At our panel discussion at the Wilson Center last week, my fellow panelists Aaron Miller and Rob Malley agreed that the one-state option for Israel and the Palestinians is not a realistic vision for the future. Malley was nice enough to call my book a "masterful deconstruction" of one-state rhetoric. Miller repeatedly called it "brilliant" and said that the book effectively "buries" any notion of a single state arrangement between the river and the sea. However, he added that a New York Times op-ed by Rob Malley and Hussein Agha also raised very serious doubts about the prospects for achieving a conflict ending two-state agreement under the present circumstances.

Everyone who thinks about the problem seriously agrees that there are massive obstacles and that all such doubts are very well-founded. Miller asked the obvious follow-up question: since for the next two years or so we are probably not going to be successful in securing a conflict ending two state agreement, and a single democratic state is not a plausible idea, how can we think outside the box constructively about what sort of arrangements can be developed to improve the situation and lay the foundation for future progress. It’s an extremely challenging problem, but not one that is entirely resistant to any serious answers.

Obviously, any notion of stabilizing the situation or laying the groundwork for progress under circumstances that will be developed in the immediate future will have to be based first and foremost on a settlement freeze. No Palestinians or other Arabs are going to have any confidence in creating conditions for agreement in the medium-term future if Israel continues to gobble up land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and continues to make the problem far more difficult to solve by introducing increasing numbers of Israeli settlers into the occupied territories. Beyond a settlement freeze and perhaps even beyond the world of diplomacy there have to be other measures that begin to change the equation in a meaningful way, as Miller is suggesting. In my view Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has provided the most imaginative, practicable and far-reaching answer to Miller’s question in his government program released earlier this month.

Fayyad’s idea, in a nutshell, is that Palestinians should begin building the administrative and institutional infrastructure of their state in spite of the occupation in order to achieve what he has called "de facto statehood." With a surprising degree of specificity, but also of course some vagueness, the Prime Minister is proposing that Palestinians move quickly to develop legal and administrative structures, ministerial competency and reach, relations between the government and civil society, and infrastructure including a West Bank airport among other crucial pre-statehood measures.

The first thing worth noting is that in spite of a widespread and mistaken reaction to this idea of “de facto statehood” as being nothing more than another attempt to rhetorically establish a Palestinian state as has been done in the past, most notably in 1988, Fayyad’s approach is in fact fundamentally different than anything that has been tried in the past, at least as a strategy for liberation. True enough, the PLO and PA have established institutions in the past, particularly under the Oslo rubric, but what Fayyad is proposing is different. Earlier declarations of independence and statehood were intended to be self-fulfilling exercises, and were essentially political and diplomatic gestures aimed at securing support for the concept of an independent Palestine. Previous institution building has been formulated around the concept that statehood should be declared and accepted, and then developed in practice.

Fayyad has deviated from both of these positions by suggesting that the Palestinians should build, “strong state institutions capable of providing, equitably and effectively, for the needs of our citizens, despite the occupation.” He essentially reverses the traditional Palestinian approach of securing recognition and legal status for statehood first before addressing the construction of state institutions, with the document seeking to lay out a plan to build “institutions of the independent State of Palestine in order to establish a de facto state apparatus within the next two years.”

In doing so, Fayyad is recognizing three important points that have not figured sufficiently into previous thinking by the PA, the PLO, Fatah or other Palestinian national entities.

First, it is not true that even though there is a diplomatic impasse there is therefore nothing Palestinians can do to address their national needs and priorities. He is in effect arguing that the Palestinians can and should proceed with the business of building serious state institutions, that is to say creating new “facts on the ground” in spite of the continuation of the occupation. Obviously, the occupation greatly complicates the process, but what the program recognizes is that even under such circumstances, if they are clear about their purposes and employ intelligent strategy and tactics, the PA is entirely capable of developing the core institutions of a functional state. It also calls Israel’s bluff, and puts the Israelis in the position of having to either not interfere with Palestinian institutional and economic development or take crude, unilateral actions to prevent it, and pay the diplomatic and political price for such outrageous oppression and obstructionism.

The second thing Fayyad’s program recognizes is that without these state institutions, statehood and independence could be compromised. Because of decades of occupation, violence, corruption, intifada, mismanagement and other factors, the institutions of Palestine are severely damaged or have never been formed, to the point that if Palestinians achieve their independence tomorrow, governance would be an immediate problem because the infrastructure of government is not fully developed or has been damaged or destroyed. What this program suggests, and rightly so, is that building state institutions is a national priority for the Palestinians if independence is their overriding national goal.

Third, the program recognizes that institution building is itself a particularly important and powerful weapon of resistance to occupation. The further Palestinians go in developing their state institutions, as Fayyad has put it, “de facto statehood in spite of the occupation,” the more this undermines the reality of the occupation and advances the Palestinian agenda of independence and freedom.

The idea that building state institutions before independence is some kind of capitulation to occupation is completely wrongheaded (most enthusiastically promoted by people who are, in fact, opposed to Palestinian independence). History suggests that most successful postcolonial states began developing their state infrastructure with or without the cooperation of the occupying powers before independence was achieved. The sooner and more fully they were able to do this, generally speaking the more successful the postcolonial state has proven in practice.

The Israeli case is another instructive model, in which Jewish settlers in Palestine had created most of the key state institutions by the early to mid-1930s, long before the Israeli state came into being and when the Jewish community in Palestine was a small minority. The Zionist movement operated on two principles in this regard: first, that state institutions make statehood possible and at some point inevitable, and second that institutions were more important to Jewish statehood than achieving a demographic critical mass (one might call this the “build it and they will come” model).

Obviously, the Palestinians find themselves in a very different situation. However, both anti-colonial and Israeli history, among others, suggest very strongly that building state institutions with an eye to independence is not only not a form of “collaboration with occupation,” it is, or at least it should be, a most powerful and effective weapon of resistance. One notes that one of the most passionate objections to the program has come from Israel’s ultra-right wing Foreign Minister, Mr. Lieberman, who is well aware of this and does not like it one bit.

