Two states is no solution at all. Even for Abbas the declaration of statehood is merely a symbolic act to strengthen and internationalise the Palestinian position before resuming negotiations. He says
Once admitted to the United Nations, our state stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel.
Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another, however, and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us.
The beginning of negotiations in which Abbas has already stated his willingness to accept half a million settlers and the cantonisation of the West Bank. So lets get this right. Abbas seeks to declare statehood in order to do the one thing that real states never do, to cede large parts of its territory to a colonising occupier. That is the act of a traitor.
Its all very well you sayiing "the WB Palestinians should declare a state" but what does that mean for Palestinians. Will the world then move to end the military occupation? Will a no fly zone operate and UN troops enter to drive Israeli soldiers out? Will the apartheid wall (which runs far beyond the green line) be torn down? will the massive security system and private roads and checkpoints and watch towers and security gates and barbed wire and armed troops and attack dogs and armoured vehicles and aerial drones and robot snipers suddenly disappear? Will the olive groves stop being razed. Will the house demolitions stop? Will the detentions without trial end? Will 5 million stateless people be allowed home? Will half a million settlers and all the military infrastructure needed to maintain those settlements be gone?
No. The world will, at best vote for it and continue business as usual, or worse offer the Palestinians a sop such as observer status and for ordinary Palestinians the occupation, settlements, demolitions, killings, road blocks, land siezures, arrests, evictions, torture and brutality will continue unabated while Palestinians are relentlessly driven from their land and the treacherous collaborator Abbas will continue to line his own pockets and beg for useless negotiations while he and his entourage parade in front of the world press playing at being international statesmen and leaders of a non existent fictional state.
There's no chance at all that Israeli Jews will agree to live in an Arab run country that would result from a "right of return
Something very similar was said of white South African's under apartheid. I can hear the bleating now. It went something like
There's no chance at all that South African whites will agree to live in an black run country that would result from one person one vote
And where is Apartheid now? Of course they didn't and won't simply "agree". A democratic and just peace must be fought for and won and Israeli's, like white South African's before them, must be forced to accept the only genuinely democratic solution. Equal rights for all in a single democratic state. In fact it is a glaring example of how accepted the racist Israeli narrative has become that such a reasonable demand, one accepted by every democratic state on Earth, is seen as so impossible. What this amounts to is claiming that Israeli's will never accept the extention of national and democratic rights to the people whose rights they are denying. If they won't accept it then the world must force them to.
One thing is for sure. Any "peace" that is achieved without offering real justice to an oppressed people will bring neither peace nor justice and only create the conditions for continued conflict. The problem, the heart of the issue is the racist, exclusivist ideology called zionism and the assumptions behind it and, like apartheid before it, it is that ideology that must be fought and broken if there is ever to be peace.
