Palestine was to be divided into a Jewish and a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as a neutral unit, all these parts united in a kind of economic federation.
The Palestinians rejected the plan. They considered the whole country their homeland, and hoped to regain it with the help of the Arab armies.
The Jewish side accepted the plan without hesitation. Like everyone who was alive in the country at the time, I remember the wild jubilation in the streets. But David Ben-Gurion did not dream for a moment of remaining satisfied with it. He knew that a war would break out, and hoped that our side would enlarge its territory decisively. As indeed happened.
The day after the 1948 war ended, the Partition Plan was dead. A new reality had come into being. The war had partitioned Palestine into three units: Israel proper, the West Bank -- which was now a part of the Kingdom of Jordan -- and the Gaza Strip, which was governed by Egypt.
Today, several wars later (who is counting?), Israel dominates in different ways all of historical Palestine. And peace seems far, far away.
IN THEORY, what are the alternatives?
Right after the 1948 war, in early 1949, a tiny group of young people in the country, including a Muslim Arab, a Druze Arab and myself (curiously enough, all three of us later became members of the Knesset) devised a plan for the solution: the so-called Two-State Solution. One country, two states -- Israel and Palestine, Jerusalem as a joint capital, open borders between all parts, a joint economy.
We found no takers. Everybody was against it: the government of Israel, the Arab states, the USA, the Soviet Union (until 1969), Europe, the Muslim world.
That was 70 years ago. And see the miracle: today that is almost a world consensus. Everybody is for the "two-state solution." Even Netanyahu sometimes pretends to be.
There is no third alternative. It's either two-states or a colonial Jewish state in all the country.
Yared Kushner may well be a genius, just like his father-in-law. But even his brilliant Jewish brain will not find another solution. And all the power of the United States will not suffice to keep the Palestinian people down forever. The Big Plan is just another prescription for eternal war.
I wish that Europe, including the post-brexit Britain, were willing and able to prevent this catastrophe. If I had met the prince on the sandy seashore, I would have told him just that.
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