There are going to be many potential answers to Aaron Miller’s inescapable question. But it seems to me that this program of unilateral, proactive and constructive Palestinian infrastructure and administration development to create a de facto state in preparation for statehood and in order to make statehood more likely if not inevitable is an excellent example of thinking outside the box and not relying on hopes for a conflict ending agreement in the next two years. It is entirely consistent with publicly stated American, Israeli and Palestinian positions, and only people fundamentally opposed the concept of independent Palestinian statehood can be opposed to it. In a typically brilliant Al Hayat column, Raghida Dergham, laid out precisely why the Arab states too should welcome this move. Everyone should be taking this seriously, and doing what they can to help it succeed.

I am grateful to a careful reader for pointing out that I have mischaracterized some aspects of the Toronto Declaration. The statement says, "We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF." Media reports led me to believe otherwise. Some of my other concerns about the declaration are still valid, but I think there’s a lot more nuance and substance to the effort than I indicated in my post yesterday. I still think the points I was making about broad-based boycotts are valid, and they are in fact buttressed by the fact that the Toronto declaration was careful not to be as broad-based as I thought it might have been. In other words, while I unfairly mischaracterized, at least to some extent, the Toronto declaration, I stand by my generalized observations about the need to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful boycott and divestment actions. This one looks a lot better to me today than it did before, and it was unusual oversight for me to rely on secondary sources rather than primary ones.

As I’ve explained before on the Ibishblog, I have serious reservations about relying on boycotts as a primary tactic for the Palestinian national movement under the present circumstances. And, I think that boycotts that target Israel generally, as opposed to the occupation, under any circumstances would probably have rapidly diminishing returns, in several respects, for the Palestinian cause. I think the probable impact on Israeli political sentiments was pretty acutely diagnosed by Uri Avnery in the second of two recent commentaries on the subject. However, I have expressed sympathy for targeted boycotts that focus on the occupation and make it clear that what is being targeted is the hideous apparatus of the settlements, the checkpoints, the separation barrier, the home demolitions, etc. In other words, I don’t have a simple position of being opposed to boycotts, as some people have misunderstood. I think some are much more useful than others, and I judge them on a case-by-case basis and not in a knee-jerk manner.

To illustrate my point, there have been a number of divestment actions of late that I think have been entirely positive, useful and should be encouraged because they specifically target the occupation and not Israel in general, and are therefore politically useful and not counterproductive. Last week, the Norwegian government said it was going to withdraw all of its pension fund investments from Elbit Systems, the company that manufactures the monitoring system installed on the appalling Israeli separation barrier that snakes through the occupied West Bank.

Norway’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said that the decision was made because, "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law." To which I can only say, bravo! This kind of divestment action, specifically targeting the mechanics of one of the worst aspects of the occupation, is an extremely positive development. It is sound, principled, moral and very much in Norway’s own interests.

There is probably a lot more that can be done, especially in Western Europe, to achieve similar highly targeted, occupation-specific divestments that send the right message in the right way. Even in the United States, when it comes to direct contributions to violations of international humanitarian law by the occupation, some similar measures might be possible, and, when targeted in an intelligent and purposive manner, indeed useful.

Boycott and divestment activists in Europe and the United States can learn a great deal from the extremely intelligent way in which Norway took and framed its decision. The ministry explained: "The surveillance system has been specially designed in close collaboration with the buyer and has no other applications. Elbit Systems is clearly aware of exactly where and how the system is intended to be used." The Norwegian government made it crystal clear that these specific elements were central to its decision to divest from Elbit Systems, and stressed that the decision was based on these aspects of the issue and not the nationality of the Israeli company. The way Norway has handled this is not only principled, it is extremely astute and shrewd, making a very important point without falling into the obvious pitfalls which attach themselves to broad-brush boycott measures, and which I have outlined in earlier Ibishblog postings.

In addition, the U.S. pension fund TIAA-CREF has withdrawn approximately $250,000 from the Israeli firm Africa Israel Investments, which was reportedly in response to a letter from some Palestinian activists pointing out that, "the fund continues to invest clients’ money in a number of companies supporting Israeli settlement activity." This also strikes me as worthwhile and the useful development, although I remain somewhat skeptical about how much these kind of actions can actually achieve. However, I am ready to be pleasantly surprised and I really can’t see any downside to boycott actions of this kind that are specific to organizations and companies that are deeply engaged with the mechanics of the occupation.

On the other hand, the controversy over the Toronto Film Festival, in an effort to in effect block Israeli films from being shown or to punish the festival for showing Israeli movies is, I think, a good example of a boycott action that is well-intentioned but not particularly helpful. The artists and filmmakers who have supported the action cite the occupation as their primary objection, but I have two serious reservations about this approach.

First, I think that responding to the occupation by boycotting anything Israeli in order to punish all of Jewish Israeli society for the crimes of the occupation is at least as likely to reinforce Israeli and other Jewish support for the settlers as it is to undermine it. In other words, I just don’t think this kind of generalized boycott will have the effect of dividing Israeli society but rather is more likely to unite it in a very negative way.

Second, I think that anything that smacks of broad-brush censorship, in this case the exclusion of art that has been made by people from the wrong society, is difficult to defend. It will leave a bad taste in the mouths of many people who might otherwise be sympathetic. There are after all a very wide range of opinions among Jewish Israelis, and also an Arab minority in Israel (boycotts that target all of Israeli society tend to forget about this, as it will be extremely difficult to make targeted exclusions for Palestinian citizens of Israel). At any rate,I am left very cold by the idea that refusing to engage with the art and expression of a particular society generally is a positive contribution to international political life. One can easily imagine similar positions taken by other groups of people towards, say, the brilliant films being made in recent years in Iran. How would that help anything?

