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What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal
In this new book, Dr. Ibish examines the arguments generally put forward by Palestinian and other Arab American proponents of abandoning the goal of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state and instead seeking to promote a single, democratic state in all of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The book also looks at differences between the deployment of the one-state idea by some Palestinian figures in the occupied territories as a diplomatic "threat" intended to spur greater Israeli seriousness about a negotiated agreement and the diasporic discourse that drives most one-state rhetoric. Finally, Dr. Ibish explains in some detail why ending the occupation and peace with Israel, while difficult to achieve and thus far elusive, are the only plausible and practicable Palestinian national strategy.
The book also includes a preface by ATFP President Ziad J. Asali.
The book also includes a preface by ATFP President Ziad J. Asali.
138 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2009
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November 18, 2023
No one on the ground wants a one-state solution. It is a weird academic exercise dreamt of by a tiny minority of far-away academics who represent almost no one but themselves. It would lead to incredible violence, and is often a maximalist anti-Jewish idea masked by “progressive” notions of equality and peace. It harms the people it purports to be helping, actual Palestinians in the Middle East.
Hussein Ibish says all of this and more in this short and clearly argued book.
That it even needs to be said would be surprising if not for the fact that this conflict is sadly burdened with a massive corps of far-away academics and activists who often as not do not know the history they claim to be experts on, and who treat the future of the people on the ground as an academic exercise.
It is all such a waste of attention that you should actually be angry at people who talk about it. Ibish by his own explanation here says he only wrote this analysis of the one-state idea to help and undercut it, to try and stop it from wasting people’s time even more.
Personally I read this book less to learn about its subject and more to judge its author. Ibish usually writes op-eds, and I wanted to know more about him. This was his only book (to my knowledge) focused on the Arab-Israel conflict, so I read it. I do tend to find him fair overall, but both here and in his other writings I’ve seen he tends to frame Israel in the least sympathetic way possible over and over, sometimes being flat-out wrong or at least very arguable. If you based your understanding of Israel just on him, you’d be misled. But his criticism is not hateful, it’s just that I find it stresses things differently than I would, or omits things that I find important, and so on. Knowing that, I find he is a constructive and educational critic, often quite empathetic, and I read his stuff whenever I happen upon it.
Hussein Ibish says all of this and more in this short and clearly argued book.
That it even needs to be said would be surprising if not for the fact that this conflict is sadly burdened with a massive corps of far-away academics and activists who often as not do not know the history they claim to be experts on, and who treat the future of the people on the ground as an academic exercise.
It is all such a waste of attention that you should actually be angry at people who talk about it. Ibish by his own explanation here says he only wrote this analysis of the one-state idea to help and undercut it, to try and stop it from wasting people’s time even more.
Personally I read this book less to learn about its subject and more to judge its author. Ibish usually writes op-eds, and I wanted to know more about him. This was his only book (to my knowledge) focused on the Arab-Israel conflict, so I read it. I do tend to find him fair overall, but both here and in his other writings I’ve seen he tends to frame Israel in the least sympathetic way possible over and over, sometimes being flat-out wrong or at least very arguable. If you based your understanding of Israel just on him, you’d be misled. But his criticism is not hateful, it’s just that I find it stresses things differently than I would, or omits things that I find important, and so on. Knowing that, I find he is a constructive and educational critic, often quite empathetic, and I read his stuff whenever I happen upon it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review