The Single State Solution: Vision, Obstacles and Dilemmas of a Re-Emergent Alternative in Flux

Abstract

In this chapter I begin by giving a brief snapshot of the recent re-emer- gence of the single-state solution as a potential political force, and of its alternative intellectual worldview against the Oslo Accords. Predominantly powered forward by the Palestinian Diaspora within the international arena today, it is this unified vision that holds the whole of the alternative together as a movement of resistance. Centering political Zionism and its processes of separation as the central obstacles to justice and equality in Palestine/Israel, in the second section I proceed to highlight the core elements of this world- view, and the strategies of resistance that emerged as channels through which to begin to transcend Zionism. In the final section of this chapter, I argue that in the single-state alternative’s struggle to erase the “green line,” and to wage a struggle for equal citizenship for all of the inhabitants of historic Palestine, the role of Palestinian-Israelis is central6. However, it is also within the dilemmas and divisions of this role that many of the obstacles facing the single-state alternative within the geography of Palestine/Israel itself can be seen. As such, in juxtaposing the voices of a selection of prominent Pales- tinian-Israeli intellectuals presently involved in the creation of a grassroots national movement for equal citizenship with those of others within the land of Palestine/Israel itself, I seek to underline the main obstacles and divisions the movement is currently facing across the fragmented geographies of the land. In doing so, I hope to be able to create space for strategies forward from within the terrains of the single-state alternative’s present failure to transform its original potential into a coherent movement for social change within the geography of the contested land itself