The bottom line is I just don’t see how excluding all Israeli movies from international film festivals is going to help the Palestinians. It seems to me precisely the kind of boycott action that is more likely to annoy most Israelis and unify them rather than intensify divisions over the occupation and undermine the position of those Israelis who are willing to seriously and completely end it (quite possibly many of them being artists and filmmakers). As with any tactic, there are forms of boycott and divestment that are politically constructive and useful, and those that probably do at least as much harm as good.

NOTE: The day after I posted this, I posted the following correction, since some of this posting contained a mischaracterization of some aspects of the Toronto Declaration.

ANOTHER NOTE: This posting appears to be cursed. Now MarketWatch reports that TIAA-CREF denies that its withdrawal from the Israeli company was in any way linked to political considerations, but rather was based on its removal from a stock index:

The U.S. pension fund TIAA-CREF said that it no longer owns shares in Africa-Israel. In a statement, the fund said that "[earlier] this year, the CREF Stock Account had an extremely small investment in the company, which was sold after its removal from an emerging-markets index that the account tracks." The online editions of the Israeli newspapers Yediot Achronot and Ha’aretz reported that a number of the fund’s investors had urged TIAA-CREF to shed the holding because the company had built projects in the West Bank.

Good information on these issues appears harder to come by than most. Who knows how many more of these notes I will have to add in the coming days. Hopefully, none.

This morning, Sept. 10, there was a panel discussion on my new book, “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda,” at the Wilson Center with my fellow panelists Aaron David Miller of the Wilson Center and Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group. I think it is one of the best conversations on the question of peace and how to get there in which I have ever been a part. Video of the event should be forthcoming in a few days from Wilson, but in the meantime, I am posting my prepared remarks that served as a basis of my formal comments. As delivered, they were somewhat different, of course, as will be reflected in the recording of the program. But the ideas are all the same. I would like to thank the Center and Dr. Miller for arranging the event and to Mr. Malley for his outstanding participation.

PREPARED REMARKS FOR THE 9/10/O9 WILSON CENTER PANEL:

On college campuses in the United States and Britain, and increasingly among grassroots activists in the West generally, the cause of ending the Israeli occupation and securing independence for a Palestinian state is being abandoned in favor of a much more far-reaching goal of replacing Israel with a single, democratic state for all Israelis and Palestinians, including all of the refugees. Until now, this rhetoric has been largely unchallenged from a pro-Palestinian point of view, which is probably been a significant factor in its appeal.

My new book, “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda?,” which is available for free download or purchase on the website of the American Task Force on Palestine, traces the development of this agenda and interrogates its assumptions and claims.

The outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, which inflicted profound suffering and created deep ill-will on both sides, bolstered stridently nationalist perspectives in Israel and among the Palestinians. For many, it prompted a negative reevaluation of what kind of peace was possible and desirable.

In Israel, this was manifested in the collapse of the ?peace camp,? a radical shift to the political right and the election of Ariel Sharon. Among Palestinians, Islamists, especially Hamas, gained significant ground.

In the Palestinian diaspora, where support for Hamas is both limited and, especially in the United States, politically untenable and even legally risky, this same disillusionment and radicalization has been largely expressed through the rise of the one-state agenda.

More generally, the one-state agenda reflects the widespread conclusion that Israel will never agree to seriously end the occupation and allow for the creation of a fully sovereign, viable Palestinian state, and that therefore negotiations and diplomacy are pointless.

At the end of part one of my book I pose a series of pointed questions that are not usually addressed to, or have been insufficiently answered by, one-state advocates, and in many cases not adequately considered by their sympathizers:

? If Israel will not agree to end the occupation, what makes anyone think that it will possibly agree to dissolve itself? If Israel cannot be compelled or convinced to surrender 22% of the territory it holds, how can it be compelled or convinced to surrender or share 100% of it?

? What, as a practical matter, does this vision of a single, democratic state offer to Jewish Israelis?

? What efforts have Palestinian and pro-Palestinian one-state advocates made in reaching out to mainstream Jews and Israelis and to incorporating their national narrative in this vision?

? How do one-state advocates propose to supersede or transcend Palestinian national identity and ambitions? Why is it that no significant Palestinian political party or faction has adopted this goal?

? How, apart from empty slogans about largely nonexistent and highly implausible boycotts, do one-state advocates propose to realize or advance their vision? What practical steps do they imagine and what is their roadmap for success?

? Since they reject both Palestinian independence and the ongoing agenda of infrastructural and institutional development presently defining the strategy of the ?quisling? Palestinian Authority, what do one-state advocates, as a practical matter, offer those living under occupation other than expressions of solidarity and interminable decades of continued struggle and suffering?

It is striking that the most ardent and tenacious one-state advocates seem to be taking a great deal of time in starting to formulate an answer to any of these questions.

I have no doubt that sooner or later a response, and hopefully a calm and thoughtful one, will be forthcoming from some of the committed one-state advocates. But the amount of time it is taking to formulate any sort of answer to these extremely relevant and pointed questions suggests that, perhaps, they are proving somewhat difficult to formulate and, quite possibly, in many cases were not anticipated.

But there surely must be a considerable burden of proof on those proposing that the Palestinian national movement abandon its long-standing goal of ending the occupation, which is based on a huge body of international law and reflects a regional and international consensus, in favor of a grand experiment in almost entirely uncharted waters that seems to pose significant risks and offer uncertain benefits.

One-state proponents have an obligation to explain how exactly they think they can achieve the extraordinary task of compelling or convincing Israel to effectively dissolve itself.

If they cannot answer simple, clear and obvious questions such as these, it will be impossible to consider one-state rhetoric an actual agenda for accomplishing anything, but rather a convenient vehicle for rejecting any and all things Israeli and adopting a position of uncompromising confrontation.

