Scholar and media pundit Hussein Ibish, one of the nation's leading champions of Palestinian rights, has published a new book called "What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda?" The book, available for only $10 from the American Task Force on Palestine and free as an eBook download, details why the "one-state" agenda is designed to prevent peace and undermine the Palestinian national drive to establish a national homeland and state in Palestine.
Ibish, who writes a popular web blog at www.IbishBlog.com, argues with reason and common-sense to expose the fraud of the "one-state agenda" which in its fundamental premise actually weakens the battle against the Israeli occupation. The one-state agenda essentially assumes that Jews, Christians and Muslims can go back to a 1920's scenario where everyone lives together as equals, assuming that Israelis -- who have refused to return land or dismantle settlements, will simply extend "equal rights" to non-Jewish citizens.
The one-state agenda actually negates the suffering of Palestinians under Israel's oppressive military rule and ignores the decades of discrimination against so-called Arab Israeli "citizens," pretending as if those denials of rights ever existed.
Ibish discusses his precedent-setting book which advances the only solution to the conflict, creating a "two-state solution," during an interview on my national radio show (Radio Baladi).
Ibish argues that the one-state agenda relies on a fallacy that a one-state reality already exists, and that Arab population growth threatens to impose a one-state reality on Israel. In fact, the population growth has not threatened Israel's anti-Arab policies at all and in fact are leading to a situation where issues of apartheid-like scenarios have become more and more common practice.
Ibish also discusses the powerful agenda that President Barack Obama is pursuing which has taken the push for a Palestinian state durther than any other American president. Obama's speech to the United Nations (and past speeches including the speech to the Muslim World) have put enormous pressure on Israel's government, which has resisted peace.
Of course, the Palestine-Israel conflict is troubled by years of pain and suffering and that pain and suffering has been exploited by activists who argue calls to continued conflict and non-solutions like the one-state agenda. It's difficult for some to accept the reality of the only choice left to them, two states -- the majority of Palestinians support the Two-State Solution, although the one-state activists continue to exploit the suffering and fan the flames of rejection.
Ibish's book re-sets the fundamentals of Palestinian reality and helps those who desire the creation of a Palestinian State to actually see the possibility of it being achieved. It definitively exposes the flaws in the one-state agenda argument, revealing am agenda that will only mean more and more suffering for Palestinians who have suffered more than any people deserve.
It's time to end the conflict and create two-states and allow Palestinians to begin the process of nation-building and national salvation. The only way to do that is through the Two-State Solution which has found a powerful advocate in President Barack Obama.
In this new book, Dr. Ibish examines the arguments generally put forward by Palestinian and other Arab American proponents of abandoning the goal of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state and instead seeking to promote a single, democratic state in all of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The book also looks at differences between the deployment of the one-state idea by some Palestinian figures in the occupied territories as a diplomatic "threat" intended to spur greater Israeli seriousness about a negotiated agreement and the diasporic discourse that drives most one-state rhetoric. Finally, Dr. Ibish explains in some detail why ending the occupation and peace with Israel, while difficult to achieve and thus far elusive, are the only plausible and practicable Palestinian national strategy.
