Rosenberg’s rubbishing of BDS misses the point
Arafat knew that some and perhaps many diaspora Palestinians would accuse him of betraying their cause if he made peace with Israel on terms that required to right of return to be limited to the territory of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; but fully supported by all of his most senior Fatah leadership colleagues, he took the view that it was better for the Palestinians to have “something concrete” rather than nothing at all. (As I have previously written, he also dared to hope that one or two generations of a two-state peace with Israel would lead by mutual consent to one state for all, in which case the Palestinian right of return could be considered again).
Now back to Rosenberg’s assertion that the solution to the conflict is “two states for two peoples”.
The point he misses, perhaps because there has not yet been a formal burial attended by Western leaders and the mainstream media, is that the two-state solution has long been dead. (In truth it was probably never alive in Zionism’s mind). So what are the most likely scenarios for the future?
I can see three possibilities.
Some might say there is a fourth possibility – a violent Palestinian uprising fuelled by despair. Though understandable, that would be a disaster for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians because it would save Israel’s leaders from having to create a pretext for a final ethnic cleansing).
Rosenberg asserted that a BDS Movement “dedicated to the eradication of Israel as a country is never going to achieve support other than from a radical fringe.”
In my view he is wrong to the extent that the BDS Movement is already supported by more than a radical fringe and is gathering momentum. But I also think he is right to the extent that the BDS Movement could and would gain much more support and momentum if its goal was only ending the 1967 occupation to create the space for a viable Palestinian state. It does seem to be the case that very many people who would support the BDS Movement on that basis hold back from doing so because they don’t want to be associated with a campaign that is committed to dismantling and eradicating Israel.
In the light of the above it seems to me that the best and most effective way for the BDS Movement to respond to its critics and detractors would be to give priority to spelling out why One State For All, and thus the dismantling and eradication of the Zionist entity, is in the best interests of all – not only Arabs and Jews but all of us, governments and peoples of all faiths and none everywhere.
The point being that if the Zionist state is not dismantled and eradicated it will most likely take the region and quite possibly the world to hell. I wrote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, that the red warning lights of Armageddon are twinkling.
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