While the one state agenda (I will not call it a solution, as it is at best a distant outcome) is really only influential on campuses and among grassroots activists and has no role in the policy conversation in Washington, there nonetheless is the question outlined by Dr. Miller regarding the viability or achievability of a two state agreement. Both of my colleagues here today are on record questioning whether such agreement could be achieved and whether, even if it were, it would really resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

I think we have to start an evaluation of these suggestions with two fairly obvious points which I think are not disputed by any serious commentator: first, that a military victory which resolves the conflict is not available to either party; and second, that the status quo is untenable and unacceptable to both. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are going to go away or capitulate and abandon their national identities or projects. Therefore, in the absence of a resolution, or a process leading towards resolution, conflict will continue and there will be a generalized relationship of violence and indeed warfare.

It strikes me that anyone who wishes to conclude that a two state peace agreement is either unachievable or undesirable has a political, and indeed a moral, obligation to propose a workable alternative. And let me stress that this alternative must be acceptable to both parties, which is to say it must meet the minimum national requirements of both Israel and the Palestinians. For the reasons I’ve outlined in my book, while I think the one-state agenda might be acceptable to many, and possibly even to most, Palestinians, at least in theory, I am absolutely convinced that there is no way, and no one has been able to demonstrate any plausible way, to make it appealing to all but a tiny fringe of Jewish Israelis. They will not accept it, and they will fight vigorously and virtually unanimously against it.

Much the same applies to ideas on the Israeli right about somehow forcing Egypt to resume responsibility for Gaza and passing parts of the West Bank which Israel does not wish to retain back into Jordanian control, thereby obviating the need for any agreement with the Palestinians. This may be very appealing to many Israelis, but it is absolutely unacceptable to the Palestinians, the Egyptians and the Jordanians, and they too will not accept it and will fight vigorously and virtually unanimously against it. So these ideas are not plausible alternatives, because at best they only speak to the interests of one side. Rather, they are excuses for not having a plausible workable alternative while rejecting the two state solution.

If there is another formula for meeting the minimal national requirements of both parties in a manner that would, in fact, end the conflict, as I strongly believe a two state solution would, I am completely unaware of it. It strikes me that, as I repeatedly stress in my book, it is not as if the parties, the region and the world has a plethora of interesting choices regarding this conflict. In fact, I think the choice boils down rather starkly to a rather brutal binary: war or peace. To conclude or assert that a two state agreement is unavailable and unworkable without providing a workable alternative that both parties would or might plausibly accept under realistically imaginable scenarios, it seems to me, fails to constructively address the real policy challenge facing not only the parties but also the United States.

Over the past decade or so, maybe longer, the benefits to the United States in resolving this conflict have become increasingly clear. But I think what’s now becoming more acutely appreciated, and this partly explains the Obama administration’s prioritizing of diplomacy on Palestinian-Israeli peace, are the very real costs to the United States of failing to resolve the conflict. Dr. Miller, for example, for all his skepticism, reflected a very well-developed appreciation for these costs in his superb book “The Much Too Promised Land.”

It seems to me that to propose that a two state agreement is simply too implausible to form the basis of a sound policy for the United States, or a reasonable strategy for either Israel or the Palestinians, without proposing a viable alternative is to suggest that somehow the status quo is tenable or that one simply has to except that an extremely brutal and highly damaging conflict is going to continue for the foreseeable future and that there is nothing we can do about this. I don’t think this is the most constructive approach to the issue.

And let me add, the alternative is not simply a continuation of the conflict as we have known it, but a serious intensification and, in all probability, an increasing atmosphere of religious fanaticism in terms of reference making the conflict much more violent and much more resistant to any kind of negotiated resolution. Just because the only available path to avoiding an incredibly dangerous and tragic future is going to be extremely difficult is not a good argument for abandoning it. I’d be extremely happy to consider alternatives, but I really have not heard of any serious ones. It’s the practical equivalent of saying but there is no political way to sell the necessary steps to avoid catastrophic global warming, and by implication therefore we shouldn’t try to address the issue.

In my book I propose what I think is the real measure of how to judge when the two-state solution really becomes an implausible anachronism and should be either abandoned or seriously rethought, and that would be when large majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians conclude over a sustained period of time that such an agreement is either unattainable or undesirable. At that point, obviously, it will be difficult and possibly pointless to resurrect this model. However, until now the two state solution is the preferred option for majorities among both Israelis and Palestinians. It has been accepted in principle by an Israeli government, however reluctant it was to do so, and was unchallenged at the recent sixth Fatah General Party Congress in Bethlehem. It is rooted in a very large body of international law and UN Security Council resolutions. It is supported by almost the entirety of the international community, including the Arab states as reflected in the Arab peace initiative, and is now a national security priority for the United States.

Most importantly, it is the only way for Israel to secure its goals of peace and regional recognition and integration and for it to secure a Jewish majority within its borders, and for the Palestinians to achieve their national goals of freedom and independence. In everyone’s interest, therefore, our challenge is to find a way to make this work, not to conclude that it cannot work.

But let me be clear about this: I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the optimist party. I have no illusions about the obstacles facing the realization of such an agreement, or the significant possibility (and perhaps even probability although I do not think so) that no such agreement can be reached. However, given the lack of plausible, workable alternatives and the grim reality of what the consequences of a failure to achieve such an agreement would be for all parties, even if one work to conclude the chances for such an agreement are in the range of, say, 10 or even 5%, the only constructive course would be to work to achieve it nonetheless.

Past administrations have tried to avoid this problem, but it is too central to be ignored and always has a way of coming back to bite one in the backside, so to speak. Walking away is not a reasonable option, in my view. At least not for the United States. Neither is accepting the status quo and managing an inherently unmanageable conflict that is in continuous deterioration as long as the diplomatic process is not functioning properly. And, I repeat, I see no viable alternatives, which is exactly why I wrote this book about the one-state agenda, which I think is plainly a nonstarter at least for most Israelis.

For all the reasons, I can only conclude that the challenge before us is to devote our energies to finding a way to make a two state agreement functional and achievable, unless and until anyone comes up with a serious, practicable alternative.

