Jaipur: The two-state solution (to Israel-Palestine conflict) is a train that has left the station a long time ago, and we have to realise it, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said Saturday at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
In a panel titled ‘Geopolitics: Turmoil in West Asia’, Levy, along with British-Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh, Ireland’s Ambassador to India Kevin Kelly and British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron, discussed the Gaza conflict, fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and the evolving geopolitical landscape.
The panel emphasised the centrality of the conflict in Palestine, where 80-90 percent of Gazans have been displaced and at least 46,000 killed since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.
It also highlighted the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, the International Criminal Court-issued arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Ireland’s consistent foreign policy on Palestine despite potential backlash.
The conversation explored the feasibility of a two-state solution, with Levy suggesting a one-state solution and calling for equality and democracy.
“The two-state solution is doing the biggest damage now,” said Levy. Elaborating, he said it is supposed to happen “one day, not today, obviously, because there is no partner” of Israel on the Palestinian side, and “not yesterday, because there were no partners”.
“Some time in the future, when our conscience is totally clean, we will have the solution. We will wait for the right time. Meanwhile, generation after generation after generation of Palestinians are living under these criminal conditions, both in the West Bank and Gaza, without any prospective (of the future),” he said.
Claiming that settlers have taken over chunks of West Bank with the support of the Israeli state and army, Levy said it was not realistic to believe that Israel will clear the illegal settlements or that there will be anything more than “lip service” from the US on that front.
So, the Palestinians, the only people in the world without citizenship, “will not feel even a beginning of equality at any level”, he said.
“The only two alternatives, realistically, are either an apartheid state forever or a democracy… and I do not know a worse regime than an apartheid regime,” he concluded.
Asked about a one-state solution, Levy said though that was hard to imagine, that was the way forward.
“Both peoples (Israelis and Palestinians) are now maybe in the lowest point ever in terms of believing in peace or in any kind of settlement,” he said.
“Israel’s actions in Gaza, the criminalisation of empathy for Palestinians in the country, and the belief that it has the right to do whatever it wants, don’t allow space for a two-state solution,” Levy added.
On the geopolitical landscape, Kevin Kelly said: “We are at a real inflection point in the Middle East (West Asia) at the moment.”
He said he had been visiting the region for a while and thought things couldn’t get worse, but they have. In resolving the (Palestinian) crisis, he said the centrality of the situation in the Palestinian territories is “absolutely key”.
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On ceasefire, censorship & aid
According to Kelly, the ceasefire in Gaza, brokered through the US, Qatar and Egypt, was good news but fragile.
In the context of the Saudis having demanded a pathway and a timeline for a Palestinian state, he said: “I think their voice will be key in the same way that it was in the ceasefire… this will require all of us to imagine a future which is more peaceful.”
He asserted that for that future, some of the fundamental challenges have to be resolved through politics because they cannot be resolved through violence.
The panel also discussed the chilling effects of the British government clamping down on academic freedom by terming any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism.
The speakers emphasised the need for Israel to change its policies to reduce anti-Semitism and called for international support for investigating Israeli actions.
“If you want to look at freedom in western societies at the moment, the litmus test is always Palestine,” Dabbagh said, highlighting the heavy-handed clampdown on campus protests in the US, and threats to withdraw funding from academics and universities teaching Palestinian history and culture in the UK.
Even Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports were censored, she said, adding that all of that is being done in the name of checking anti-semitism.
The conversation also highlighted Israel’s ban on UN aid agency UNRWA from operating in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the “cynical” way in which aid has been allowed and obstructed at the will of Israel.
Cameron said the UK has distributed more aid than ever in the past year. Supporting the UNRWA, she added: “I have been to schools, to hospitals in Gaza before the current conflict, and seen the scale of services they were able to provide.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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