But the reality is, what Israel is posing as a, quote, two-state solution is a Swiss cheese, in which Israeli-controlled territory is the cheese, meaning it’s contiguous, and the Palestinian towns and villages in that small, shrunken part are the holes, not contiguous. So that’s what we’re dealing with.What we have today is one state. If we define a state as a territory in which one government controls, that’s what we have in historic Palestine. Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, and Gaza, all together are controlled by one government. That’s the Israeli government. The Palestinian Authority has municipal authority–garbage collection, teachers, etc. It doesn’t control land, people, courts. It has courts, but they’re not the dominant courts. The Israeli military courts are still dominant in the West Bank. We hear that Gaza is no longer occupied because in 2005 Israel made the decision to withdraw the 7,000 settlers and take the soldiers and redeploy them out of Gazan territory onto the border of Gaza, which is also completely enclosed in a wall. We don’t hear as much about the Gaza wall as we do about the West Bank wall, but both are completely enclosed.
What we have in that situation is the exact definition of the international covenant against the crime of apartheid, which defines the situation in which two different populations live in the same territory with two different legal systems designed to privilege one group over another group.
JAY: Yeah. One group can’t vote.
BENNIS: One group not only can’t vote, but one group–for example, if you look at the West Bank today, if you look at the question of children, if children throw stones, if a settler child throws a stone, in fact, nothing happens. In fact, they are never really held accountable. But in theory that child is appropriately brought to a juvenile court, where the goal of the court is rehabilitation of children and where the dignity of the child is to be paramount.
If a 12-year-old Palestinian child–or in one case a three-year-old child was pulled out of her bed in the middle of the night and told if she didn’t say where her brother was, who was charged with throwing stones, that–the soldiers said they would destroy her home. A three-year-old. I mean, it’s impossible to imagine. But a 12-year-old child, Palestinian child, charged with the same thing, of throwing rocks, is held accountable in a military court.
And now they have a special military court for children, which is–you know, this is the definition of apartheid in one state. So that’s, I think, important to recognize what exists today, because if we’re looking at what there needs to be, we have to start with what exists.
JAY: Right. And I would even say that even if you got rid of the Swiss cheese and then had two-state, you’re going to have one country with this practically modern European economy–
BENNIS: Right. Twenty-third wealthiest country in the world,–
JAY: –next to–.
BENNIS: –and another country of enormous impoverishment.
JAY: I don’t understand how two-states could ever be equal.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 17 July 2018 17:55 (five years ago) link