Month: December 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal watchdog will investigate how the Biden administration chose a site for a new FBI headquarters following a contentious competition marked by allegations of conflict of interest.

The Inspector General for the General Services Administration is probing the decision to locate the facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, over a site in Virginia., according to a letter released Thursday by Virginia lawmakers. The new building would replace the FBI’s crumbling headquarters in nearby Washington, D.C.

Virginia’s senators and representatives said in a joint statement that there was “overwhelming evidence” suggesting the process was influenced by politics and called on the GSA to pause anything related to the relocation until the review is complete.

The acting inspector general said that his office would immediately begin evaluating the GSA’s process and procedures for selecting the site and share a copy of any report that results, according to a letter sent to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

“We applaud the inspector general for moving quickly and encourage him to move forward to complete a careful and thorough review,” Virginia’s delegation said in a joint statement.

The agency said it welcomes the review and pointed out that it had already released decision-making materials and a legal review of concerns raised by the director of the FBI.

“We carefully followed the requirements and process, and stand behind GSA’s final site selection decision,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement.

The review comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray told staff in an internal message earlier this month that he was concerned about a “potential conflict of interest” in a GSA executive choosing a site owned by a previous employer.

Wray said his objections were about the process rather than the site itself.

GSA, which manages the government’s real estate portfolio, denied any conflict. The agency said the site about 13 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of Washington was the cheapest one with the best access to public transit.

Maryland and Virginia have long been vying to land the FBI.

Maryland’s leaders applauded the Greenbelt choice, saying was “never about politics” and the new facility would meet a “dire, longstanding need.”

The Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) orchestrated the hacking of television channels in Crimea to broadcast a speech by President Volodymyr Zelensky on the evening of Nov. 29, multiple Ukrainian media outlets reported on Nov. 30.

Zelensky’s evening address from Oct. 24, during which he addressed “all our people in Crimea,” was broadcast on Russian channels in Crimea at around 9:30 p.m. local time on Nov. 29.

“All of you feel that the Russian presence on our land is not permanent. I know this. Ukraine will reclaim its territory and its people. We will not leave anyone to the occupiers.”

Ukraine will soon have fire control capabilities over Russian-occupied Crimea, Zelensky said.

Speeches by Ukraine’s chief commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and HUR Chief Kyrylo Budanov were also broadcast before the screen turned black.

Some locals then reported on social media that the names of all television channels had been replaced with a popular obscenity that uses Putin’s name.

A spokesperson of the Russian-installed proxy authorities in Crimea also said that some Crimean internet providers had also been hacked.

Ukrainian media outlets Suspilne and Ukrainska Pravda said that the television hack was part of a long-term operation against the Russian occupation of Crimea, citing unnamed sources in intelligence.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Deutsche Bank viewed Donald Trump as a “whale” of a client, was eager to land him and eagerly cultivated a relationship that grew from $13,000 worth of revenue to $6 million in two years, according to documents presented Wednesday at the former president’s civil fraud trial.

The bank’s dealings with Trump are a key issue in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company and some executives of hoodwinking lenders and insurers by presenting them with grossly inflated statements of his asset values.

The defendants deny any wrongdoing. They have sought to show that the bank felt delighted, not deceived, by Trump and courted his business.

“We are whale hunting,” then-bank managing director Rosemary Vrablic wrote colleagues in November 2011, as she began to forge ties to Trump and his family.

At the time, the family was looking for a loan to buy the Doral golf resort near Miami. Over the next three years, Vrablic’s connection to the Trumps yielded loans for that project, then two others in Chicago and Washington, as well as multimillion-dollar deposits in the bank.

Her division’s revenue from Trump business shot up from about $13,000 in 2011 to a projected $6 million in 2013, according to a bank document prepared for the then-co-chairman, Anshu Jain, before a lunch with Trump in early 2013.

The briefing document suggested “key asks” for Jain to make: “Obtain more deposits and investment management assets,” and “strategically discuss leveraging Mr. Trump’s personal and professional network within the real estate industry in NY” for the bank’s benefit.

