Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009, pages 61-62

Waging Peace

Boston Conference on One-State Settlement Draws Large Crowd

ON A RAW weekend in late March, hundreds of academics and activists crammed into Lipke Auditorium at the University of Massachusetts in Boston to attend an international conference on the prospects for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trans Arab Research Institute (TARI), a Massachusetts-based think-tank, and the university’s William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences organized the conference entitled, “One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens?” which was offered free of charge.

Conferences on the one-state settlement have been held abroad, in London and Madrid in 2007. But the Boston program was the first major North American assembly—and the largest. With 565 registrants, the conference exceeded capacity a month before it convened, said Hani Faris, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the event’s organizers. “I could have registered 1,000 or 2,000 [people],” he said, “but we were limited in terms of space.” Forty-seven countries were represented among the international participants, and some of the Americans came from as far away as California.

Surprised at the high turnout, Faris attributed the conference’s popularity to growing dissatisfaction with the two-state resolution, which proposes granting Palestinians a state in the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank, or approximately 22 percent of Mandate Palestine. Calling the two-state proposal a “dead horse,” Faris said that “more and more people are coming to the realization that we need to think of another solution.”

The conference took place at a time when a settlement of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict seems especially elusive. Israel’s recent massacre in Gaza, its election of a right-wing government openly opposed to a Palestinian state, and Palestinian factionalism have set back peace talks.

Despite the bleak weather and even bleaker political horizon, the mood in Lipke Auditorium was soberly energetic. Breaking only briefly for lunch and coffee, participants listened as more than 25 North American, Israeli, and Palestinian scholars and activists assessed the two-state option and discussed strategies for building support for a one-state solution.

Presenters who critiqued the feasibility of the two-state proposal pointed out that it did not reflect events on the ground and, more importantly, negated the right of return for Palestinians. The term “occupation” masks “the semi-permanent reality of the Israeli state” within the West Bank, said Meron Benvinisti, an Israeli geographer and author who supports having a Jewish state west of the 1967 border. The “present condition in (Israel/Palestine) is already a bi-national condition,” he noted. “And it’s a bad one.”

Palestinian geographer Salman Abu Sitta struck a more optimistic note with a power-point presentation on how the return of Palestinian refugees to a single state could be implemented in stages.

“After land and people are united, it will be necessary to do many things,” he explained. “There is property to be restored, historical sites to be recovered, and an environment to be healed. There is no logistical obstacle for the reconstruction of Palestine.”

Michael Lynk, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario, proposed federalism as a possible legal framework for the new state. Citing the examples of Vietnam, Korea, India and Germany, Lynk said partition does not resolve conflicts but just transforms them.

Other speakers were more cautious in their endorsement of a one-state solution. Husam Zomlot, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and former PLO representative to the United Kingdom, called the proposal premature. “We [the Palestinians] would be treated as second-class, third-class citizens,” he said. “You first disengage, then re-engage.”

Even one-state enthusiasts acknowledged the obstacles. The idea has little or no support among Israelis, the international community, or Palestinians, whose displacement and political disarray severely complicate pursuit of autonomy, in any form. Karma Nabulsi, an international relations professor at Oxford University, emphasized the need to include all Palestinians, refugees as well as those living in the diaspora, in any discussion of a future state.

“The disaster of Oslo is that a small Palestinian elite attempted to give up the rights of many,” Nabulsi said. “We live in an extraordinary moment. No one knows what will happen 5, 10, or 20 years from now. But there is a possibility for radical change. The death of a two-state solution is not to be mourned. It provides real possibility for Palestinians, Israelis, Jews and others to live in equality.”

Organizer Hani Faris said videotapes of the conference will soon be available online, and there are plans to publish the conference lectures in a textbook.

—Claire Schaeffer-Duffy