Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Monday, March 30, 2009

Cole interview at Washington Note

Video of my conversation with Steve Clemons about my new book, Engaging the Muslim World, is up at the Washington Note website. Clemons is a canny observer of US foreign policy and knows the capital's movers and shakers, so it was a special pleasure to think together with him about where US relations with the Muslim world are headed.


Engaging the Muslim World

End/ (Not Continued)

posted by Juan Cole @ 3/30/2009 12:03:00 AM

1 Comments:

At 2:08 PM, Blogger Arnold Evans said...

My first time seeing Juan Cole discuss the possibility of a one-state solution.

23:23
So, I think personally that Israeli policy is digging its own grave and I think increasingly the likelihood is that you will have a one state solution ultimately.

(From the longer youtube at Clemmons' site.)

I wish a follow-up on that issue in particular had been asked.

My opinion is that there is a one state situation today, I guess obviously, and the possibilities are

1) no "outcome" the status quo continues indefinitely - which is what right wing Israelis openly are calling for, and what right and left wing Americans tacitly endorse by advocating an indefinite "negotiating" process for a two state solution that is structurally non viable.

2) an outcome of one Jewish state made viable by large-scale expulsions or killings - which seems impossible to meet because the West would sanction Israel for electing a leadership capable of doing this, and Israel's neighbors would not accept the increased number of refugees, not accepting the refugees from 1948.

3) an outcome of one non-Jewish state - the outcome most in line with Western values, and the one that does not require massive expenditures of resources by Western countries, such as direct payments and isolating, sanctioning, invading and occupying potential strategic opponents of Zionism's goal of an eternal Jewish state.

I think it is time to begin discussing what a one state solution should look like, and ways to ensure that individual rights of the one-state's subjects, regardless of religion or ethnicity, can be guaranteed.

 

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