Too late for a two-state solution

I never imagined that anything that an Israeli politician could say or do would surprise me. But a few days ago, when I heard on the radio that Mr. Ehud Olmert, the soon-to be ex-prime minister of Israel had said in a farewell statement that Israel "will have to pull out from almost all the territories (in the West Bank), including in East Jerusalem, including in the Golan Heights" -- I just could not believe my own ears.
This was an extra-ordinary statement coming out of the mouth of a hard-line Israeli politician who, thirty years ago, voted in the Knesset even against the Camp David accords which gave back Sinai to Egypt. So what caused this sudden change in Olmert's thinking?
Some analysts think that most Israeli politicians except the ultra-right have reached the slow but painful realisation that because of demographic reasons (the Arabs are expected to outnumber the Jews in the former British mandated territories of Palestine in a few years' time), sooner or later Israel will be forced to make a choice between having a democratic Jewish state or an oppressive colonial power ruling over an increasingly hostile Palestinian population through a militarily enforced apartheid system. Hence this change of heart.
Many Kadima and Socialist party members now believe that a two-state solution is the best guarantee for the survival of Israel as a Jewish state. It is tragic that after forty years of death, destruction, suffering, and humiliation inflicted on the Palestinians on a day to day basis most of the Israeli leaders are now coming round to the idea of a two-state solution.
But this is probably not a viable proposition any longer because of the facts on the ground created by Israel's aggressive settlement policy over the last forty years. During this period, the lives and the future of the Israelis and the Palestinians have become closely intertwined. In the words of a Fatah politician in Ramallah: "Where will the Palestinian state rise up? The Israeli nation is inside us already."
While paying lip-service to peace negotiations, Israeli politicians (both Conservatives and Socialists) have vigorously pursued and are still pursuing a policy of ruthless colonization. Israel has dotted the whole of the West Bank with hundreds of garrison-like settlements, fenced highways connecting the settlements (for settler use alone), watchtowers and checkpoints.
In the process, heavily-armed settlers have taken over the best land and water resources in the occupied territories. By relentlessly pursuing this policy Israel has unwittingly created a monster of its own over which it has lost control. The settler movement has become so powerful and so entrenched in the occupied territories that its radical members are now openly defying the Israeli government.
A recent rise of settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers stationed in the occupied territories has been reported by human rights activists. The settlers vehemently oppose any talks about an eventual pull-out from the occupied territories. It will require a full-scale military operation by the Israeli army to force the settlers to leave the occupied territories and it is inconceivable that any Israeli politician will have the guts to order such an operation and far less to carry it through.
Many analysts think that time has come for the Palestinians to deconstruct certain myths and accept certain realities. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority no longer exists. It was destroyed by Ariel Sharon. The Palestinian Authority in its current shape or form is unable to deliver anything to the Palestinians not even some improvement in the apartheid-style living conditions of the Palestinians. The current peace process has no future because Israel will never allow the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.
The Israelis have actually used the foreign-funded Palestinian Authority to hide the crude fact -- from international scrutiny -- that Palestine (the occupied territories) is, in reality, an oppressed colony. Likewise, they have cleverly used the never-ending peace process as a cover to consolidate their stranglehold on the occupied territories. The longer it continues the stranglehold will become even tighter. So what is the solution?
Actually, the solution, at least from the point of view of the Palestinians, was proposed a few years ago by Professor Edward Said, perhaps the most prominent Palestinian intellectual of the last century. In his brilliant treatise Culture and Resistance, he put forward the idea of a one-state solution, i.e., the creation of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural state in the whole land of Israel/Palestine.
Unfortunately, because of his sudden death in 2003, Professor Said did not have enough time to elaborate on this idea. But to make his idea more acceptable, more cogent and more democratic (yes, democratic), I propose that the rights of all the minority communities be guaranteed by the constitution of this new secular state.
Therefore, under the current circumstances, the Palestinian Authority has no other option but to recast itself as the African National Congress of South Africa under the apartheid regime and prepare its followers and sympathisers across the world for a long struggle for democracy and equal rights.

Chaklader Mahboob-ul Alam is a columnist for the Daily Star.