One-state solution to end Israel-Palestine conflict

Crispin Hull
The Canberra Times
26 January 2008 - 0:18AM

The flight into Egypt of tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza this week might provoke some Palestinians to rethink how they might improve their lives.

Gaza is a 360sqkm strip of land along the Mediterranean bounded by Israel and Egypt. Its population of 1.5 million makes it one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

At international law it is part of no country. Egypt occupied it in 1948 after the dissolution of the British Palestinian Mandate and then Israel occupied it after the 1967 war.

Since the last Israeli settlers withdrew in 2005, it has notionally been governed by the Palestinian Authority, but in fact it has been controlled internally by Hamas for the past year. Israel controls the border, the coast and the air space. It can determine what people, goods, and electricity cross the border.

Without access to Israel and Israeli electricity, life in Gaza descends from the merely grim to utterly hellish. Life in the other parcel of land notionally controlled by the Palestinian Authority but hemmed in by borders mostly under Israeli control the West Bank is better, but not a great deal better.

For Palestinians to get a better life they will have to change the reality-denying mindset instilled by the Palestine Liberation Organisation's former leader, Yasser Arafat.


http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/opinion/onestate-solution-to-end-israelpalestine-conflict/1169805.html

need a bit of that change too.

Israel will not allow the establishment of one state with a majority arab population - it would eliminate its raison d'etre. If many Palestinians took citizenship, there will either be substantial new jewish immigration or the denial of those rights.