And how did it go?

“It was a very, very nice, productive lunch,” Vrablic recalled on the stand.

Behind the scenes, she told a colleague at the time in an email: “It went great. Donald was low key and demure. Unbelievable. The conversation was fantastic. Not sure he could do it again for a second meeting but hey … miracles can happen.”

Adding that the two were planning to golf together that spring, she wrote: “I bet the real D shows up for that one.”

The next year, her direct boss went to lunch with Trump to thank him and “ask whether we can work on other opportunities with them,” according to a document for that meeting.

James maintains that Trump’s allegedly inflated financial statements were critical to netting his company the Deutsche Bank loans at favorable rates, saving him many millions of dollars in interest.

Trump says the financial statements actually underestimated his wealth and that a disclaimer on them absolves him of liability for any problematic figures. Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, claims that James, a Democrat, is trying to harm his prospects of returning to the White House.

“There was no defaults, no ‘nothing,’” he wrote Wednesday on his Truth Social plaftorm, calling the case “rigged” and “victimless.”

Trump personally guaranteed the loans at issue — standard practice for lending by Deutsche Bank’s division that caters to rich individuals, Vrablic said. The deals came with conditions about Trump’s net worth and, sometimes, liquidity, and they often required annual submissions of his financial statements.

Other current and former Deutsche Bank executives have testified that while they expected the information to be accurate, they came up with their own numbers.

Documents show the bank sliced Trump’s $4.2 billion estimate of his net worth to $2.4 billion when considering the Doral loan, for example. Asked Wednesday whether the cut had concerned her, Vrablic said that if the bank’s credit experts “were comfortable with it, I would be comfortable with it.”

The $125 million loan went ahead, with one banker writing in an email that Trump had “among the strongest personal balance sheets we have seen.” A top executive agreed to sign off but insisted on an “iron clad” guarantee from Trump.

Trump provided it, Vrablic said Wednesday.

Over the years, she and colleagues spoke enthusiastically among themselves about the potential for building on Deutsche Bank’s Trump ties. The bankers envisioned offering him estate planning services, presenting him investment options and netting more clients through word-of-mouth — “given the circles this family travels in, we expect to be introduced to the wealthiest people on the planet,” Vrablic wrote in a 2011 email.

She advocated within the bank for lending to Trump Organization ventures. In a 2012 email to then-Executive Vice President Ivanka Trump, Vrablic promised to ensure that a Deutsche Bank lending executive knew “how important you and your family’s business have become to the bank.”

Eventually, though, the bank started saying no. In 2016, when Donald Trump was on the campaign trail and his company sought a loan for its golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, the bank decided “to maintain neutrality to any political situation and not lend money to a highly politically exposed person,” Vrablic explained in an email at the time to Ivanka Trump.

Vrablic testified Wednesday that the bank was wary of “the increased exposure, scrutiny” surrounding a potential president and concluded “that it was not appropriate to go up in exposure.”

Judge Arthur Engoron will decide the verdict. He ruled before the trial that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud and he ordered that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s properties, putting their future oversight in question. An appeals court has put that order on hold for now.

The trial concerns remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking more than $300 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

Categories: News | Politics Election | U.S./World

Russian President Vladimir Putin has again railed at the West during a speech in which he said that Russia was “at the forefront of building a fairer world order.”

Set against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine that he started but did not mention by name, Putin told the World Russian People’s Council plenary session on Tuesday that Moscow was engaged in a “fight for sovereignty and justice” which was “one of national liberation.”

During the video address, whose transcript was released on the Kremlin website, Putin praised how the “Russian world… has blocked the way of those who aspired to world domination and exceptionalism.”

“We are now fighting not just for Russia’s freedom but for the freedom of the whole world,” he said, describing how “the dictatorship of one hegemon is becoming decrepit.”

President Vladimir Putin speaks during the 15th World Russian People’s Congress at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow on November 28, 2023. Putin spoke of a “new world order” during the event. Getty Images

Putin has repeatedly pitched the war in Ukraine as a proxy battle between Moscow and the West and in the face of U.S.- led sanctions has positioned himself as leading a pivot away from the current world order towards Asia and the so-called “global south.”

