Shelly Schreter – A Response to a Review of Ian Lustick’s Book Paradigm Lost
Shaul Magid, in his highly favourable review of Ian Lustick’s book (Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality) appeared in Tablet on March 2, 2020, scornfully eulogizes and buries the “two-state solution”. He is not gentle about it, because the no-longer-reasonable (if it ever was) belief in two states for two peoples has become a dangerous, counterproductive delusion, a crutch for the tenuous Jewish identity of liberal Zionists. For Prof. Magid, liberal Zionism is an irrational clinging to an obsolescent fantasy, a denial of reality, “akin to talk of a flat earth”. The settlers have won and it’s game over. Rather than wasting precious time in chanting the pointless mantra of two states, liberal Jews/Israelis should be challenging the Israeli Right (far more realistic than they) in defining the parameters of the one state that already exists, and has for a long time.
Magid and Lustick are of course entitled to their political assessments. Many on the Israeli Left have despairingly reached a similar conclusion, of the inevitability of the annexation of all or most of the West Bank. The Israeli Right happily agrees about its inevitability, even though many of them are nervous about the Bantustan-like, truncated Palestinian state envisioned in the Trump “Deal of the Century”.
Consistently down the years, public opinion polls have confirmed the existence of a widespread preference among the Israeli public for strategic separation from the Palestinians in a two-state format, with the critical proviso that reliable security guarantees have to be part of the package. It is an argument with which I sympathize, living as I do in Ra’anana, which is within conventional mortar range of the West Bank town of Kalkiliya, at Israel’s “narrow waist”.
How can a reasonable security guarantee be provided? We are all aware of the history of Arab rejectionism and terror, and rather less aware of the extent to which our own conduct of the occupation since 1967 has contributed to it. There are important groups in Israel today, like the Commanders for Israel’s Security (https://en.cis.org.il/), who have developed serious answers to these questions.
I am one of the “delusional” liberal Zionists so harshly described by Prof. Magid, and have lived in Israel for 44 years. I will limit myself to two final points in response:
- The struggle to convince Israel of the necessity of two states is far, far from over, the despair of some on the Left and ecstasy of many on the Right notwithstanding. When faced with the end of the Jewish state, which is the inexorable consequence of the one-state paradigm, most Israelis will prefer the essential search for the formula enabling secure strategic separation from the Palestinians. This remains true, even in the wake of Likud’s victory (apparent, as of this writing) in our recent election. There is no perfect, hermetic security guarantee, but reasonable approximations can be reached – especially when the alternative is the demise of the one, precious Jewish state that we do have.
- The cavalier assertion that one state already exists, and that we should stop resisting it and instead get on with trying to mould it into the best possible form, is a massive denial of the horror that will ensue if that should ever become a reality. For the one state that would emerge here will not be some multi-ethnic, federal, peaceful democracy like Canada (which hasn’t had an easy time of it either). This is the Middle East. It will rather be a catastrophic entity, rent by unending civil war, violence and societal breakdown, and a curse for anyone unable to flee it, as so many surely will. Anyone pretending otherwise is the real hugely irresponsible, delusional dreamer. The path forward is difficult, but the choice is clear.
Sheldon (Shelly) Schreter
(Originally from Montreal, living in Israel since 1976, former director of the WUJS Institute in Arad and of the Israel-Diaspora Institute at Tel Aviv U., a private company director living in Ra’anana, Israel)
