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Palestine already is a state. What's left is getting official recognition and full de jure UN membership. Nothing prevents it. It hasn't so far happened because Abbas won't go for the gold. He's more beholden to Israel and Washington than his own people.
That aside, reality on the ground dictates a one-state solution. Ali Abunimah endorsed it in his book titled "One Country : A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse."
He explained the impracticality of partition. It doesn't work. He presented another way that will - one nation for all its people at peace with equal rights. At this stage, it's the only viable alternative if pursued and given a chance.
At the same time, no Israeli leader ever proposed it. Decades of peace negotiations have been entirely one-sided. Israel's solution is take what we give you or no deal. Its most generous offer stopped short of sovereign viability.
Israel won't relinquish Palestinian territory it controls. "It is not credible that a society would invest billions of dollars in road and housing that it truly intended to give up," said Abunimah.
He's right. He also said even the most liberal Israeli leaders "came to embrace Palestinian statehood in theory while undermining it in practice." For decades, expropriation of Palestinian land and dispossessing its residents have been official policy. It still is.
Doves and hardliners concur. Only their rhetoric differs. "Creating a single state for Israeli Jews and Palestinians could in theory resolve the most intractable issues - the fare of Israeli settlements".the rights of Palestinian refugees, and the status of Jerusalem."
The alternative assures occupation, continued conflict, land theft, dispossessions, inequality, a permanent non-Jewish underclass, instability, and avoidance of within reach justice. Abunimah is right saying:
"The main attraction of a single-state democracy is that it allows all the people to live in and enjoy the entire country while preserving their distinctive communities and addressing their particular needs.""It offers the potential to de-territorialize the conflict and neutralize demography and ethnicity as a source of political power and legitimacy."
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