A key argument of my recently released book After Zionism is to find ways to reach the one-state solution between Israel and Palestine. It’s the only truly just outcome.
But others, namely the colonists in Palestine, have another idea. A one-state solution that permanently excludes Arabs. The Times of Israel reports:
MK Tzipi Hotovely knew her audience well. The last of nearly a dozen speakers at a conference advocating Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and the end of the two-state solution, the young Likud lawmaker described for the crowd a scenario very familiar to right-wing pundits in Israel: being challenged by the media about their views on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
“After having proven with signs and miracles that a Palestinian state would be a catastrophe and would just increase terrorism, the question that scares right-wingers interviewed by the media the most is this — the ultimate left-wing question: ”˜So what is your solution? What’s your plan?’” Hotovely said. Raising her voice, she continued: “Friends, everybody here today knows that there is a solution — applying sovereignty [over the West Bank]. One state for the Jewish people with an Arab minority, lest any right-winger say there’s no solution!”
To the raucous applause of more than 500 conference-goers squeezed into the visitors’ center of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Thursday, Hotovely warned against advocating merely the annexation of the West Bank’s Area C, which is under Israeli control and where most settlers live, an idea recently spread by some on the right. “We need to demand sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and nothing less than that,” she declared.
There’s nothing new about far-right groups holding events in which speakers fantasize about “Greater Israel.” But Thursday’s conference was different: It indicated that the idea of the one-state solution has become respectable within a larger segment of society, including the ranks of Israel’s ruling party.
Hotovely was right: For years, moderate right-wingers tiptoed around the question of what they envision for the future of the territories Israel captured in 1967. Only hardliners openly admitted what perhaps many others secretly desired, but knew to be politically too incorrect to openly demand.
“We’re all here to say one thing: the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Why? Because!” co-organizer Yehudit Katsover proclaimed in her opening statement to the conference, which she organized with right-wing activist Nadia Matar.