Last night I was privileged to witness a preview at the Kennedy Center of what looks to be a brilliant and important new play, "Burn Your Bookes," by Richard Byrne. It wasn’t a full performance of the work, sadly, but a kind of working rehearsal of Act II, performed by the excellent Taffety Punk Theatre Company of Washington DC. The group promises that a full production is high on their list of future projects, possibly to be staged next year. Based on what I saw last night, I can’t wait.

The play is about the late 16th century alchemist Edward Kelly and his patron and collaborator John Dee. There is a great deal of speculation about the activities of these notorious individuals, who have been the subject of discussion and analysis since their own lifetimes. Kelly is reputed to have been the model for Jonson’s masterpiece, "The Alchemist," and there is even speculation that Kelly and Dee were responsible for the magnificent but impenetrable Voynich Manuscript. Byrne essentially offers a recuperated version of the long-maligned Kelly, siding with a spate of recent scholarship which holds that, rather than a prototypical charlatan, his work was not only partially valid but that he was essentially an early scientific metallurgist.

The two found themselves in the capital of Bohemia, Prague, under the patronage of Emperor Rudolf II, who was obsessed with alchemy. Act II occurs entirely outside the castle in Prague. It is basically a three-way dialogue between Kelly, who is passing by, and two fellow alchemists condemned to hanging in cages outside the castle walls. The prisoners call out to Kelly for help, initiating a conversation about politics, law and, of course, the nature and purposes of alchemy. One of the caged men is a blatant grifter who has attempted to defraud the monarch and been caught when his trick was revealed. Another is an earnest but incompetent and ignorant practitioner who chanced into the business and was summoned to the court, only to be arrested as a charlatan when he failed to produce any gold.

The fraud and the incompetent are isolated, suspended and half naked, relying entirely on their empty words and futile spitting at each other. They are literally and figuratively exposed. Kelly, however, is armed with a walking stick and a lamp, metaphorically suggesting that unlike the two caged alchemists, he has power and insight, at least enough not to get hung up in a cage. For now. In the course of the conversation it is revealed that unlike the fraud and the fool, Kelly has a sense of the nascent metallurgy involved in alchemy. He also reveals, or at least claims, that he was the one responsible for exposing the fraud and bringing the fool to court, in other words that he is the one, more than the King, who placed them in their dire situation. It amounts to a rather nuanced partial defense and partial condemnation of Kelly as one part brilliant proto-scientist, one part huckster and one part master-manipulator. The idea here is that the traditional view of alchemists as either blundering ignoramuses and/or cynical con-men is insufficient, and Byrne’s version of Kelly provides an alternative way of looking at alchemists and alchemy from a more complex and nuanced perspective.

Obviously, a real evaluation of Byrne’s plainly outstanding new play requires a full production. However, it’s perfectly clear from the one-act sneak preview last night that he has developed an artistically and historically significant work, and that his play rather powerfully take sides in an ongoing academic dispute about the nature of Kelly’s work and his status, and alchemy in general. The bad news is that we have to wait for full production. The good news is that it is coming, and in the meanwhile the sneak preview can be viewed online at the Kennedy Center website.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is now reported, has told his American interlocutors recently that he was going to approve the construction of several hundred new homes in the occupied West Bank before commencing with any form of settlement freeze. The biggest problem really is that Netanyahu’s defiance of Washington is proving popular in Israel, where the public is usually very nervous about quarreling with the United States. However, in this case, the Israeli public distrusts President Obama, and seems to be largely supportive of Netanyahu’s refusal to fully cooperate in moving towards peace. It’s a kind of practical demagoguery, and shortsighted populism, but at the moment, it’s proving politically effective for the Israeli prime minister.

However, the real context of this very limited but also extremely unfortunate and provocative, indeed outrageous, settlement activity is preparation for the announcement of a freeze in September or October. While Netanyahu is defiant of the United States, the Obama administration has not given in to his conditions and is still pushing for a settlement freeze that is comprehensive, includes Jerusalem, and lasts for at least 18 months. Netanyahu’s settlement flurry, I suspect, indicates that he is preparing the ground politically for an arrangement with the United States that formally meets many, and in practice meets virtually all, of the Obama administration’s conditions. However, it’s also likely that some of the most sensitive aspects of this understanding will be informal and unannounced, probably to the point that the Israeli prime minister will insist that he has not given in on this or that issue, when, in fact, at a practical level he has.

Netanyahu not only has an ideological and instinctive inclination towards maintaining the occupation and thwarting Palestinian independence, he also is dealing with a cabinet that is extremely fragile and contains many people significantly to his right, making it very difficult for him to act in a reasonable and constructive manner even if he were inclined to do so. Worse still, he now finds it politically advantageous with the general Israeli public as well as his cabinet coalition to be recalcitrant, or at least to try to appear to be obdurate. However, his agreement to the concept of establishing a Palestinian state, even if only in principle and at the rhetorical level, shows that he can be moved, will when necessary do things that key cabinet members continue to reject and oppose, and is playing a delicate political game of balancing Israel’s interests as he perceives them, his own political requirements for staying in office, and preventing an all-out confrontation with the Obama administration. This suggests that there is in reality significant room for maneuver while the public face remains, on many issues, one of stubborn intransigence.

On the American side, President Obama finds himself in a very tricky political situation, with rapidly declining popularity ratings and complete chaos on his signature health care issue. The United States retains enormous leverage over Israel, but the power of Israel’s American political supporters and the current difficulties of the President, not to mention the fact that the defiance is proving popular domestically in Israel, has complicated the already difficult business of applying this leverage to specific Israeli behavior, especially on such a pivotal issue as the settlements.

The question, then, is: is Netanyahu’s miniature settlement surge the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? Is the Israeli prime minister determined to sabotage the Obama peace initiative for ideological and/or political imperatives? Is this a sign that Israel is simply going to refuse to do what is necessary to achieve peace, and the end therefore of Obama’s hopeful beginning in re-engaging with the peace process? That is entirely possible. On the other hand, it is also possible to read this move as pointing in a contrary direction, as the beginning of the end, and the final temper tantrum of defiance before Israel agrees, in practice, to effectively stop building settlements for the foreseeable future.

