On solutions – Avi Garfinkel in Haaretz:

‘For most of his life, the writer A.B. Yehoshua, who turned 85 earlier this month, lived in mixed – Jewish-Arab – cities: Jerusalem and Haifa. Yet at more or less the same time he moved to Givatayim, one of Israel’s most homogeneous cities, he made a breathtaking U-turn. After supporting the two-state solution for 50 years, he announced, in a number of opinion pieces in this paper, that he considers that solution unviable. What needs to be done, he wrote, is to give all the Arabs of the West Bank and East Jerusalem citizenship within the framework of a single, joint Jewish-Arab state. In 2016 he suggested that Israel immediately begin to grant residency status and citizenship to the approximately 100,000 Arabs who live in Area C of the West Bank (which is under Israeli control), thereby giving resonance to the plan of the former director general of the Yesha council of settlements, Naftali Bennett, who is today prime minister.
It’s not every day that a person of 80-plus changes his opinion, and not every society has experienced a revision of approach like this on the part of its greatest living writer, much less on the issue that has split society from the state’s inception: the conflict with the Arabs. The astonishment is all the greater if we take into account the fact that in his writing – in his essays and fiction alike – Yehoshua frequently expressed himself fiercely against the idea of blurring boundaries in general, and between Jews and Palestinians in particular: “After the Six-Day War, the border, which is the cornerstone of every [example of] sovereignty in the world, began to become blurred. Although we did not annex the territory we conquered… we nevertheless annulled the physical existence of the clear border that stood between two different peoples, and we started to disperse ourselves in settlements – once again emulating the Diaspora – within the fabric of life of another people… Today [in the second intifada] we are paying the price of a non-border in grim, blood-drenched form, because every day, an enemy enters the circulatory system of our being, without our even being able to identify him…”’

(…)

‘Overall, Yehoshua’s literary career is characterized by a recurring engagement with boundaries. Draw borders before a disaster happens, Yosef Mani implores his Arab neighbors in “Mr. Mani” (1990), “Get ye an identity before it is too late!” Yosef, however, does not heed his own advice and fails to safeguard the borders, when he decides “to penetrate a place that Jews were barred from”: Yosef is killed by his father on the Temple Mount, namely Mount Moriah, the outstanding example of “a place that Jews were barred from.” The image from the essays of the lethal mixture of different bloods resonates at the beginning of “Mr. Mani,” when an infant who receives a transfusion dies apparently from “incompatible blood types.”’

(…)

‘The one-state idea posits a danger not only for Jewish identity but also for the Jewish (and Palestinian) body – the danger of a Bosnian or Rwandan, Yemeni or Syrian reality: a lethal, blood-drenched civil war, with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands killed. It’s true that anything is possible, so maybe we Jews and Palestinians will get lucky and succeed in leaving behind the bloody past and in putting an end to the wars and the cycle of reaction and revenge. But what if that doesn’t happen? Isn’t the risk too great? What image will the one-state assume once it has an Arab majority, a Palestinian prime minister, defense minister and chief of staff? How will the millions of new Palestinian citizens react when rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel? Will they not use their democratic right to decide to grant the right of return within the boundaries of the Green Line to millions of Palestinian refugees? And what moral image will such a state possess, in which Jewish and Arab chauvinists, religious zealots and homophobes will constitute a solid majority of the population? For we need to remember: The union that is being proposed here is not only between A.B. Yehoshua and Sari Nusseibeh, but also – and indeed mainly – between Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Elor Azaria, on the one hand, and their fired-up Palestinian counterparts who continue to be funded by Iran. Why mainly? Because the chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Every spat between neighbors, road accident or act of rape involving individuals from the two peoples in the single state could deteriorate into general chaos.’

(…)

‘Indeed, the solution of a Palestinian state existing beside a Jewish Israel appears to be unviable for the foreseeable future. But from the temporary impossibility of a particular solution (two states), the conclusion that there is another solution (one state) that is possible, or even preferential, does not follow. Yehoshua is right in saying that the existing situation is intolerable in terms of security, humanity and morality. He deserves high praise for trying to find new answers, displaying the sort of creativity, flexibility and a readiness to revise an approach that are not typical even of those who are far younger than him. Many elements of his plan, including the need to halt the expansion of the settlements and to stop abuse of the Palestinians, are undoubtedly correct.
However, flexibility is not always loftier than stubbornness. In the context of the Palestinian conflict, it’s preferable to adopt the emotional, even anti-intellectual statement of Yehoshua’s friend and colleague, writer David Grossman: “I have sumud [Arabic for “steadfastness,” a Palestinian strategy] for peace.” Not peace now, not one state, but patience and forbearance.’

Read the article here.

Yes, waiting for peace as waiting for the Messiah is always a way out.
And indeed, there is not one solution that appears to be viable today, neither two states, nor one state, nor one and a half state.

The existing situation is intolerable, there is just no path out of it. By the way this is the case in many places, including the US. And there are many degrees of intolerableness.

Democracies die also because too many citizens don’t believe in them anymore or take them for granted.

One question has not been asked: whether the nation state is part of the solution or part of the problem. I would say the latter.

We the people, what exactly does it mean?

We might be in need of an identity, and we are in need of a passport, but passport and identity are two different things.

And in general, people get more out of an enemy than of a friend. Just read ‘1984’ or look around.