Beyond the Two-State Solution: A Jewish Political Essay

By Yehouda Shenhav

Book Overview

For over two decades, many liberals in Israel have attempted, withwide international support, to implement the two-state solution: Israel and Palestine, partitioned on the basis of the Green Line -that is, the line drawn by the 1949 Armistice Agreements thatdefined Israel's borders until 1967, before Israel occupiedthe West Bank and Gaza following the Six-Day War. By going back toIsrael's pre-1967 borders, many people hope to restore Israelto what they imagine was its pristine, pre-occupation character andto provide a solid basis for a long-term solution to theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict. In this original and controversial essay, Yehouda Shenhav arguesthat this vision is an illusion that ignores historical realitiesand offers no long-term solution. It fails to see that the realproblem is that a state was created in most of Palestine in 1948 inwhich Jews are the privileged ethnic group, at the expense of thePalestinians - who also must live under a constant state ofemergency. The issue will not be resolved by the two-statesolution, which will do little for the millions of Palestinianrefugees and will also require the uprooting of hundreds ofthousands of Jews living across the Green Line. All these obstaclesrequire a bolder rethinking of the issues: the Green Line should beabandoned and a new type of polity created on the completeterritory of mandatory Palestine, with a new set of constitutionalarrangements that address the rights of both Palestinians and Jews, including the settlers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0745660290
• ISBN13: 9780745660295
• Release Date: July 2012
• Publisher: Polity Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.1"