If Netanyahu builds a few hundred homes now, and then through both formal and informal commitments effectively stop building any more settlements for the next couple of years, that would open the door for very significant progress, without collapsing his government and creating an avoidable and unconstructive crisis. It’s probably true that this current Israeli government is not the one that will ultimately sign a permanent status agreement that ends the occupation and ends the conflict. But it could be the government that, after extraordinary theatrics of defiance and recalcitrance, finally bites the bullet on settlements making serious negotiations possible and beginning the process of moving towards the end of the occupation and of the conflict.

Since my colleagues and I at the American Task Force on Palestine have been consistently maligned as "collaborators" by fringe elements of the Arab-American community because we seek to end the Israeli occupation and promote the establishment of a Palestinian state to live alongside Israel, I was extremely interested to see that precisely the same word is used by extremist right-wing supporters of Israel to describe Jewish Americans who also favor peace. David Horowitz’s appalling blog frontpagemag.com today features what appears to be the second in a series of such outrageous denunciations, called "Collaborators in the War Against the Jews" and targeting Tikkun magazine publisher, Rabbi Michael Lerner. Lerner’s unforgivable sin is to be critical of the occupation and some Israeli policies, which for the fanatics at Horowitz’s shop amounts to treason. The first article in what Horowitz’s website shamelessly calls its "collaborators series" targeted Baylor University professor Marc Ellis.

Horowitz’s rationalization for this campaign of slander and intimidation is worth considering:
"Some of the individuals waging an all out war on American college campuses against Israrel and the Jews are themselves Jewish. Some have called them ‘non-Jewish’ or ‘self-hating’ Jews. What is undeniable is that in the role they have chosen, these individuals are collaborating, often openly and without apology, with groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah and states such as Ahmadinejad’s Iran that call for a new genocide. Over the next few weeks, Frontpage will profile some of these Jewish collaborators in the war against Israel and the Jews and show how they give and and comfort to the Islamist enemy."

Simple word substitutions immediately demonstrate how uncannily similar this overwrought rhetoric is to some of the more strident elements of Arab-American discourse. In both communities, there are those so extreme that they are prepared to excommunicate those who disagree with them, who deviate from an established and hegemonic ethnic narrative, and who insist on the right to think critically and independently and to try to understand and sympathize with the perspectives of the other side. Use of terms like "collaborator," "traitor," and similar implicitly violent rhetoric is not only a mark of desperation, it’s also a telltale sign of extremism and fanaticism. Sadly, there’s plenty of that to go around on both sides of this divide.

Israel Policy Forum very kindly asked me to contribute a blog posting to their site, which I am now re-posting here, about my new book, published by the American Task Force on Palestine, "What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal." It is now available for free download or hardcopy purchase from the ATFP website. The book is essentially a study of the emerging discourse among a growing minority of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, especially on American and British college campuses, which passionately rejects the idea of ending the occupation and securing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state to live alongside Israel in peace and security, instead proposing a single, democratic state for everyone in Israel and the occupied territories, and all Palestinian refugees as well. One of the reasons that this rhetoric has been gaining ground on college campuses in recent years is that the case for the traditional Palestinian national goal of ending the occupation and statehood hasn’t been vigorously defended against the critiques leveled by one-state proponents.

Until now, in pro-Palestinian circles, the one-state agenda has enjoyed an open field in which proponents of ending the occupation have largely ignored one-state rhetoric, wrongly thinking that it is too marginal and utopian to have much of an impact. However, decades of disappointment with the peace process and despair that diplomacy can ever produce an end to the occupation has led to a growing number of younger activists to reject what is, after all, the only plausible and viable path to peace. It was high time for someone with a well-established track record and a long history of working on the Palestinian cause take up these arguments and explain to people calmly, rationally and systematically what’s wrong with the one-state agenda.

Even though my book is a defense of a well-established national strategy and a set of ideas that had formed a virtually unanimous Palestinian consensus for several decades (now challenged by Islamist and one-state minority perspectives), many of the arguments I outline are, in fact, new. I go through the arguments generally presented in favor of a one-state agenda, pointing out their flaws, mistaken assumptions or logical fallacies, as well as arguments in favor of an agenda to end the occupation and secure an end-of-conflict agreement with Israel, in both cases point by point. I also examine the distinction between the diasporic discourse promoting a single state that passionately and categorically rejects Palestinian independence as both unachievable and insufficient, as opposed to the misguided tactical deployment of one-state rhetoric as a diplomatic "threat" to induce greater Israeli seriousness about peace negotiations that has emerged among some noteworthy Palestinians in the occupied territories. I have avoided any detailed evaluation of the one-state discourse among the tiny minority of Jewish Israelis who espouse this viewpoint, as my focus is the role of this discourse in Palestinian and pro-Palestinian political circles.

My aim was to keep the arguments as simple and brief as possible, without sacrificing any essential point, and I think it’s a quick read that avoids unnecessary tangents or repetition. Originally I had intended this to be an issue paper and guessed that it would be about 17 pages long. However, in the drafting process it became clear that a systematic and thorough-going evaluation was actually required, giving rise to a much longer study that is now presented in this book.

I have no illusions that I will be able to change the minds of large numbers of people who advocate a one-state agenda. In my view, much of this rhetoric, especially in Palestinian communities in the West, is largely driven by emotion rather than a clearheaded and intellectually honest evaluation of what Palestinians can actually achieve in order to advance their national interests. It is noteworthy and symptomatic that the two instances of negative feedback I have received so far (the overwhelming response thus far having been positive) have come from individuals who have not read the book and were angered simply by the title and the identity of the author, without consideration of the merits of the argument. However, I do believe that the substance of the book, insofar as people, including one-state advocates, take the time to consider its arguments, ought to at least make even the most ardent advocate think twice.

