Israel's strategic ally, the United States, has falsely postured as a neutral broker in two-state talks by:
(a) pretending there is some equivalence between the nuclear-armed, militarily powerful, industrialized Israeli state and a stateless occupied people who have suffered continued abuse by the occupier;
(b) allowing Israel to constantly move goalposts by Israel in negotiations, the last example in 2016 being the Israeli insistence that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state even though 25% of Israel's population and the great majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories are not Jewish;
(c) enabling Israel's aggressions by ignoring its expansion of settlements after the Oslo Accords of 1993;
(d) enabling Israel's aggressions by continuing to provide Israel with massive foreign aid to the tune of $3-billion over the decades and after the collapse of negotiations in 2016 to $3.8 billion, despite Israel's policies of collective punishment in the occupied territories;
(e) prejudicing negotiations in 2004 by agreeing to Israel's retention of large settlement blocs in occupied territories in any final agreement, thus putting a seal of approval on thefts of large blocs of Palestinian land; and
(f) supporting Israel's siege of Gaza, an extreme form of illegal collective punishment begun in 2007 following an attempted coup against the legitimate Hamas authority voted into power in a 2006 election.
The Palestinian Authority, created by the 1993 Oslo Accords, caved in to combined Israel-US pressure and agreed to the most extreme terms demanded by Israel, as evidenced by disclosure in 2011 of the "Palestine Papers." But Israel, with US compliance, rejected even these most generous terms, putting the lie to the US and Israeli claim they want a fair negotiated settlement to the conflict. The Palestine Papers show conclusively that Palestinians did everything they could have done (and more) to reach an agreement. Today, the politically powerless PA is subservient to Israel by assisting its occupation policies.
The necessity of a 1-state solution and the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" (BDS) movement
Given Israel and the US's undermining of any basis for a 2-state solution, many call today for negotiation of a 1-state solution in which every inhabitant of Palestine/Israel, regardless of religion or nationality, will have full citizenship rights. In other words, Israel would have to give up its theocratic nature as "The Jewish State," grant occupied Palestinians citizenship, and become a state of all its citizens. There has never been a negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians on a 1-state solution to the conflict, primarily because Israel and to a lesser degree the Palestinian Authority benefit from endless negotiations for a 2-state solution.
BDS, the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" movement, was initiated in 2004-2005 by a number of Palestinian organizations, a prominent founder being Gandhi Prize winner Omar Barghouti. Barghouti has spoken in favor of a one-state solution for Palestine in which all occupants regardless of religion would be full-fledged citizens. BDS is a non-violent campaign to generate political and legal pressure abroad on Israel to recognize the rights of Palestinians for autonomy and the full range of human rights. The pressure is directed at other countries and their corporations to cease their illegal operations in the occupied territories. BDS, as such, mirrors the successful boycott and divestment campaign against South Africa that helped end its extremist racist apartheid practices.
While BDS as an organization takes no official stance on a one state or two-state outcome, its program is totally consistent with either outcome. A number of other organizations that have adopted BDS, such as the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace, also take no position on 1-state or 2-state solutions, but are consistent with either outcome. Israel's exclusionist settlement policies, on the other hand, are inimical to a 1-state solution and indeed to any meaningful 2-state solution.
Smearing BDS
Israel and its US allies have stooped to tarring anyone with serious criticisms of Israel's settler-colonialist abusive policies as "anti-Semitic." In fact, in February 2019, the US Senate voted on a bill, S1, that would have effectively criminalize BDS, allowing state governments to refuse to do business with any organization which adhered to BDS, thereby threatening their 1st Amendment rights. To the Senate's shame, S1 was approved by a 77-23 margin, but was not approved by the House. The willingness of the Senate to toy with the 1st Amendment right of free speech is in itself a testament to the necessity to support BDS, an important non-violent project.
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