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Community Forum: Two-state solution best for Israel

This week’s writer is Haviland Smith, a retired CIA station chief living in Vermont.
The situation today in Israel/Palestine (the old British Mandate of Palestine) is dictated almost entirely by history, by demographic reality and by the fact that each of the parties in- volved seeks to control the entire area at the expense of the other. 
Historically, the first documented instance of the name “Israel” dates to the 12th century B.C., although Jews previously had already been living for centuries in what is now Israel/Palestine. During the first two centuries A.D, the Romans expelled most of the Jews from the area and replaced Israel with the Roman province of Palestine. That was the beginning of the Jewish diaspora. After the third century A.D., the area became increasingly Christian. Following the seventh century, it was largely Muslim and remained so until the middle of the 20th century.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a partition plan for the British Mandate. This plan established borders for new Arab and Jewish states, side by side, and created an area of Jerusalem that was to be administered by the United Nations.
The end of the British Mandate was set for midnight on May 14, 1948. That day, David Ben-Gurion, the president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared “the establishment of a Jewish state, to be known as the state of Israel.” That proclamation precipitated the departure or expulsion of almost three quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs from Israel, many of them ending up in refugee camps in the surrounding Arab countries. Tens of thousands of them and 1.5 million of their descen- dants remain in those camps today.
Since 1948, Israel and Palestine have both felt aggrieved. The Israelis feel that they have an historical and moral right to the area by dint of their past ownership in the centuries before Christ. The Palestinians believe that they were expelled from lands that were theirs because of their occupancy of those same lands after the death of Christ. The parties have gone to war over the issue on five occasions since the founding of Israel in 1948 and have seldom lived in any sort of peace. 
The international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine illegal under international law, because the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits countries from moving their citizens into territories (the Palestinian occupied areas) occupied in a war. The U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, the International Red Cross and the International Court of Justice have all affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies. Israel disagrees, saying the 1967 conflict was not a war.
Since 1948, the United States has vetoed dozens of anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian resolutions in the U.N. Security Council. The first time America has done anything different was when it abstained on the late December 2016 U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, creating a maelstrom in Israel and inducing endless anti-Obama administration remarks from right-wing Israelis and their American supporters.
Israel has choices. It can occupy all of Israel/Palestine, as some Israeli voices are already recommending, and either expel, or leave the Palestinian Arabs (the numerical majority) as non-voting, non-citizens, thus voluntarily becoming an apartheid state. Or it can create a state that includes Palestinian Arabs (the majority) as voting citizens — voluntarily becoming a non-Jewish state. Finally, if it truly wishes to survive, it can agree to the creation of two separate states, Israel and Palestine.
The demographic realities of Israel/ Palestine dictate that, under the current arrangement, in 2025, 48 percent of the future population residing there will be Jewish. That would drop to 46 percent by 2035. The Palestinians are reproducing at a rate far faster than the Israelis.
Absent a two-state solution, if Israel wants to remain democratic, it will be in the minority in its own country. If Israel chooses to remain Jewish, it will have to expel the Palestinians or go to an apartheid system. Neither of these solutions is acceptable. Israel is a democratic Jewish state and is internationally acceptable only as such. Given the reality of demographics, that can only be accomplished through a two-state solution with Israeli and Palestinian states side by side in peace.
Those who argue for the two-state solution, like Secretary of State John Kerry, are the best friends Israel has, whatever Mr. Netanyahu chooses to say. Those who argue against it, whether Israeli or foreign, are Israel’s worst enemies in the long run. 

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