I read this book after Tsvi Misinai's "Brother Shall Not Lift Sword Against Brother" and before Caroline Glick's "The Israel Solution". Compared particularly to Glick's work, I regard Abunimah's "Bold Proposal" a human, respectful and...
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I read this book after Tsvi Misinai's "Brother Shall Not Lift Sword Against Brother" and before Caroline Glick's "The Israel Solution". Compared particularly to Glick's work, I regard Abunimah's "Bold Proposal" a human, respectful and practicable approach to a One-State-Solution that historically was favored for instance by Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, and that is proposed today for instance by Gideon Levy, Muhammed Dahla, Mahmoud Darwish and Judith Butler.
"The oppressed must often show their oppressors a way out of the hole they dug", the native Palestinian author quips hopefully. Contrary to Glick's hawkish right wing solution of unilateral imposition, Abunimah listens to the other side and is well aware that "Israel is an emotional insurance policy against the visceral vulnerability that many Jews still feel ..." He agrees with Glick, however, in "that there is no workable partition that is acceptable to a majority of Israelis and Palestinians." He differs with Glick on the demographical argument. While Glick, in view of converging fertility rates of Jewish against Palestinian wombs, asserts that "the demographic time bomb is a dud", Abunimah cites Israeli experts Arnon Soffer and Sergio Della Pergola who arguably predict that by 2020 non-Jews will form a clear majority between the coast and river Jordan. Whereas Glick finds confirmation in what she calls the "hemorrhage of [Palestinian] emigration", Abunimah cites Yaakov Zur who decried "the appalling rate of ninety-five percent" of [Soviet] Jews going to destinations other than Israel. Abunimah seems mislead when he points to an Ashkenazi chief rabbi seeking converts (and new Israeli immigrants) "among desperately poor Inca tribespeople in the Andes". As far as I know, these Latin Americans were descendants of Jewish fugitives from Spanish Inquisition. Abunimah obviously has a blackout when he, albeit with caveat, inserts, for whatever purpose, that Russian Novosti newspaper "published an article proposing that Arab men should be threatened by castration" [sic] and "cash prizes for young men who voluntarily agree to castration" (pp.95-96). To be sure, Abunimah gives more space to the dementi than to the hoax, but one wonders why he mentioned it at all.
Concerning the problematic right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel, Abunimah is conciliable: "The Law of Return should ... be preserved in order to recognize the special connection Jewish communities have with Israeli Jews" (p.119).
Most important is chapter five where Abunimah compares the South-African abolition of apartheid with the possible demise of partition between the coast and Jordan. What is comparable in this comparation surely is the mutual distrust that must be cured at least partially before the removal of walls and fences. For Israelis, the South-African lesson "is to listen to their enemies rather than demonize them", Abunimah says. In his evaluation of "how violence fits" in such long term processes, Abunimah's South Africa chapter seems disturbingly ambiguous, but fortunately in the last chapter he states at least that "there can be no place in this struggle for violence that targets Israeli civilians".
The author's outlook is comprised in two statements from two sides he cites. First, Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, observed that most Palestinians "view Israel's democracy more positively than any other in the world, followed by America's". Second, Meron Benvenisti wrote in 2003 that binationalism is "apparently inevitable. Israel and the Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of the `one state'."
I read this book after Tsvi Misinai's "Brother Shall Not Lift Sword Against Brother" and before Caroline Glick's "The Israel Solution". Compared particularly to Glick's work, I regard Abunimah's "Bold Proposal" a human, respectful and practicable approach to a One-State-Solution that historically was favored for instance by Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, and that is proposed today for instance by Gideon Levy, Muhammed Dahla, Mahmoud Darwish and Judith Butler.
"The oppressed must often show their oppressors a way out of the hole they dug", the native Palestinian author quips hopefully. Contrary to Glick's hawkish right wing solution of unilateral imposition, Abunimah listens to the other side and is well aware that "Israel is an emotional insurance policy against the visceral vulnerability that many Jews still feel ..." He agrees with Glick, however, in "that there is no workable partition that is acceptable to a majority of Israelis and Palestinians." He differs with Glick on the demographical argument. While Glick, in view of converging fertility rates of Jewish against Palestinian wombs, asserts that "the demographic time bomb is a dud", Abunimah cites Israeli experts Arnon Soffer and Sergio Della Pergola who arguably predict that by 2020 non-Jews will form a clear majority between the coast and river Jordan. Whereas Glick finds confirmation in what she calls the "hemorrhage of [Palestinian] emigration", Abunimah cites Yaakov Zur who decried "the appalling rate of ninety-five percent" of [Soviet] Jews going to destinations other than Israel. Abunimah seems mislead when he points to an Ashkenazi chief rabbi seeking converts (and new Israeli immigrants) "among desperately poor Inca tribespeople in the Andes". As far as I know, these Latin Americans were descendants of Jewish fugitives from Spanish Inquisition. Abunimah obviously has a blackout when he, albeit with caveat, inserts, for whatever purpose, that Russian Novosti newspaper "published an article proposing that Arab men should be threatened by castration" [sic] and "cash prizes for young men who voluntarily agree to castration" (pp.95-96). To be sure, Abunimah gives more space to the dementi than to the hoax, but one wonders why he mentioned it at all.
Concerning the problematic right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel, Abunimah is conciliable: "The Law of Return should ... be preserved in order to recognize the special connection Jewish communities have with Israeli Jews" (p.119).
Most important is chapter five where Abunimah compares the South-African abolition of apartheid with the possible demise of partition between the coast and Jordan. What is comparable in this comparation surely is the mutual distrust that must be cured at least partially before the removal of walls and fences. For Israelis, the South-African lesson "is to listen to their enemies rather than demonize them", Abunimah says. In his evaluation of "how violence fits" in such long term processes, Abunimah's South Africa chapter seems disturbingly ambiguous, but fortunately in the last chapter he states at least that "there can be no place in this struggle for violence that targets Israeli civilians".
The author's outlook is comprised in two statements from two sides he cites. First, Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, observed that most Palestinians "view Israel's democracy more positively than any other in the world, followed by America's". Second, Meron Benvenisti wrote in 2003 that binationalism is "apparently inevitable. Israel and the Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of the `one state'."