Name-checking the 1917 Russian Revolution, the civil war that followed and the break up of the USSR in 1991, Putin said people “are still paying now, decades later, for the miscalculations made at that time.”

In his view, these events had led to “separatist illusions” as well as “a policy of artificial, forced division in this large Russian nation, a triune of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.”

“We will never forget these mistakes and should not repeat them…any attempt to sow ethnic or religious discord, to split our society is betrayal, a crime against all of Russia. We will never allow anyone to divide Russia.”

“It is our country that is now at the forefront of building a fairer world order,” he said. “Without a sovereign and strong Russia, no lasting and stable international system is possible.”

“We know the threat we are opposing. Russophobia and other forms of racism and neo-Nazism have almost become the official ideology of Western ruling elites,” said Putin, who has given “denazification” of Ukraine as one reason for his invasion.

Putin also said the West “has no need” for Russia which “they want to dismember and plunder” and warned that if there is “outside interference or provocations to incite ethnic or religious conflict as acts of aggression against our country… we will respond accordingly.”

A nuclear threat has hovered over the war in Ukraine and Putin and the Kremlin have sent mixed messages about unconventional weapons, whose use are a regular talking point on Kremlin propaganda channels, especially if it is deemed that Russia faces an existential risk.

“The Russian world and Russia itself do not and cannot exist without Russians as an ethnicity, without the Russian people,” he added.

The World Russian People’s Council is marking the 30th anniversary of its founding with the aim of discussing Russia’s place in the world.

It is headed by the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, who has faced condemnation from the global Orthodox Church for his support for Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Putin addressed the church’s primate directly in his speech and praised his work “to bring about the spiritual revival of Russia,” which included a push for “family values” in which women would be encouraged to have more children to address the country’s demographic crisis.

Commenting on Putin’s speech, risk analyst Alex Kokcharev posted on X (formerly Twitter) a split image of the Russian president and a still from a film based on the George Orwell novel 1984.

“Strong 1984 vibes,” he wrote.”Putin delivered a speech in which he reiterated his vision for a ‘new world order’ in which Russia has the right to conquer all countries previously ruled by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.”

В Дагестане задержан заместитель министра внутренних дел по республике и начальник следственного управления ведомства Руфат Исмаилов, у него дома и на работе проходят обыски, сообщили российские государственные агентства ТАСС, “Интерфакс” и РИА “Новости” со ссылкой на источники.

По предварительным данным, Исмаилов подозревается в коррупции. Речь идет о получении взятки в крупном размере, высокопоставленного полицейского вывезли в Москву, утверждает член Общественной наблюдательной комиссии в Дагестане Шамиль Хадулаев. Телеграм-канал ВЧК-ОГПУ, предположительно связанный с российскими правоохранительными органами, называет сумму предполагаемой взятки, которую получил замминистра, – 100 миллионов рублей от одной из страховых компаний.

Ранее утром 7 ноября об обысках у Исмаилова сообщили дагестанские СМИ. “Работают ФСБ и приезжие сотрудники МВД”, – утверждал телеграм-канал “Молодёжка” со ссылкой на источник в правоохранительных органах. Телеграм-канал “Спросите у Расула” сообщал, что обыски также проходят у Далгата Абдулгапурова, заместителя Исмаилова – он тоже задержан и “вывезен” в Москву, утверждает Хадулаев.

МВД эти сведения не комментирует; задержание Исмаилова и Абдулгапурова и данные о возбуждении уголовного дела о коррупции подтвердило республиканское управление ФСБ России.

По информации газеты “Черновик”, Руфат Исмаилов родился в Дербенте в семье мирового судьи, окончил Нижегородскую академию МВД, работал заместителем начальника дербентского ГОВД по следственной работе, на должность замминистра внутренних дел Дагестана его назначили в 2019 году.

