Santorum Endorses One-State Solution – OpEd

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Eli Clifton does his usual sterling job finding this absolute chestnut.  Rick Santorum unwittingly endorsed a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he made this statement on the campaign trail [emphasis mine]:

…The GOP presidential hopeful said that “all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians” and offered his endorsement of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

Santorum even went so far as to compare Israeli annexation of the West Bank to the acquisition of Texas during the Mexican-American war.

I’m all for it if Rick is.  Let’s call all the Jews AND all the Palestinians living in the West Bank “Israelis” and solve the entire conflict by embracing a one-state solution.  Of course, I don’t think this is what Rick has in mind.  Likely, he’d support expelling most of those undesirable “Israelis” to some non-Israeli territory somewhere, like the Sinai, where they can make the desert bloom like Israeli pioneers did.  He certainly can’t support giving all those “Israelis” (who happen to be Palestinian) full voting rights.

Oddly, settler wingnut Yisrael Medad seems to be offering them just that in this comment, in which he proffers citizenship to “the Arabs,” something he can of course afford to do because he knows his far right government wouldn’t do so in a million years.

Returning to Santorum, he clearly didn’t major in American, or any kind of history in college.  Otherwise he’d know that his “historical” parallel doesn’t hold water.  The territory the U.S. annexed after the Mexican-American War was quite sparsely populated and had very few Mexican nationals.  The West Bank has several million non-Jewish residents.  The U.S. didn’t expel the Mexican nationals that remained after the 1848 War.  If he follows this example, he’ll be creating a single Israeli state including all the Jews and Palestinians from the “river to the sea.”

This article appeared at Tikun Olam

Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein is an author, journalist and blogger, with articles appearing in Haaretz, the Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Al Jazeera English, and Alternet. His work has also been in the Seattle Times, American Conservative Magazine, Beliefnet and Tikkun Magazine, where he is on the advisory board. Check out Silverstein's blog at Tikun Olam, one of the earliest liberal Jewish blogs, which he has maintained since February, 2003.

One thought on “Santorum Endorses One-State Solution – OpEd

  • November 23, 2011 at 12:55 pm
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    As I am a banned commenter at Silverstein’s site, thank you for this opportunity.

    As for nuts, I wont get into a cracking contest with Silverstein. However, as facts are his weakness, can I make clear that:

    (a) granting voting rights is in my political philosophy based on Jabotinsky’s approach as I learned in Betar, that of Begin and was in the Techiya Platform, of which I was a member.

    (b) if there is any doubt, please read chapter 4, whichj was dedicated to me in this book: A Strnager in My House Holt, Rinehart, and Winston by William Reich published 25 years ago.

    Reply

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