Alan Hart: The Palestinians' Only Option

In the final countdown to the UN General Assembly vote on recognition of Palestine as a non-member state, the PLO has indicated that it's expecting "a pleasant surprise", it being the number of European countries which will not do Zionism's bidding on this occasion and will vote for the resolution. Victory for the Palestinians in this forum can be taken for granted, and it will help to further isolate the Israel of Netanyahu as a pariah state, but It won't be, can't be, a substitute for a viable strategy to secure justice for the Palestinians. In my analysis the Palestinians now have only one option. For starters, it requires the PLO to recognize and declare that the two state solution is dead, not least because no Israeli prime minister is going to trigger a Jewish civil war in order to end the occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem. Then what? The next step should be winding up the Palestinian Authority and handing total responsibility for the occupation back to Israel. That would open the door to what I believe to be the only viable strategy for the Palestinians, if they are ever to obtain justice. With the two state solution not only dead but formally buried, they could then campaign, with glowing global support, for equal rights and security for all in one state. All of pre-1967 Israel plus all the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip. In one or two decades at the most, because the Palestinians would outnumber the Jews, one state would mean the end of Zionism, but it would also open the door to real security for the one state's Jews. As I have previously written and never tire of saying, the Jews are, generally speaking, the intellectual elite of the world, and the Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. What they could do together in peace and partnership in one state is really the stuff that dreams are made of. They could change the region for the better, and by doing so, give new hope and inspiration to the whole world. As things are, and look like going, and given that the Palestinians are never going to surrender to Zionism's will by accepting crumbs from its table, the only alternative to one state for all is a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.