• В Дагестане сейчас расследуют беспорядки во время антисемитской акции в аэропорту Махачкалы 29 октября. Согласно последним данным МВД, всего за участие в акции были задержаны более 200 человек, большинство из них понесли административную ответственность, еще 11 человек проходят в качестве подозреваемых по уголовному делу.
• В начале октября обыск прошел в доме задержанного главы администрации Кизилюрта Магомеда Магомедова, подтверждающую видеозапись опубликовали СМИ. На кадрах показан четырехэтажный дом чиновника и якобы принадлежащие ему оружие и запасы икры.

Among other things, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (center) says he discussed the situation in the Black Sea with Odesa authorities. (file photo)

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met on November 29 with civilian and military authorities in Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, which has been a regular target for Russian strikes directed at its port installations critical for food exports.

“Many important questions…. The situation in the Black Sea, mine countermeasures and ensuring the safety of the ‘grain corridor.’ The work of the air defense…protecting Odesa, the infrastructure of the ‘grain corridor,’ and our brigades,” Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

Zelenskiy met with Ukrainian troops in the area and handed them medals and awards for bravery, he said.

The president also met with civilian authorities to discuss measures to bring life in Odesa and other southern regions back to normal after a spell of inclement weather that hit the area, leaving at least 12 people dead and 23 injured.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Kyiv’s allies to step up efforts to increase the production of armaments and munitions for Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

“In order to ensure the stability and security of the entire European region, its defense industry must increase production, coordinate, and work as one integral defense industry complex of the Euro-Atlantic community,” Kuleba said in introductory remarks at the first meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Brussels on November 29.

The NATO-Ukraine Council, the joint body in which Kyiv and its allies sit as equal participants, was launched at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July.

Earlier this month, European diplomats told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity that the European Union was concerned that it will not be able to supply Ukraine with the 1 million artillery rounds by March next year as promised in spring by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

Earlier on November 29, Russian shelling of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Kharkiv regions caused casualties among civilians and damage to infrastructure, despite Ukrainian air defenses repelling a large drone attack on several parts of Ukraine.

RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Seven civilians were wounded in Donetsk overnight, the acting head of the region, Ihor Moroz, said on November 29. Five residents were wounded in the industrial city of Toretsk and two in Severniy, Moroz said on Telegram.

In the Kharkiv region, Russian shelling caused extensive damage overnight to infrastructure, residential areas, administrative buildings, businesses, and educational facilities, Governor Oleh Synyehubov said.

The cities of Kharkiv, Chuhuyiv, and Kupyansk bore the brunt of the Russian bombardment, Synyehubov said. No casualties were immediately reported, he added.

Russia also unleashed a fresh wave of drones on Ukraine overnight, launching 21 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles and three Kh-59 guided missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement early on November 29.

“All the enemy’s attack drones were destroyed above the Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, and Khmelnytskiy regions. Also, two guided missiles were destroyed in the Mykolayiv region. A third one did not reach its target,” the air force said. No casualties or damage was immediately reported.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces were engaged in 87 close-quarter battles over the past 24 hours, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in its daily report on November 29.

Heavy fighting continued in Kharkiv and in Donetsk region where Russian forces have been incessantly attacking Ukrainian positions in the industrial city of Avdiyivka. Moscow’s troops have been unsuccessfully trying to encircle for several weeks at a heavy cost of human lives and equipment. Anton, an artilleryman from a brigade stationed near the southern flank of the embattled city, told an RFE/RL correspondent that the situation had become more “difficult and intense” since the beginning of the Russian offensive in the area on October 10. “I have long stopped counting the targets that we are destroying, and the Russians themselves don’t stop sending thousands [of their soldiers] to certain death,” he said. The costs have been high for Ukraine as well.

Oleksandr, a doctor heading a triage site close to Avdiyivka, said that wounded Ukrainian soldiers were arriving at his facility every few hours. As his team treated a soldier with the call sign “President” for a minor injury, he said he was seeing more and more soldiers come in with bullet wounds, indicating that more close-quarter combat is being fought in the area.

