Now, as Gaza still smolders, calls for a two-state solution or partition persist. But neither will work.
The problem with the UN's partition of the Palestine region was that legislation is not sufficient to bring a country into being, at least without repercussions. Throughout history, the preferred method has been total conquest and subjugation, or at least the threat thereof. To no great surprise, the neighbor Arab states did not want to accept the UN's mandate, and war soon broke out. Isreal actually conquered additional lands from it original borders, but in my humble opinion, did not go far enough. It should have conquered the now disputed Gaza strip and West Bank. If it had, the people living there could have assimilated into Isreal, regardless of their religous and ethinc backgrounds. As Qaddafi poits out:
Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.
Sixty years later, the solution remains a single state. Muslims, Christians, and Jews should all be allowed to live within a secular Israel, share the holy lands, and participate in the political process together. How this happens may not be pretty, and it is likely that even then the fighting would not end forever, but it certainly has a better historical track record than outside government intervention.
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