Because of pressure from Europe? Even pressure from the White House? No, nothing but a crushing military defeat on the battlefield will compel the Israelis to give up their state. And if that happens, our debate will become irrelevant anyhow.
The majority of the Palestinian people, too, want a state of their own. It is needed to satisfy their most basic aspirations, to restore their national pride, to heal their trauma. Even the chiefs of Hamas, with whom we have talked, want it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is laboring under an illusion. There are Palestinians who talk about one state, but for most of those, it is just a codeword for the dismantling of the State of Israel. They, too, know that it is utopian.
There are also some Palestinians who delude themselves into thinking that if they talk about one state, it will frighten the Israelis so much that they will agree to the establishment of the Palestinian state next to Israel. But the result of this Machiavellian thinking is quite the opposite: it frightens the Israelis and pushes them into the arms of the right. It arouses the fearful dog of ethnic cleansing, which is sleeping in the corner. That dog must not be forgotten for a moment.
All over the world, the tendency is going the other way: not the creation of new multi-national states, but on the contrary, the breaking up of states into national components. In Scotland, this week, victory was achieved by a party that wants to split from England. The Frenchspeaking minority in Canada is always wavering on the brink of secession. Kosovo is about to gain independence from Serbia. The Soviet Union has broken up into its component parts, Chechnya wants to separate from Russia, Yugoslavia has broken apart, Cyprus has broken apart, the Basques want independence, Corsicans want independence, in Sri Lanka a civil war is raging, as it is in the Sudan. In Indonesia, the stitches are coming loose in a dozen different places. Belgium has endless problems.
In the entire world there is no example of two different nations deciding of their own free will to live together in one state. There is no example-except Switzerland-of a bi-national or multi-national state really functioning. (And the example of Switzerland, which has grown for centuries in a unique process, is the proverbial exception that proves the rule.)
To hope that after 120 years of conflict, into which a fifth generation has already been born, there could be a transition from total war to total peace in a joint state, giving up all aspiration to independencethat is a complete illusion.
How is this idea to be realized? The advocates of the one state never go into this in detail.