Dr. Ghada Karmi on Death of Two-State Solution: “Face the Facts”

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2023, p. 62

Book Talks

PALESTINE DEEP DIVE hosted esteemed Palestinian author Dr. Ghada Karmi at the Frontline Club in London on June 5 to celebrate the launch of her latest book, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel. 

Karmi began by explaining why she no longer considers the two-state solution a serious proposition. “It’s been this mantra that people repeat over and over again,” she said. “When you examine it, what you realize is that what it’s all about is preserving Israel,” often to the detriment of Palestinians.

In addition to depriving Palestinians of much of their historic land, Karmi noted that any two-state solution would likely do little to protect the rights of refugees. “What is omitted even in the best variation of the two-state solution are the refugees,” she explained. “I’m talking about the people sitting in camps, who’ve been in camps since 1948. Well, where are they going? Not a mention of these people. How is it acceptable to leave them rotting in camps supported by the U.N. with no end in sight, with no promise of a future?”

Karmi also argued that it’s become counterproductive to support a Palestinian state. “As people know, 138 member states of the U.N., that’s a majority of member states, have recognized this thing called Palestine. What is the Palestine they’ve recognized? They’ve recognized a state which is to be constructed. It doesn’t exist now in the 1967 territories, a lot of which are already taken over by Israeli settlements. What are these U.N. states thinking? What are they recognizing?” Promoting Palestinian statehood “is effectively putting a spanner in the works of people who really want a just solution,” she added. “That’s the problem with it.”

With Israel already ruling over a one-state reality, Karmi believes focus ought to be on pressuring Israel into ending its apartheid system. “If you actually look at geography, what you see is that the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, one territory ruled by Israel, is composed demographically of roughly half and half Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews,” she observed. “It seems to be very clear that we have a situation of one state already. But the problem with that one state is it’s ruled by one apartheid regime, which deals with half the population in a manner that no civilized society can accept; they have no rights, they have no citizenship.”

Karmi is under no illusion that a single democratic state is a popular proposition among Palestinians or Israelis, but she considers it the only realistic solution for achieving justice. “I feel very strongly that people have to face the facts,” she said. “I can bet you most Palestinians will say no thank you [to one state], because they don’t want to live with their usurpers, with the people who’ve treated them so badly.” Israelis, meanwhile, “would be horrified, because for them Arabs…are a despised people, and the last thing they would want is equal citizenship with people they despise. Furthermore, they have loads of privileges at the moment, the privileges of a colonial society they don’t want to give up.”

The West’s unwavering support for Israel is yet another impediment to a one-state solution, Karmi argued. “The West is fixated on the idea of Israel,” she said. “They can’t give it up. One of the reasons why the one-state idea, with all the sense that it makes, doesn’t get anywhere at an official level in Western circles…is the fact that they understand that if you have one democratic state, that’s the end of Israel as you know it. It’s not [that] Israelis [will] be killed, it’s that the state structure of Israel will end.”

—Omar Aziz