A New War Of Words

OK, forget about a “two-state solution”, how about a “one-state solution”? At least that’s what some Palestinian leaders are saying, according to a recent article. How about “a single state with equal rights for all”? Gee, sounds nice and democratic, doesn’t it? Nice and egalitarian… non-racist… non-“theocratic”… downright “liberal”, in fact. Which is why it’s never going to happen in Israel. But the Palestinians are being very clever about this, because it’s a great way to show the world (or, the few who haven’t already caught on) that the last thing on Israel’s mind is equal rights for Palestinians. In fact, some would contend that the last thing on Israel’s mind is peace – unless it’s that kind of peace that comes from having shoved all the Palestinians into the Mediterranean. But hey, they tried that back in the 1940s… they did their best… but these people breed like rabbits, you know? And they insist on living in those flea-bitten refugee camps for decades… and the surrounding Arab states encourage this – Palestinians are no more welcome in Jordan, for example, than they are in Israel. Of course we know that the Arab states perpetuate this situation just to keep Israel on the defensive in such arenas of enlightenment as the U.N. But even Ehud Olmert, en route to jail, stopped to state that Israel “has no choice but to abandon the lands it captured during the 1967 war.” Now, if anything is going to wake Ariel Sharon out of his coma, that will. And to add to the controversy, the Palestinian side is starting to use the “A word” – apartheid – to describe a single state solution _without_ equal rights. Well, we know that, second only to the “H word” (Hitler), there is nothing like the A word to stop a conversation in its tracks. Well, OK, maybe the M word (Munich) is just as good. So I guess we can at least look forward to a battle between the A word and the M word for the next few months.