For Zionists, the ‘Two State Solution’ Has Always Meant More Ethnic Cleansing

• For Zionists, the ‘Two State Solution’ Has Always Meant More Ethnic Cleansing
  by Jonathan Ofir, https://mondoweiss.net/
  A Palestinian state has always been a fiction for Zionists. Therefore, the notion of partition in any form of historical Palestine was only ever endorsed by Zionists as a political-diplomatic means towards overtaking more territory and dispossessing more Palestinians.
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  To demonstrate this, I shall first go back to an early partition plan – that of the British Royal Peel Commission of 1937, to gradually reach our present day.
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  The British Peel Commission partition plan
  The British Royal Peel Commission was constructed in order to determine the origins of the great tensions between what they would regard as “Jews and Arabs”, following the onset of the Great Arab Revolt by Arab Palestinians of 1936 (which lasted until 1939). The Peel Commission report assessed that the “underlying causes of the disturbances of 1936” were:
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  (1) The desire of the Arabs for national independence;
  (2) their hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish National Home.
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  These two causes were the same as those of all the previous outbreaks and have always been inextricably linked together. Of several subsidiary factors, the more important were–
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  (1) the advance of Arab nationalism outside Palestine;
  (2) the increased immigration of Jews since 1933;
  (3) the opportunity enjoyed by the Jews for influencing public opinion in Britain;
  (4) Arab distrust in the sincerity of the British Government;
  (5) Arab alarm at the continued Jewish purchase of land;
  (6) the general uncertainty as to the ultimate intentions of the Mandatory Power.
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  The Peel Commission’s suggested solution was to separate the two populations. The ‘Jewish state’ would consist of the central coastal plain and the northern Galilee areas, the ‘Arab state’ would be from the West Bank down through to the furthest south, and in between, a corridor from Jaffa to Jerusalem would be under British Mandate auspices. This solution would involve what it called “exchange of populations”: ”
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  “If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population”.
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  What did exchange mean? The Peel Commission pointed out that there were about 225,000 Arabs alongside 400,000 Jews in the suggested Jewish state, and that minority– along with the 1250 Jews in the Arab state — created a problem.
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  The existence of these minorities clearly constitutes the most serious hindrance to the smooth and successful operation of Partition.
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  The Zionists understood “population exchange” as a euphemism for forced “transfer” in general, and they saw it as a welcomed opening and legitimation of their designs for ethnic cleansing so as to obtain a strong Jewish majority. David Ben-Gurion:
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  “In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the [Palestinian] Arab fellahin…it is important that this plan comes from the [British Peel] Commission and not from us…Jewish power, which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale. You must remember, that this system embodies an important humane and Zionist idea, to transfer parts of a people to their country and to settle empty lands. We believe that this action will also bring us closer to an agreement with the Arabs.”
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  Ben-Gurion’s words confirm the utter centrality of “transfer” for the Zionist project. As Israeli historian Benny Morris put it:
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  “transfer was inevitable and inbuilt in Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a Jewish state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population”.
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  Ben-Gurion, the Zionist leader who became the first prime minister of Israel, was in support of that partition – not as an end, but as a beginning. He wrote this to his son Amos in 1937:
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  read more.

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