{"id":26765,"date":"2017-11-17T03:48:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T11:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=26765"},"modified":"2017-11-15T09:51:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T17:51:18","slug":"two-states-viable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/11\/17\/two-states-viable\/","title":{"rendered":"Two states viable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gershon Shafir was in Vancouver Nov. 9 to discuss some of the issues he raises in his latest book, A Half Century of Occupation<\/em>. (photo from pages.ucsd.edu\/~gshafir<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What does it mean to have a \u201cpermanently temporary occupation\u201d in Israel? Gershon Shafir was in Vancouver Nov. 9 to discuss this question. A guest speaker at Simon Fraser University\u2019s School for International Studies, Shafir is an Israeli expat, University of California, Los Angeles, sociology professor and author of the recently released book A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine and the World\u2019s Most Intractable Conflict.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the 10th book for Shafir and he wrote it specifically for the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war. The permanently temporary occupation is a difficult subject to discuss, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s because the existence of this phenomenon \u2013 that Israel is an occupying power \u2013 is denied. But what\u2019s going on is an occupation and is considered to be so by the Israeli government itself when arguing in front of the country\u2019s Supreme Court, the international community and the Palestinians that live under it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shafir said the word occupation is a legal term referring to the effective control of a country on a territory over which it has no sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s occupation is one of the longest belligerent occupations since World War Two and it\u2019s truly exceptional because it\u2019s going into its third generation,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cIn my book, I look at the nature of the occupation, the role played by the Israeli state through settlement, and radicalization by religious settlers. I also study the feasibility of alternative solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to 1948, Jewish settlement occurred in areas that were least densely populated by Palestinians, allowing the possibility of a separation between the two groups. \u201cBut religiously motivated settlers prefer to have their new settlements in the heartland of the most densely populated Palestinian areas, so the settlement process has been radicalized,\u201d said Shafir.<\/p>\n

In his lecture, and in more detail in his book, Shafir discussed the extent to which the occupation has transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of his book, he conducted a study that found the built-up area occupied by Israeli settlements is two percent of the West Bank and the demographic ratio of Israeli Jews to Palestinians is 1:7. He questions the widespread consensus that a territorial partition of Palestine and a two-state solution is no longer possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve carefully counted the number of settlers and the places where they reside, and I\u2019ve subdivided settlement into different categories. What you discover is that if you remove 27,000 settlers in the West Bank, a land exchange is possible, as is a territorial partition and a Palestinian state,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who say a two-state solution is impossible don\u2019t sufficiently study the feasibility of a one-state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shafir added that he\u2019s not advocating a political position in his findings. On the contrary, he\u2019s just suggesting that, based on his research, a two-state solution is still feasible. \u201cLet\u2019s not give up on that idea too soon, because we don\u2019t know what we\u2019ll be walking into,\u201d he advised.<\/p>\n

The lecture at SFU was part of a book tour in which Shafir spoke on university campuses in Boston, Seattle, New York and Los Angeles. Shafir comes to this topic with years of pedigree. He was president of the Association for Israel Studies in 2001-2003, and the books he\u2019s authored include Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914<\/em>, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship<\/em> (co-authored with Yoav Peled), which won the Middle Eastern Studies Association\u2019s Albert Hourani Award in 2002, and Struggle and Survival in Palestine\/Israel<\/em>, a collection of life histories, which he co-edited with Mark LeVine.<\/p>\n

Lauren Kramer<\/strong>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gershon Shafir was in Vancouver Nov. 9 to discuss some of the issues he raises in his latest book, A Half Century of Occupation. (photo from pages.ucsd.edu\/~gshafir) What does it mean to have a \u201cpermanently temporary occupation\u201d in Israel? Gershon Shafir was in Vancouver Nov. 9 to discuss this question. A guest speaker at Simon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[7593,1673,7594,2721,1044],"class_list":["post-26765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-gershon-shafir","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-occupation","tag-peace","tag-two-state-solution"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}