Palestine and Israel: One State to end the conflict

The School for Oriental and African Studies, London, organised a conference on the One State Solution for Israel and Palestine last November.

"Over the past several years the failure of the two-state approach has led to a resurgence of interest in a one-state solution and the London conference brings together many who have written or spoken in favor of it."

The conference gave way to a declaration on the One State Solution, published in Counterpunch. The declaration is worth reading because its clarity contrasts with the vague agenda of the two state solution. People who are still promoting the two state solution, not only failed many times, but were never specific about what a Palestinian state could or should be.
"The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.

The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution."

Thanks, But No Thanks: A wonderful defence of the One State solution.
"But statehood as such is a relatively recent addition to Palestinian aspirations. The main Palestinian impetus after the disaster of 1948 was that of "return"; it was more about reversing the loss of Arab land and patrimony, than the fulfilment of classical post-colonial self-determination, via statehood."