I'm pleased to report that ten participants have already registered. That means there are only 21 spots left. I expect these to be filled up by November. Registration forms are available on the tour website.
Because there isn't much more to say about that, I'll pass on a few links to articles that deal with a very lively topic among our conversation partners in Israel and Palestine. As you may know, one of my hopes for tour participants is that they experience firsthand the complexity of the hopes and fears of Israeli Jews and Palestinians (in Israel and in Palestinian Territories). Someone will invariably ask our guest speakers, "What do you think, should there be a one-state or a two-state solution?"
Several recent articles address that question. At least among some, the two-state solution has arrived at a dead end.
Ian Lustick's September 14 New York Times piece, titled "Two-State Illusion," begins this way: "The last three decades are littered with the carcasses of failed negotiating projects billed as the last chance for peace in Israel. All sides have been wedded to the notion that there must be two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli."
Ilan Pappe's article, published the same day, is titled "The Two-State Solution Died Over a Decade Ago." In that article Pappe writes, "Any hope of reviving something out of the original ideas that led the Palestinians to support the Oslo Accords back in 1993 wilted with Ehud Olmet’s government of 2007, when it buried, for all intents and purposes, both the Oslo Accords and the two state solution."
Yesterday Marc H. Ellis, responded to both pieces. Ellis is an author, liberation theologian, and Associate Fellow to the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University for Peace, Costa Rica. He wrote:
"Of the two, I would chose Pappe’s – with a caveat. The Two State solution hasn’t actually been on the table since the 1967 war. That’s going on fifty years.
What’s important is the future. While serving up American-size rhetoric on the dangers facing Israel/Palestine in the years ahead, Lustick is weak on what it would take to reach his goal of expanding justice and security for Jews and Palestinians. Pappe is more direct but he, too, comes up against the disturbing reality that no one from within the Middle East or outside of it has the answer to the urgent question: How can Palestinian freedom be implemented?"
All of these pieces are worth reading. Coming along with me to experience the challenges on the ground would be even better. But read first, and then fill out the registration form.
Posts
