The American Right's Middle East Peace Plan: The One State Solution

Wow.  This article from an Illinois Republican Congressman really is striking.

It has been 64 years since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Partition Plan for Palestine and the struggle to implement a “two-state solution” began. Today, we are no closer to that end. That reminds me of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, everyone who continues to cling to the delusion of a two-state solution is insane. There is no such thing as a two-state solution. It cannot work, it has not worked, and it will not work.

That sure is depressing... and I understand where he's coming from.  The Palestinian polity seems so hell-bent on Israel's destruction that the Two State Solution often seems beyond reach.  Israel isn't helping the situation much either by continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, making an eventual Palestinian state unviable.  For me, when confronted with this problem, I like to point to the intractable world problems of my younger days, in Northern Ireland and South Africa- two places in which peace and justice seemed completely hopeless.  Now both places are at relative peace.  Does that mean Israel and the Palestinians are fated to make peace?  No, not at all, but it means it's possible, with enough patience and enough hard work and enough motivation from both sides.

Representative Joe Walsh, however, must disagree- he's given up on peace.  So he's turned to another solution: Israeli dominion over Palestinians forever:

It is time to let go of the Two-state-solution insanity and adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.  Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just, and democratic government in the region.

 But don't worry; the Arabs will be fine with this arrangement:

Those Palestinians who remain behind in Israel will maintain limited voting power but will be awarded all the economic and civil rights of Israeli citizens.

So Rep. Walsh's definition of "democratic government" apparently is not in conflict with a system that denies full voting rights to residents who happen to be Palestinians.  I have a sneaky feeling that the Palestinians might not quite see it that way.

More evidence here that the Republican party in the US, in its zeal to demonstrate its support for Israel, has staked out a position much more extreme than any but the most wacked-out religious zealots in Israel.  I don't think Israel needs friends like Joe Walsh.