Juan Cole: Israeli settlements could cause one-state solution
Saeb Erekat, chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization Steering Committee, said Wednesday that Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas should be frank with the Palestinian people and admit to them that there is no possibility of a two-state solution given continued Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
It is morally and ethically unconscionable to leave millions of Palestinians in a condition of statelessness, in which they have no rights. (Warren Burger defined citizenship as the"right to have rights" as my colleague Margaret"Peggy" Sommers pointed out in her new book.) Therefore, if there isn't going to be a two-state solution, there will have to be a one-state solution, in which Israel gives citizenship to the Palestinians. (As it is, 20 percent of Israelis are Palestinian Arabs and that proportion will grow to 33 percent by 2030, if they are not expelled by sometime-Moldavian-night-club-bouncer and now foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman.)
Al-Jazeera English has a video interview with Saree Makdisi on Erekat's statement:
The Israeli colonies in the West Bank are actively encouraged by the Israeli government. Haaretz reported last winter on a hitherto secret database on the settlements kept by the Israeli government:
An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements -- about 75 percent -- construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents. . .
The settlements in which massive construction has taken place on private Palestinian lands. Entire neighborhoods built without permits or on private lands are inseparable parts of the settlements. The sense of dissonance only intensifies when you find that municipal offices, police and fire stations were also built upon and currently operate on lands that belong to Palestinians...