Two states

The UN General Assembly is to vote on Thursday on a resolution to recognize Palestine as a member state. It will probably pass with a big majority, but it will be a hollow victory. In the first place the U.S. will prevent the Security Council from giving it any substance. Secondly, no Israeli government would be able to remove the half million Israelis from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and their presence makes a 2-state solution impossible. The two populations are almost completely mixed up, more than 20% of Israeli citizens being non-Jewish, and at least 15% of people on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem Jewish. As for the unfortunates of Gaza, it is unthinkable that their present imprisonment should be permanent The only viable solution would be a single, highly decentralized, demilitarized, secular state with equal rights for all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, religion or language - everything that Zionists have refused for 65 years, and which Britain and the UN failed to impose in the 1940s. I don't think this is totally unrealistic. The reward for the Israelis would be general recognition for such a state, with its capital in a united Jerusalem, and the end of a permanent state of war. They would be able to return to the ideals that Jews did so much to promote down the centuries: peace, international harmony, human rights and respect for law. Their present devotion to a racially defined nationalism and the rule of force is hardly inspiring.