Essentially, the book is an effort to turn what until now has been a monologue, and a rather shrill one at that, into a dialogue. One-state rhetoric makes exceptionally bold and sweeping claims, such as the idea that Palestinian independence is impossible and/or undesirable, that while Israel cannot be compelled or convinced to surrender control of 22% of the territory it presently holds it nonetheless can be compelled or convinced to surrender or share control of 100% of it, and that a single state for Israel and the Palestinians that is peaceful, equitable and democratic is simply an inevitability because of the intersection between Palestinian demographics and Israeli settlement policies. Categorical assertions and claims of this kind needs to be unflinchingly interrogated by anyone who wishes to promote the best interests of the Palestinian people and national movement.

Similarly, it was high time that someone strongly sympathetic to and supportive of Palestinian national rights and interests challenged the idea that since there are striking parallels between apartheid in South Africa and Israel’s occupation, therefore a South Africa-like solution presents itself as a serious option between Israel and the Palestinians. Simply put, there is a glaringly obvious set of massive problems with the one-state agenda as it has emerged over the past decade or so in pro-Palestinian circles in the West, and it was time to begin to point out what those are.

I think IPF’s constituency can learn a great deal from the arguments I outline in the book. It’s true that the one-state agenda has absolutely no relevance to the policy debate in Washington and that nobody with any foreign policy credibility espouses this point of view. However, insofar as it is becoming a widespread perspective on university campuses and among grassroots activists, it’s a discourse that needs to be understood, engaged and refuted. It is particularly telling and unfortunate that these ideas are gaining ground precisely at a time when ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state has become not only a US foreign policy goal, but a national security priority.

I am not an optimist who thinks it will be easy or inevitable to end the occupation and secure peace between Israel and Palestine, and I have no illusions about the difficulties and the considerable prospects for failure. However, I also have no illusions about the alternative, which is not a single, democratic state for all the Arabs and Jews between the river and the sea, or, for that matter, a nonviolent, Gandhian campaign of civil disobedience. The practical alternative is continued conflict, violence and occupation in an increasingly religious context that intensifies the process of turning a conflict that is difficult to resolve into one that is completely impervious to any solution. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis, nor their friends in the United States and around the world, can afford to believe that the other side is going to be vanquished, capitulate or simply abandon its national agenda and interests.

I hope that my new book will help people think clearly and critically about the really existing options facing Israel and the Palestinians, and not be driven by raw emotions, extravagant illusions and dangerous fantasies.

Almost all the feedback so far on my new book, " What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda?" has been positive and encouraging and it has sold a lot better than I had expected, especially when free downloads are available. But the first negative evaluation has emerged, on Facebook of all places, by someone called Remi Kanazi (no, I’ve never heard of him either, sorry). And, it’s simply priceless.

He writes:
"Fatah’s Hussein Ibish has a new book out telling the world what Palestinians really think. While not Palestinian, he pretends to represent them, and judging by his new book title, he is ready to tell the world their national agenda. Grasping for the remnants of his once flimsy career, Hussein Ibish wins again!"

I absolutely love this!

First of all, it’s completely obvious that he hasn’t read the book, has no intention of reading the book, and doesn’t care what it says. He judges its arguments simply by the title, the fact that he doesn’t like or know anything at all about me, and the fact that…(drum roll)… I’m not a Palestinian! Of course, I never claimed to be a Palestinian, or to represent the Palestinians. I do, however, work for a Palestinian-American organization, with an all-Palestinian leadership and board of directors. More the point, I’ve been active on the issue of Palestine for decades, and until the one state agenda emerged to challenge the goal of ending the occupation and establishing Palestinian independence, not only was the fact that I was not a Palestinian never raised to invalidate my advocacy on behalf of Palestine, it was actually a feature of certain forms of praise. Neither praise nor condemnation are called for, of course. The question is, what is the substance of my ideas, and do people agree or disagree with them based on the merits of the argument, and why. I fully expect a sharp disagreement from numerous quarters based on an honest difference of opinion and the details of the arguments, but it certainly hasn’t happened yet. I think my old friend Ali Abunimah was the first to pull this stunt, and suggest that my national origin and ethnicity simply invalidates me making any contribution to the discussion of Palestinian national strategy (but only when people don’t agree with me, needless to say). This reeks to high heaven of chauvinism and ethnocentric bias being invoked for the narrowest of ideological purposes, as you can be sure that if I were advocating the one state agenda, such people would be singing my praises.

It’s also absolutely hilarious to be described as a member of Fatah, when I’ve written so much that is critical of that organization and never had the least association with it. Finally, I simply have no idea what the last sentence even means. Did I used to have a flimsy career, but now have a robust one? Did I used to have a flimsy one, but now none at all? I’ll agree with what’s-his-name on one matter only: if his response is anything to judge by, I certainly do win on the merits, and devastatingly. I hope someone can do a little better than this. Reading the thing might be recommended as a starting point for any critique.

Everyday categories like optimism and pessimism tend to color most people?s political thinking, especially about questions involving international relations in the Middle East, but since they are irrational affects that are extraneous to factual realities, such attitudes are entirely at odds with sound political judgment. What is required for serious political analysis, especially when there is a vital goal at stake, is to dispassionately evaluate what is happening, in so far as possible free from assumptions, prejudices, pre-judgments and emotions. This is asking a great deal of people who are profoundly invested emotionally in a conflict, but it is necessary if one is to seriously evaluate the risks, opportunities and possibilities for advancing a specific agenda. This may sound obvious, but I am completely convinced by extensive experience that most people who are engaged on the question of Palestine, on all sides, consistently fail to apply this standard to their thinking, and are largely driven by irrational affects, emotions, and generalized attitudes such as optimism, pessimism and cynicism.

