Now, I don’t normally think of President Colonel Muammar Qaddafi as a thinker and a statesmen, but his recent NY editorial piece may well prove me wrong. The leader of Libya, a recent former state sponsor of terror, has thrown his hat in with a plan for peace in the Middle East. Unlike the mainstream plan of the punditocracy — a two-state solution based on Oslo, Colonel Qaddafi has offered an out-of-the-box solution, “Isratine.”
His rationale for this solution goes like this: the two state solution cannot work. Both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples deserve a homeland. However, Israel will never accept a two-state solution since it renders the state of Israel militarily indefensible, a country less than ten miles wide at it’s narrowest. And a two-state solution necessitates leaving tons of Palestinians either homeless or stuck in refugee camps — if they had a home in the West Bank or Gaza to return to, they would have already.
His solution is a single state, a home for both. Refugees can return to their homeland (or at least have their claims adjudicated by a impartial court for compensation) and both peoples in Isratine can live in peace. The Colonel looks to the Arab citizens of Israel as a model for this one-state solution.
Unfortunately, this involves a substantial compromise on both parts — deeper than any compromise over borders or land swaps can be. This compromise involves the complete abandonment of the concept of a Jewish or a Muslim state in Israel/Palestine. Isratine must be religiously and nationally neutral for the scheme to work. The Zionism that drove the early years of Israel, the nationalism that drove the PLO and the religious zealotry that drove Hamas must all be destroyed.
Sadly, I believe the Colonel’s proposal, while most sensible for the long-term economic growth of the holy land, is a solution better suited to angels than men. Both sides are still far to entrenched in their own manifest destiny to share a single country. For now, good fences may be the only thing that can make good neighbors.
The 12 Angry Men Blog 
January 28, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Watching an interview on PBS a week or so ago, I heard somebody else mention a combined state as an option. I had to agree with his reasoning as to why Israel would never agree to it. Given the birthrates of the two groups, Israel would be run by the Palestinians within a short time frame, they’d be the majority of the population.
If you can’t kill them, out breed them.
January 28, 2009 at 9:08 pm
“If you can’t kill them, out breed them.”
That only works if you guarantee that your children agree with you. It’s been a slogan of social conservatives in the US for decades, but since social liberals have more influence over the public schools, the trend hasn’t been going that way…
January 28, 2009 at 10:01 pm
We’re not talking about the US though, or as you note, not recently. There are still large parts of this planet where the hatreds of the parents are taught to their children, who go out and kill their enemies because that’s what they’ve been taught to do.
I have no idea how to break that cycle.
January 29, 2009 at 6:16 pm
“I have no idea how to break that cycle.”
The same way it was broken here. Get a bunch of people who have a general distaste for the current culture to enforce their viewpoints on the young in mandatory government education centers.