Israel's 'Solutions' Bound To Violate International Law

The Israeli political class is famous for saying they want to change the“facts on the ground” so that any negotiations with the occupied Palestinians are based on those“facts” and not on“claims.”

This is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been doing for decades through illegal settlements in the West Bank: erasing the fact of Palestinian claims on their land and establishing the right of Israelis to the entire landmass from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

In effect, the Israeli political class appears to be using the conflict that began on October 7 as the pretext to do what it had planned to do for decades, namely, to erase Palestinians from historical Palestine and to erase the Palestinian nation as an entity.

When Palestinian political forces agreed to a“peace process” that resulted in the Cairo Interim Agreement (1994) and the Oslo Accords (1994), it adopted what was known as the“two-state solution” to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The basic outline of the Oslo Accords was that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would govern the territory seized by Israel in 1967 (East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank). The Oslo Accords, argued Gaza-based Professor Haider Eid, created a“Bantustan” (such as the“African homelands” created by apartheid South Africa).

The implication of the establishment of the PA was that it would neuter actual Palestinian claims to the land (including the right of return of Palestinian refugees, established by UN Resolution 194 in 1948), and, at the same time, it would allow the Israeli state to change the“facts on the ground” by the creation of more and more illegal settlements.

Furthermore, after the Second Intifada (2000-2005), Israel cut off the“safe passage” requirement of Oslo that allowed Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank to travel across these zones.

By 2005, Israel had annulled the Oslo Accords, although the Palestinian political class remained bound by them as the only sliver of hope for the establishment of the state of Palestine (even if it would be a small fragment of historical Palestine).

The reality of the“two-state solution” disappeared as the settlements increased in the West Bank, as Palestinian control over East Jerusalem was increasingly absorbed by Israel, as the right to return was set aside, and as Gaza was bombed almost every year.

In that context, several important Palestinian intellectuals began to raise the question of the“one-state solution,” with one Israeli-Palestinian state based on a non-ethnic, secular, and democratic idea of citizenship.

By 2021, a majority of scholars of the region said the actual facts showed Israel to be“a one-state reality akin to apartheid.”

The idea that Israel is an apartheid state is now well established in United Nations documents and human-rights reports .

This assessment demonstrates two things: first, that Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory are already“one state,” and second, that it is an apartheid state, with the Palestinians in a second-class category.

Advocates of the“one-state solution” argue that the reality of a singular state now requires equal citizenship for all who live in Israel/Palestine. The current Israeli political class refuses to accept the idea of a democratic and secular one-state, because they are wedded to an ethno-nationalist project of a“Jewish State” that erases the possibility of full citizenship for Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

If the“two-state solution” is no longer practical, and if the“one-state solution” is blocked by the Israeli political class, then all that remains for Netanyahu and others is the“three-state solution.”

This is the solution that seeks to remove large parts of the Palestinian population from East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank, and perhaps even from within Israel's 1948 lines and send them to the three states of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

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The bulldozers coming behind the tanks in Gaza are attempting to push the Palestinian refugees (70% of them are descendants of those sent to Gaza in the Nakba, or Catastrophe of 1948) through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

This“three-state solution” is precisely ethnic cleansing, a crime under international law. For decades, the Israeli political class has been willing to conduct genocidal policies – including this bombardment of Gaza – to facilitate its ethno-national, apartheid state project that requires the erasure of Palestinians and Palestine.

In 2014, in the aftermath of Israel's Operation Protective Edge, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into the situation in Palestine. Nothing much came of this investigation.

During this current attack on Gaza, prosecutor Karim A A Khan went to the Rafah Crossing and said Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza may be a crime under ICC jurisdiction. Indeed, the fact of apartheid is already a crime under the 2002 Rome Statute that created the ICC.

Both the“one-state reality akin to apartheid” and the“three-state solution” of ethnic cleansing are serious crimes that require investigation. Will Khan ask the judges of the ICC to frame arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his colleagues?

This article was produced by Globetrotter , which provided it to Asia Times.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research .

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