On the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian side, pessimism about peace and ending the conflict and the occupation is almost universal. In fairness, people came by this attitude honestly, having endured decades of suffering, frustration and disappointment. This pessimism about the future informs a very common, and even typical, deep-seated cynicism about diplomacy, negotiations and the potential for any kind of workable agreement. It is understandable, but it is also dysfunctional as a basis for analyzing political developments. Everything is always too little too late, insufficient, worthless, fraudulent, meaningless or counterproductive. Some people have become so cynical and pessimistic that they never see anything of value in anything any actual political actors with any degree of leverage or authority, on any side, say or do. It would be easy to identify activists and commentators who literally oppose anything and everything that actually takes place in the political register that has an impact on fundamental realities. It?s a safe position, since everything that really exists always has myriad downsides, but it?s also an attitude that precludes any kind of serious engagement with the actually existing political realm. Gadflies are sometimes interesting, occasionally insightful and often annoying, but they are by definition ineffective.

The only approach that can actually help to achieve practical political results is to carefully and dispassionately examine every development, attempting to identify what it offers that can help move towards a clearly defined, overriding goal (in this case, ending the occupation). Every development, statement and action, no matter how seemingly minor, may offer something, however modest, that can be deployed in pursuit of the goal. Successful campaigns to create change in the real world, especially at the level of international relations and diplomacy, depend entirely on an accumulation of political leverage and capital based on the successful utilization of countless minor, and occasionally a few major, developments. Sneering at everything precludes this slow and steady accumulation of leverage and capital. It means relying on one major, massive breakthrough that changes everything suddenly and miraculously. This almost never happens. Relying on it is unrealistic and indeed foolish. Pessimism and cynicism, therefore, are mortal enemies of achieving a major goal, as they blind their adherents to the potential uses to which modest or insufficient developments can be put towards the painstaking accomplishment of an overriding objective.

When my colleagues and I at the American Task Force on Palestine engage in the kind of analysis that looks at every development for opportunities to advance the goal of ending the occupation, we are frequently accused of being Pollyannas and engaging in irrational optimism. This is entirely incorrect. Optimism, being another irrational affect, is as much a threat to sound political judgment as pessimism and cynicism. Optimism in this context would involve a deep-seated belief that peace and an end to the occupation are overwhelmingly likely or, even worse, inevitable. To the contrary, all sensible observers, no matter how committed they are to peace and ending the occupation, understand that is going to be extremely difficult to achieve and that the obstacles are enormous and under no circumstances to be underestimated. Irrational optimism of this kind is actually more readily to be found in completely unjustifiable and indefensible pronouncements that a binational state is ?an inevitability? and that the intersection of Palestinian demography and Israeli settlement policies mean that nothing can stop it from developing over time. The further irrationally optimistic implication in most of these pronouncements is that this binational state will be democratic, equitable and bear no resemblance to the occupation or systematic legal discrimination.

In truth, of course, nothing is inevitable, and everything that happens in the political realm is the result of human agency and a genealogy of human choices and actions. We shape our own realities, and only the most foolhardy would claim some sort of inspired certitude about what the future will look like many decades hence. Whatever happens will be based on the art of the possible and the consequence of actions by those who take the necessary step to dispassionately and systematically look for every opportunity, however marginal, to advance their goals and interests. The typical reaction among Palestinians and their allies is to dismiss all developments as deeply flawed and unacceptable because they fall far short of achieving an end to the occupation or a viable peace agreement. There is almost no recognition in many of these quarters that one must, perforce, make lemonade out of lemons, and work with the realities that actually exist rather than spitting at the facts and denouncing anyone and everyone, and everything they do. The Arab Peace Initiative, the Obama administration?s focus on a settlement freeze and resumption of peace negotiations, Salam Fayyad?s plan to establish the institutional framework of a state on the ground by 2011 (as he puts it, de facto statehood), the fact that the United States now openly pursues Palestinian statehood as a major national security goal, the economic development underway in the West Bank, and so much more, like everything else, is dismissed with a tisk and a derisive wave of the hand.

Obviously indeed none of this is sufficient, satisfactory or decisive. And, there is no guarantee that a reasonable peace agreement that ends the occupation will be achieved, or that Israel and Palestine will live side-by-side in peace anytime in the foreseeable future. However, it is overwhelmingly obvious to any dispassionate observer that there is a great deal for Palestinians and their allies to work with in the present circumstances, the undeniable serious obstacles and difficulties notwithstanding. Just because something is difficult and may or may not be accomplished is no argument for giving up, walking away and preferring simply to sit by and denounce everything as insufficient, unsatisfactory and worthless. That kind of pessimism and cynicism isn?t realism at all. In fact, it is a very pernicious form of defeatism, and a practical surrender of agency and the abandonment of the idea that through systematic, concerted and painstaking effort we can, within the limits set by the art of the possible, seriously change existing realities.

It is almost entirely certain that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis will refuse to accept a single democratic state (or Hamas? Islamic state) between the river and the sea, and that sufficient political or military leverage to compel them to agree to such arrangements does not exist and, in reality, cannot be acquired. In the real world, this simply is not going to happen, unless one is counting on many extremely bloody decades of continued and massively escalated violence that exhausts and demoralizes both sides to the point that they abandon their national imperatives. Whether Palestinians and Israelis are capable, in practice, of agreeing to a mutually acceptable border and resolving the other issues that would allow the occupation to end and a Palestinian state to emerge to live alongside Israel in peace definitely remains to be seen. There is no guarantee that this will happen, and plenty of grounds for skepticism. However, it most certainly remains in the realm of the possible, and therefore subject to the art of the possible.

To achieve it, Palestinians, their allies, and those Israelis and Americans who understand that this is in Israel?s and the United States? interests as much as anyone else?s, will have to proceed not on the basis of irrational affects such as optimism, pessimism or cynicism, but on the basis of dispassionate political judgment that focuses on finding every opportunity, however modest and limited, to take one small step after another towards the goal. Irrational pessimism is, in effect, surrender. Irrational optimism means believing that something good is inevitably or almost certainly going to happen, which is also self-defeating in practice. Sound political judgment, by contrast, always keeps its eyes on the prize without illusions. It is, generally speaking, the only way to realize an elusive, difficult and major accomplishment such as ending the occupation. When something ? anything ? happens, you pocket whatever it is you can get from it towards the goal and move on. It is the only way forward.