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If everyone in the region has a shot at interpreting God’s will, then I’ll offer my own vision. I believe that Jews and Palestinians are religious cousins, more alike than different. They have lived together in the past, eaten each other’s olives, worked each other’s fields, married each other’s family members. Learning to live together again should not be impossible. But this isn’t happening, not anytime soon. So as a realist, I support a two-state solution, one that gives the Jews something of what they want but also treats the Palestinians in a way they haven’t been treated, not by the Israelis or their Arab brethren—with fairness, respect, and an acknowledgment of the right to self-determination. But the political will to reach this solution is missing. The two-state solution has become the inshallah of peace plans. “God willing,” one day maybe, but most people in the West Bank know the two-state solution is just a mirage, a convenient talking point for politicians and diplomats.
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Two things stand in the way of actual peace. The first is the yearning of some Palestinians for all the Jews to leave. Israelis are not going to make peace with someone who tells them that their leaving is a condition for such a peace. But the second problem—perhaps the even bigger problem—is the settlements, and the exclusivist attitude that motivates the people who live in them. A two-state solution is, theoretically, the best in a basket of bad solutions. But given the dismal realities on the ground, what might be better, alas, is a one-state solution that absorbs all the Palestinians as citizens of Israel and gives everyone an equal vote and equal rights. Ironically, this might be the only thing that many of the most hard-line settlers, and many of the most unbending Palestinians, agree on.
"A Muslim Among Israeli Settlers"
Wajahat Ali
The Atlantic
June 2018
