A Common State in Israel-Palestine: Historical Origins and Lingering Challenging

This papers investigates Palestinian and Zionist understanding of a common state inPalestine by examining two central historical texts that promoted a one state solution in Palestine.It explores the ways in which Palestinian and Zionist nationalisms tried to address therelationship between the state and the nation as well as offered ways to protect collective andindividual rights in a single polity. It also examines how each side viewed the identity and needsof the other party, in order to understand how each party thought it (im)possible to accommodatethem into a single polity. The paper shows that the Palestinians, while trying to come to termswith the Jewish presence in Palestine after 1970, have often failed to appreciate the complexity ofJewish national identity in a single polity. They accepted the two states solution as an attempt toreconcile with Jewish Nationalism only to find that their political rights were further eroded. TheZionists, on the other hand, has often justified the one state solution from a purely introspectivedimension, namely with regards to its congruence with Jewish needs and notions of justice.Although they tried to take into consideration Palestinians claims, they maintained an orientalisttone in their approach to Palestinian claims and options. Moving forward a discourse of rightsneeds to supersede a reified understanding of self-determination and provide a new politicalformula that can protect the collective and individual rights of all those living on the land