There’s a wonderful old Hindu saying: When you’re ready for the guru, he’ll be there. I suspect that’s the case with those who are looking for a Mandela among Palestinians. When the Israelis are ready to listen to a charismatic leader who supports peace and reconciliation they’ll discover that they’ve been there all along.

On the other side of that coin, there’s the Sufi saying, “When the pickpocket looks at the wise man, all he sees are his pockets.” And that too is true, sadly….

Well, let’s start with the positive: I agree that Netanyahu will never make as generous an offer. But now look at a map of what Olmert offered a Palestinian Archipelago, a series of disconnected islands, with Israeli control of the spaces between. Discontiguous land areas are not a country, nor a genuine offer of one.

2. If we wish to imagine a one state solution there are three acts of imagination that are necessary: a. imagining the Palestinian leadership actually declaring their desire to be granted Israeli citizenship, b. imagining what that binational state will look like, and c. imagining a shift in the Israeli public or leadership’s attitude towards this binational state.

3. It should be noted that the ratio of nonwhites to whites in South Africa at the time of the handover of power from de Klerk to Mandela was approximately 9 to 1, whereas currently the ratio of Jew to nonJew is approximately 1 to 1. This difference in ratios makes a difference particularly in terms of Jewish readiness to accept the inevitability of dissolution of the Zionist dream.

A few quick responses. Point One: If I leave out an important issue, no apology needed for pointing it out to me.

Point two: I don’t think we have any disagreement here. Again, sloppy wording on my part [blush]. What I meant is that in a one state situation the kind of discrimination we see practiced currently becomes even harder to justify. You are absolutely right that in a two-state solution it would become more necessary for both sides to treat each other’s peoples equally well.

Point three: I think we do have a mild disagreement here. I agree that there has been huge and horrendous exaggerations of the anti-Israel position of Arab and Palestinian leaders, and you cite some examples of this, But the Hamas Charter doesn’t help matters Hamas, which was founded in Gaza during the intifada of 1987, has come to embody the fears that many Israelis hold about the Palestinians. Its charter declares, “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad.” The document, which is in many respects absurd and reflects the intellectual isolation and conspiracy-fed atmosphere in Gaza at the time, cites the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the anti-Semitic forgery, and links Zionism to the Freemasons, the Lions Club, and “other spying groups” that aim “to violate consciences, to defeat virtues, and to annihilate Islam.”The New Yorker and Nasrallah has been quoted as saying “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel” . But I certainly agree that there is at least as much fanaticism on both sides, and that Israeli fanaticism is more dangerous because they’re better armed. Your response to Julian was exactly right in this regard on Iran.

And yes, it’s a pleasure to be on the same side with you at the barricades…. thanks again for your comments.

On the other two points, I have moderate differences with you. I don’t think Jewish privilege in a two-state solution is any more defensible than a one-state. Today, 62 years into Israel’s existence, Arab schoolchildren are not only ediucated separately, but the state allocates several times the expenditures per capita for Jewish over Arab students. That situation, which is typical of the way Arab minority citizens are treated by the governing authorities, would continue with a two-state solution. Note that in 1954, separate but equal schooling was banned in the US; separate and grossly unequal education is the rule in today’s Israel. There continues to be a ban on intermarriage in Israel; such bans were outlawed in 1967 in the US, and thatt’s a surprisingly recent date.

With a two-state solution, there may well be some Jews who opt to stay in Palestine and acquire citizenship there. I cannot imagine that Israel, the worldwide Jewish community, or the world community as a whole, would tolerate the same kind of discrimination against them as minority citizens. There would be howls of protest, as there should be. But how could Israel insist on better treatment for Palestinian Jews than it gives to Israeli non-Jews?

Finally, you question whether some Arab leaders would like to see Jews desroyed or expelled from Israel altogether. I think the fabrication and exaggeration of this problem knows no bounds. In addition to what I wrote in response to Julian, there is a widespread quote of Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, about how Jews gathering in Israel would save the trouble of hunting them down around the world. I think five minutes of internet research would expose this quote as fabricated (see Charles Glass’s convincing analysis) but it also raises the question of the motivation of the fanatics who plant such nonsense and the willingness of so many to believe it. Google “throwing or pushing Jews into the sea” and you will find every hit to be of the “that’s what they want to do to us” variety rather than “that’s what we want to do to them.” Did some Arab at some time make this threat? Perhaps, but it is easy to find quotes of similar barbarity about the acceptability or even religious necessity of killing Arab civilians.

On the whole, Peter, I am very encouraged to see your well-reasoned analysis published online in this respectable forum, and your message of the viability, and perhaps the inevitability, of a one-state solution is much more meaningful to me than the trifling differences I have discussed above.

Sarcasm has its place, but it cannot mask your inability to say anything of substance. Needless to say, I never said these leaders have love for Israel, but just to take the most notorious example, Ahmadinejad has been consistently accused of threatening to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Sure, there is a dispute over translation, but even taking the non-Juan Cole translation, he never hinted that the Iranian military would be used to attack Israel. On Larry King last year, he said the following: “But our solution is, in fact, a very humanitarian one and a very democratic one. What we’re saying is that throughout the Palestinian territories, people should gather to determine the type of government that they’d like to have and have an election for that, free elections for all, under the supervision of international organizations.” There is little doubt that if all the people in the region controlled by Israel were given the vote, Israel would cease to exist as a Jewish State. This position, in favor of elections, is completely consistent with everything the guy has said, regardless of how inappropriate and incendiary his remarks can sometimes be. The fact is that one person-one vote elections would sink the Jewish State, and people such as yourself would rather hyperventilate about imaginary military threats than recognize that simple truth.

Contrast this with Israel’s position. Israeli leaders have repeatedly called for and threatened attacks by their military against Iran. So you have one non-nuclear country that severely criticizes the way another country is run, and advocates a democratic solution that would change it; and another country, loaded with nukes, which explicitly threatens military attack in response. No wonder people like Netanyahu and Dershowitz insist that Iran has threatened to destroy Israel with nukes. SOunds much better than the truth.

As for whether the Israeli Jews would ever accept being dhimmis in an Islamic State – No is the answer, and one I would wholeheartedly support. But neither Marmorek nor I advocate an Islamic State. The problem is that Israeli Jews would not support or accept being equals in a secular state in which religious freedoms are guaranteed to all. Frankly, they must be pushed into such acceptance, just like South African whites were pushed into it from a position of overwhelming opposition.