Towards annexation and a 1 State Solution? Forget Zionism, it’s just Realpolitik? I’m recommending this remarkable reporting, which you can read here, from refugee camps in occupied West Bank. Ignore all the photographs that accompany the story. The photographs are sensationalistic. They convey violence and conflict, when in fact the story, which appears in the mainstream Times of Israel, relates how the large refugees camps have been quiet during this so-called Intifada of Knives.
The focus of the article is more mundane than violent, which is precisely the point. People there say they are sick of the fighting and death, sick of the PA, which has done nothing for them, and that they are ready to live normal lives and settle down with the Jews in a single democratic state. Let people live where they want, in Haifa or Tel Aviv.
Ready or not, this may, in fact be the future to which the Jewish left must now work or at least watch happen and accept, a democratic bi-national state after almost a 50 year occupation with no end or 2 state solution in sight. No one should be surprised that this is the future to which, actually, the rightwing in Israel is leading the country under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlement enterprise.
When we talk about the right-wing leading Israel into a binational State, it is often with the assumption that they don’t know what they’re doing — that they’re so blinded by zealotry and nationalistic fervor that they’re willing to sacrifice the entire state of Israel for a fever dream. (Inherent in this assumption are some unparsed racist right-wing assumptions themselves but mentioning those is not my point here.) I would suggest, though, that the right-wing knows precisely what it’s doing. There are [contentious but valid] reasons to believe that the long term trends in demographics within Israel and the WB favor a permanent Jewish majority, even after annexation. Personally I think a unilateral withdrawal is the future most likely in the cards but if Likud + the settlement bloc can drag their feet long enough the fait accompli is not necessarily apartheid but a Jewish majority in Judea and Samaria as well. At such a pt giving the franchise to the WB would not be an existential risk and WB residents can continue to live in the Jewish State of Israel as full citizens (albeit ones whose religious beliefs are not enshrined in the government). If you assume that these are the two possibilities – unilateral withdrawal or annexation w/ a Jewish majority – then the strategy of the right-wing and Bibi makes sense: drag your feet as long as you can bc the ceiling for waiting is getting everything and the floor, unilateral withdrawal, can be executed at any time.
except if the universal withdrawl proves to be impossible.