says Khanna.

China is also extending its influence regionally, in both East and Central Asia, based on its economic power and on Asian identity and history. Its initiatives beyond, in Africa and Latin America, are building its global influence. Its rise represents the first time a power of non-European heritage is legitimately contending for supremacy.

According to Khanna, Europe sees its role as balancing between the U.S. and China. The European system is growing by steadily bringing peripheral countries into its orbit, then absorbing them. The U.S. political system can't do that, and in addition the process is giving Europeans a blueprint for building international institutions elsewhere.

The Big Three each dominate a north/south zone, but each will meddle in the periphery of the others. Therefore Khanna sees what he calls the "second world", the increasingly developed but not imperialist "swing states" whose alliances with the Big Three will determine the outcome. Russia and Turkey, Iran and Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Brazil, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, are no longer merely the pawns on the great powers' chessboard, but are able to play the great powers off against each other. Whether through independent-minded anti-imperial alliances, or through sovereign wealth funds which are buying up Big Three assets, the second world will determine the outcome of global politics in the next generation.

Khanna's essay updates the conventional paradigm, in which world politics is seen as a struggle among great powers. But it does not break from it, as he describes power trends as driven by national interests. The emergence of China's non-western cultural heritage in the epicenter of power is one dimension, but expressions of cultural diversity throughout the world are also on the rise.

Most importantly, Khanna does not ask whether everyone in a country has the same interests and will pull in the same direction. If globalization has made anything clear, it is that capitalists and workers, rich and poor, state and the people, have divergent interests in every country. The rise of mass communications will increasingly allow people to find their true allies worldwide, whether within their country or outside it.