The Reemergence of One-Statism

cent of mandatory Palestine constituted by the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in June 1967.” This realization has “instigated renewed consideration of the old idea of a one-state solution, as either the ideal outcome or as the most likely default outcome, for Palestine/Israel.” According to Khalidi, some see this one-state denouement as the “inevitable outcome of the extension into the immediate future of current trends... [These trends, amounting to] inexorable creeping de facto annexation [by Israel] of the West Bank and East Jerusalem,... will produce what is in effect a single sovereign Israeli-dominated polity throughout Palestine, with either rough Arab-Jewish demographic parity or, more likely, an eventual Arab majority. In this scenario, some feel, in time it will prove impossible to keep the two peoples in one tiny land segregated, or to keep that polity Jewish-dominated, as it eventually became impossible to keep South Africa white-dominated.”1

Khalidi adds: “There is little reflection among those who hold this [one-state] conception about the future constitutional structure or political arrangements between the two peoples... Similarly, there is little consideration of how it would be possible in such a single state to overcome either the apparent desire of both peoples for independent statehood, or the deep and abiding distrust of each collectivity toward the other.”

According to Khalidi, there is another group of one-staters whose thinking is a “throwback to the old Palestinian idea of a single unitary state of Palestine... [either] in terms of the previ-