Letter: A two-state solution to the Middle East is nonsensical, there can only be a one-state solution

Letters to editor

While support for a Palestinian state by the Republic of Ireland, Spain and Norway is commendable, a so-called ‘two state solution’ to the Israel-Palestine conflict is a nonsensical concept.

Where would the border be? The present configuration is unworkable. Would there be a northern and a southern state or an eastern and a western state? It would involve further widespread loss of land and property rights; huge migration in two directions replicating the 1947 partition of India-Pakistan; repatriation of people and their descendants displaced out of Palestine by the 1948 creation of the Israeli state; compensation payable by the new Israeli state to everyone adversely affected.

The Palestinian state would need to be the larger state to accommodate the larger Palestinian population. Which state would have the contested capital city, Jerusalem? Could Jerusalem become a viable multi-faith ‘Vatican’ city state within either of the two larger states? (a three state solution?)

Would the Israelis or the Palestinians accept those consequences of ‘partition’? Netanyahu and his Zionist faction have declared that they would not. They want the whole of Palestine. Hamas and other Islamist/anti-Zionist factions would accept nothing short of the eradication of any Israeli/Jewish/Zionist state in the region.

There can only be a one state solution. Moderate Jews and Arabs might have been amenable to one multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-faith, non-Zionist state of Palestine, but the recent atrocities on both sides have made that an unlikely possibility, even by external enforcement.

There can now only be either:

a) a state of Israel populated by migrant Jews and their descendants, many or most of whom retain or have entitlement to citizenship of another country. Relocation of the Palestinian population somewhere in an already migrant-phobic world. Or

b) a state of Palestine populated by indigenous and returnee displaced Palestinians and their descendants. Relocation of the Jewish population in their countries of alternative citizenship or recent origin (within the past hundred and fifty years).

Will the outcome be determined by war supported by external forces with their own geo-political agendas, as at present, or will the side with the ability to do so adopt the moral option and remove itself from the region?

Dennis Golden, Strabane