Farrukh Dhondy | A ‘pie-in-the-sky’ ‘1-state’ solution for Israel, Gaza… Over to Kamala!

Is Bachchoo’s constant begging for two sips

From the cup he held, now rudely wrenched away

When Saki left the tavern in disarray,

Leaving Bachchoo to deeply wonder now

Did draughts from the chalice truthfully endow

Life and hope to all those who would sup

Or was it but temptation’s poisoned cup?”

From The Curse of Modification, by Bachchoo

The closest I have come to Chicago is perhaps New York and my second-hand acquaintance with the city would be my reading of Norman Mailer’s book about the riots that bedevilled the Republican and Democratic parties’ conventions, Miami and the Siege of Chicago.

In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson declared that he wouldn’t stand again and the Chicago Democratic convention adopted Hubert Humphrey as their presidential candidate. Humphrey had, by then, declared that he was not for a cessation of the war that the United States was waging against Vietnam.

To the America of the day, with thousands of disillusioned war veterans, draft dodgers, millions of hippies, Afro-Americans and the liberal left who were deeply affected by the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, this was a red rag. The bulls charged.

Chicago faced the sort of pre-civil-war symptoms that the fellow Elon Musk so clownishly and ludicrously said were afflicting Britain this July and August.

The police fought off the Chicago mayhem, though the riots undoubtedly gave Richard M. Nixon a serious signal and, five years after he became President that year, he pulled out of Vietnam with some face-saving cover with the North Vietnamese who, under Ho Chi Minh, stormed Saigon.

Some unperceptive rabble-rousers commented that this week’s Democratic convention, again in Chicago, which will endorse Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential candidate and her prospective V-P Tim Walz, might witness the same sort of demos and disturbances as those of 1968. Only, this time it would be about Gaza.

Yes, outgoing President Joe Biden and his team have repeatedly endorsed “Israel’s right to defend itself” after the Gaza-based Hamas command launched a kill-and-kidnap operation into a pop concert and some kibbutz on October 7 last year. Mr Biden has backed up his support with deadly arms supplies to Israel which have undoubtedly contributed to the 40,000 or so deaths of civilian Palestinians in Gaza.

Kamala Harris, as his vice-president, didn’t distance herself from Mr Biden’s policies and complicity in Israel’s war, but has, now that she is a presidential candidate herself, softened her attitude by publicly denouncing the “inordinate” killings and bombing of schools, hospitals and other Gaza facilities in which the Israeli Defence Force says Hamas militants are stationed.

Ms Harris has in the past consistently supported a “two-state solution” though she hasn’t gone as far as endorsing or recognising a Palestinian state of Gaza and the West Bank.

Though Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state is now in the Middle East and has announced that Israel has been persuaded to respect the American call for a ceasefire, there has been no indication from Kamala Harris that she will end the supply of deadly missiles and billions of dollars of military equipment to Israel.

This partial call for peace and condemnation of the “excessive” deaths of civilians may have contributed to limiting the number of demonstrators outside this Chicago convention. The reports are that the demos are peaceful, hopeful and waiting for further announcements of a ceasefire.

Perhaps the 15,000 or so demonstrators, which the protest leaders claim, are also supporters of a two-state solution.

But what does such a solution mean? Will it mean that President Kamala Harris’ putative future administration will initiate negotiations to freeze the borders as they are today without demanding a retreat of recent armed-settler incursions into and de facto annexations in the West Bank? Can the borders of the two states be drawn with some reference to Israel’s retreat from at least some of the territory it has grabbed since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948?

My pie in the unco-operative sky is not a two-state solution but one which appeals to me as most civilised. (Gentle reader, I’ve just said I’m eating pie-in-the-sky, so don’t laugh or mock as you would at conspiracy theorists or space-invader wallahs.)

My argument is based on the fact that while religions have urged human beings towards decency, they have also prompted and precipitated the worst human behaviour throughout history. Think: burning at stakes, crucifixion, crusades, wars, persecution of minorities, denial of science, misogyny… (I’ve only got 900 words!).

There are those who believe that God impregnates virgins, some that He dictates books and others that he promises land to people of a particular religion. The State of Israel, despite ultra-orthodox Jews opposing this tooth and nail, is founded on this “Promised Land” belief. Is it in the Old Testament?

And then isn’t also Moses’ Sixth Commandment from Jehovah: “Thou shalt not kill”? 40,000 and counting, Bibi Netanyahu?

Some of the most enlightened human beings, even in recent twentieth-century history, have attempted to found non-religious “secular” states in which every religion is allowed to exist and thrive.

Can there ever, on that principle, be a one-secular-state solution in Israel-Palestine? It would inevitably involve constitutional guarantees of the freedom of worship and of course a democratic structure which precludes any religious section being supreme within it.

That would be the end of its “secularity”.

It has happened elsewhere.