Once Upon Isratine

"The One-State Solution"
A33, Thursday 1/22/09, Op-Ed
By Muammar Qaddafi (no kidding)

For its bi-annual One-State op-ed, the Times could’ve gone with a Palestinian spokesman, like Michael Tarazi or Diane Buttu. A respected Jewish professor, like Tony Judt, is a trendy pick. Yet Libyan dictator and 80s terrorist icon Muammar Qaddafi got the nod this time.

Qaddafi knows that his terror star power alone isn’t a ticket to getting published in the Times. He has to strike a certain tone. While lamenting “tired rhetoric,” he describes in ambiguous New York Times fashion a “wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence,” “religious extremists in the region” and a “cycle of destruction”.

The artificial even-handedness, including a few pandering points, though, serves a bigger purpose since the colonel has an even-handed approach in solving the conflict.

He begins by bestowing on Palestinians a centuries-old national identity, replacing what should be “Arabs/Muslims” with “Palestinians.” He writes “the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed,” and “many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones.” One wonders which older divisions existed between Jews and Palestinians before the 20th century.

He mentions that Jews until 1948 referred to the land as Palestine. True, but he doesn’t mention that the Arabs of Palestine started referring to themselves as Palestinian predominantly after 1967. He mentions the refuge and shelter Jews found in Arab lands – a relative and incomplete truth.

Diminishing the significance the land has for Jews, and setting up his utopian vision of a shared future, Qadafi writes of “waves of peoples from all directions,” which “complicates claims by either party.” He refers to a Palestinian “history of persecution,” in the same vain as the Jews. In a piece like this, these are minor quibbles, but still worth mentioning.

A two-state solution, we’re told, “will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel,” with an “armed Arab state” right next door. Sounding like the IDF Chief of Staff, Qaddafi speaks of Israel’s strategic depth and points out Israel is “less than 10 miles at its narrowest point”.

Qaddafi then moves on to resolving the Palestinian refugee problem. “Any situation that keeps the majority in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.”

It’s unclear what two-state plans Qaddafi perused, but none call for keeping any refugees in camps and all call for settlement and normalization within a Palestinian state – which would be within the borders of which Qaddafi speaks. He states that “Palestinian held areas” (which would no doubt expand under a peace deal) “could not accommodate all of the refugees.” Baloney.

It’s also unclear what he means by the “older idea” of dividing the West Bank “into Jewish and Arab areas, with buffer zones between them.” One can only guess he’s referring to the propagandized “bantustan” version of the Camp David proposal.

He writes that Israelis and Palestinians have “become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically.” The economic cooperation has in the past decade decreased as Palestinian armed struggle has increased. One can only guess what he was thinking with “politically”.

Qaddafi returns to Palestinian refugees, this time spelling out the “right of return”. Just when you think Qaddafi has a grasp of Jewish history, he writes that it is not Jews, nor their ancestors, who were original inhabitants of Palestine.

Fascinatingly, Qaddafi strings together four relevant points. He writes that Palestinians “fled in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 – violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.”

Qaddafi actually embellishes, using absolute language with each of these points. They fled in fear during 1948; violence against the Arabs, much of which was rumored, did occur; Jews did forcibly expel some Palestinians; it’s hard to imagine that Palestinian Arabs were never un-welcomed. Nevertheless, Qaddafi’s points enforce a greater truth that the Palestinian exodus, the Nakba, was self-induced.

The next point revisits Isratine's absorption capacity. “Only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.” This point, along with increasing the use of his “Isratine,” are what he really seems to want to drive home.

To further cement the logic of Isratine, he writes of assimilation as a success story in Israel. Although Arabs in Israel are citizens and “take part in political life,” they are hardly assimilated.

Even more ridiculous, he cites West Bank settlements, where “Israeli factories depend on labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.” It’s fitting that in a piece the Times likely saw itself as sophisticated and edgy in printing, Israeli
settlements are “models of assimilation”.

Early in the piece, Qaddafi wrote that “the Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.” Combine this with Qaddafi’s problematic contention that the “basis for Israel is persecution of the Jewish people,” and you have the most solid argument against the one-state idea.

Aside from the right of the Jews – as well as the Palestinians, if they truly desire it – to self-determination, what is consciously overlooked is the genocidal anti-Jewish propaganda that has for decades molded the minds of Israel’s neighbors. In this case, borders bring peace and justice.

Qadaffi revealed another fundamental flaw in this piece when he writes of “a just and lasting peace” which “lies in the history of the people of this land”. Yet it’s not just in the history of the Jews, but in their future that explains the Jews' overwhelming desire for a place of safety, a desire to control their own destiny.

In a speech in June, Qadaffi suggested that JFK was assassinated “when he promised to look into Israel’s nuclear program.” That was actually the less offensive part of a speech in which he sought to explain candidate Barack Obama’s support for Israel:

"We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites. We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him."

Perhaps the Times could solicit Qadaffi’s views on race relations. Actually, it's unlikely that if Qaddafi submitted a piece on something other than Israel, it would get printed.