AMEU’s The Link: “The One-State Reality and the Real Meaning of Annexation”
The Link, published on a bi-monthly basis, is Americans for Middle East Understanding’s primary education and information tool. More than 175 issues of The Link have followed since the first issue in 1968.
The Link archive constitutes a body of informed commentary, fact and anecdotal evidence that is all the more valuable for writers, researchers and historians because each issue (for the most part) covers only one subject.
In the current issue, Ian Lustick, who holds the Bess Hayman Chair in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, writes, “With the hullabaloo surrounding Israel’s supposedly imminent ‘annexation’ of portions of the West Bank, one might imagine that the parts of Palestine occupied in 1967 were not long ago integrated into the State of Israel. They were. Failure to internalize this one-state reality leads politicians, diplomats, activists, and non-expert observers into dangerous errors.
They misread Israeli government intentions, misunderstand its rhetoric and tactics, misrepresent the dangers of ‘annexation,’ and miss out on the real opportunities created by the predicament Israeli maximalism has created. The reality that one state dominates the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea does not mean that all zones and populations exposed to the power of the Israeli state are ruled by the same institutions or the same norms.”
This article is based on his latest book, Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.