Relatively few, both with us and with our neighbors, were engaged in the interview that Muhammad Dahlan gave to the Sky News channel in Arabic. Dahlan was a guest at the studio of the Lebanese interviewer Gisele Khoury and presented the viewers with a political initiative to promote the Palestinian issue. According to his plan, the two-state solution is dead – and the Palestinians must accept that. He called on the Palestinians to go to the presidential and parliamentary elections. After they elect an agreed president and legislature, they will put an alternative formula on the table of the State of Israel: a requirement to live in a binational state.
Dahlan’s proposal erases, against his will, the two-state solution, which was rejected by the Israeli governments. The two-state solution, anchored in the Oslo Accords, stated that an independent Palestinian state would be established alongside the State of Israel. “The two-state solution is an illusion, and that’s why it’s dead, Netanyahu destroyed it,” explained Dahlan. “Let’s not waste time, but start the campaign to reach the one country.”
According to him, Israel goes easy on the Palestinians when it talks about annexation and claims that there is no Palestinian people. In this way, he pointed out, it promotes the bi-national state. For 30 years we demanded two states, and the Israelis made fun of us, Dahlan added and explained. Let’s put the idea of one country before them, and see how they react. Many Israelis support the proposal, he said, and the international community will not be able to oppose.
There are those in the Palestinian camp who saw Dahlan’s interview as a public relations exercise. It is quite possible that the senior Palestinian, who was dismissed from the ranks of Fatah by Abu Mazen and has been living in Abu Dhabi ever since, wanted to garner media attention. The PA’s media channels ignored him, as he hated Abu Mazen. Hamas reacted with relative indifference, although he also spoke to To their hearts. After all, Hamas also wants a binational state, but without Jewish supremacy. But Dahlan will be remembered as the first of the senior Palestinian officials of the Oslo generation, who removes the two-state solution from the table.
Although this is a call in the wilderness, we should start getting used to it. The idea of the binational state will find a permanent place in the reality of our lives in the years to come. More Palestinians may adopt Dahlan’s call, if only to challenge the right-wing in Israel and the Americans, the architects of the two-state solution. It is not known who will lead the Palestinian Authority after Abu Mazen, and what political line he will adopt. Arab parties in the Knesset may also bring forward a bill in this spirit, thus promoting the idea. Not out of eagerness but out of lack of choice.
It is difficult for the average Israeli to perceive a day when the Palestinians of ’67 will be citizens in his country. But many Palestinians want to annex Israel, as happened to their brothers in ’48. They do not intend to be second-class citizens in this country. They want full equality and know that they won’t get it right away. Dahlan also knows, but what is burning. First they will be declared citizens in the same country as us, the Jews. Then they will fight for equal status.
The breeze from civics classes
One of the happiest people these days is Hassan Nasrallah. The leader of Hezbollah, who receives reports on the political situation in Israel, has been telling us for several months that we, the Zionist entity, will not get to celebrate the country’s 80th birthday. Like the House of Hasmoneans and the Kingdom of the House of David that collapsed, the Jews, he believes, will not cross the 80 mark this time either. This is a government of thieves, extremists and corrupt people, he said in one of his last speeches, and therefore, not only are we not afraid of it, we want it to continue to act and bring an end to them soon.
Nasrallah believes that Israel has a mechanism of self-destruction, which will reach its peak in the coming years, and we are seeing the beginning of the process these days. It relies on a series of basic assumptions formulated by various Arab scholars throughout the years of the country’s existence. Their common denominator is that Israeli society is violent on the outside, thanks to its advanced military, but is weak on the inside. He based his “spider web speech” on this in May 2000. Israel, he said, is weak from spider webs.
According to this concept, the Israelis are a mixture of postcards who found a piece of land here, but were never cut off from the lands of exile where they lived for centuries. In fact, many of them rushed to arrange a second citizenship for themselves. They are not tillers of the soil, and therefore do not understand the importance of a person’s adherence to the soil.
Hassan Nasrallah (Photo: Reuters)
Throughout history they did not really aspire to Zion, otherwise it is impossible to explain why they did not come to settle in it from time immemorial. In addition to this, Nasrallah and his ilk believe, Israeli society is hedonistic and wants to live for a moment. She is not ready to sacrifice herself, especially not today. And now, he exults, they have appointed criminals to lead them.
A significant part of his words are wishful thinking. Another part is a propaganda effort to encourage his public. Lebanese society is as Nasrallah prophesied to us: divided, suffering from corrupt leadership, loving its homeland but running away from it. It’s good to show her, these days especially, how it works for others.
In the face of these things, it is interesting to see his friends in the axis of resistance, aka the Palestinians.
Dahlan in the interview mentioned above also referred to the two ancient kingdoms of Israel. He mentioned that Israelis have “the 80-year complex,” and said that the Netanyahu government has declared war on Israeli society. But unlike Nasrallah, Dahlan did not predict Israel’s collapse, but on the contrary, he assumed that it would continue to exist, and that is why there should be a dialogue with it. Even the top brass of Hamas is not complacent these days in the face of the crisis in Israel. Certainly not like Nasrallah. It’s not because they don’t want it to collapse. They just know her better than him.
Dahlan, Sanwar, Rajoub, Hussein al-Sheikh, all high-ranking Palestinian figures, are the greatest experts on Israel in the region. They know us better than most of us know ourselves. They master Hebrew, and therefore follow us in our language and not through filters. They were all security prisoners, and as we know, there is no good school for Israeli society from prison.
If you want to know the other, put your neck under his boots. The one who gets trampled will know better than anyone the one who stepped on him. Therefore, they know where Israel’s weaknesses lie and what are its strengths, which Nasrallah, despite his extensive experience, has yet to learn. Nasrallah and his friends in the resistance axis in Iran and abroad have never seen a democratic society from the inside. Not in Iran, not in Iraq where Nasrallah acquired an education, and not in Lebanon. In contrast, the leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority live in the shadow of democracy from their birth. Although she controls them mercilessly, they know her inside and out.
They know the weight of the various coalition components. They also know Netanyahu well, and some have even met him. They also know Israeli society and the currents of influence within it. Know the economy and the place of the pressure groups. Nasrallah has no idea about all of this. And since they know each other intimately, and he doesn’t, they do what any wise person would do these days: watch this dramatic unfolding, and remain silent.
The writer is the commentator on Arab affairs of Gali IDF.