Foreign Policy: Who’s afraid of a one-state solution?

Well, plenty of people are, and understandably so. But my new piece for Foreign Policy covers some of the people who are not.  And since this is a debate that’s only now beginning to emerge into the mainstream, I thought it would be useful to open a rolling post here documenting the pro and anti voices on this issue.

First, the article I refer to by Meron Benvenisti, is here. If there’s one article you’re going to read by a pro-one-state Israeli, this is it; and if there’s one article by a pro-one-state Palestinian you need to read, it better be the classical one, by Edward Said.

Second, there have been a number of books published on the matter in recent years:

• Ali Abunimah,  “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse”
• Ghada Karmi, “Married to Another Man“
• Avraham Burg, “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes“.

Burg’s book is particularly important for understanding the Israeli perspective, as he hails from the kernel of the heart of centre-Zionist mainstream. You can read an unpublished interview of mine with Burg here .

[Note: The links are to Amazon, but if you actually want to buy books, I recommend Book Depository, who ship free worldwide]

Third, for Hebrew readers, there’s a good roster of articles for and against the one state here.

And finally, if you have recommendations and links to articles and/or books on this issue, please use the comment button below. The list above will be updated as we go.

Book review: My Life as a Traitor

Review appeared in abridged form at the Post weekend edition as “Political memoir of no presumption” on March 6, 2008

A blindfolded 20-year-old girl is pushed into an interrogation room in Teheran’s notorious Evin prison. She can’t see her interrogator; she can only smell him. For the next 39 days she endures beatings and humiliations for daring to organize student protests; when allowed to “rest” in her minute cell, she recollects her upbringing in a loving, liberal middle-class Teherani family, sharply contrasted with the suspicious surveillance state outside, and her journey from “pink shoe sensibility” – the muted protest of a girl not allowed to display outward signs of loveliness – to growing political involvement along with an infatuation with a student leader by the name of Arash Hazrati. She is released in the end, thanks to the advocacy of a previous love interest, a man close to the regime; later on, she escapes to Australia. This, in a nutshell, is the plot (readable on the dust jacket, so it’s no spoiler) of My Life as a Traitor, by Zarah Ghahramani, co-written with journalist Robert Hillman.