The military said that Ukrainian marines continue to hold bridgeheads on the left bank of Dnieper River after landing there earlier this month. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Russian troops one year ago withdrew eastward from Kherson city in the face of Ukrainian advances, crossing the Dnieper, but continuing to shell the city and its surroundings from the left bank.

On November 19, the Ukrainian military said it had pushed Russian forces some “3 to 8 kilometers” east of the Dnieper River as its forces secured bridgeheads on the eastern side of the waterway.

With reporting by Aleksander Palikot in the Donetsk region

For Vladimir Putin’s more than two-decade rule, he has promoted himself as a friend and protector of the Jewish community, and he launched an invasion last year with the ostensible goal to “denazify” Ukraine.

But the scenes of violence in Makhachkala, Dagestan, this week, as well as images of local people searching out Israeli passport holders in a hotel in the city of Khasavyurt, recalled darker moments in Russian history, when Cossacks rampaged through Jewish communities as local authorities looked on.

For some Russian Jewish leaders, the Kremlin’s recent geopolitical shift away from Israel – which has launched a ground invasion in Gaza – as well as nods toward antisemitism, played a direct role in last week’s events in Dagestan.

“By meeting Hamas last week and not condemning the massacres, the Kremlin might have given the green light to some elements in the Caucasus that the hunting season [against Jews] is on,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, a former chief rabbi of Moscow, who left in 2022 after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This week, Putin sought to show he was in control, convening his security council over the rioting and quickly shifting the blame for the attacks abroad. Others asked how a country with such top-down control could allow the riot to take place.

“I think that considering in Russia everything is tightly controlled by the government, it is inconceivable that these riots were not instigated or directed by governmental structure,” said Goldschmidt. “This is my belief and I am not the only one.”

Yet Dagestan, a poor region with striking mountain ranges on the southern tip of Russia, has consistently proved a challenge for the Kremlin to manage. Moscow spent decades attempting to quell an Islamic insurgency there, where more than 90% of the population identify as Muslim, and still struggles to find a solution for poverty and high unemployment.

The area has served as a focus for political protest. It hosted some of the country’s largest anti-mobilisation demonstrations last year, when Putin called up hundreds of thousands of troops for his invasion of Ukraine, and in 2020 had attracted conspiracy-tinged protests against coronavirus quarantines.

A still from video footage shows protesters waving a Palestinian flag invading the runway of Makhachkala airport after a flight landed from Tel Aviv. Photograph: Telegram/@askrasul/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this summer, spontaneous protests broke out after electricity and water was cut off for more than a week to the city of Izberbash. Later, residents from Makhachkala protested, saying they had lost power for days or weeks at a time. The patternwas repeated in other cities.

“Dagestan is a territory with enormous problems, big infrastructure problems, and when the events in Gaza began, some of the local channels began to share two photographs: Gaza without electricity and [Dagestani city] Khasavyurt without electricity,” said Akhmet Yarlykapov, a senior researcher at the Centre for Caucasus Studies and Regional Security at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. “Of course people are in solidarity with Gaza, with the Palestinians. They’re both Muslim. But the true reasons for these events are in Dagestan’s own internal problems.”

The war in Gaza has unleashed a wave of anger among Russian Muslims, in particular in the poorer North Caucasus. Ziyatdin Uvaisov, an activist and head of Patient Monitor, an NGO in Dagestan that advocates for medics and patients’ rights, said 95% of Dagestanis were “truly angry over the Israeli crimes taking place in Palestine” but that local authorities had prevented them from holding demonstrations.

“If there’d been some ordinary rally, it’s possible people would have calmed down, acted rationally, seen that there are limits … When it’s not approved within the bounds of the law, then you end up with a riot,” he said.

He said that he had not gone to Makhachkala airport because: “I understand that anything can happen with this mass gathering of disorganised people, that they could maybe do something wrong … people were getting really wound up.”

He argued that most people in Dagestan held anti-Israeli views not because they were antisemitic but because of the war, saying there was no violence against the region’s well-established Jewish community, which is largely based in the southern city of Derbent.

Yet vivid images of young Dagestani men chasing airport travellers they believed had arrived from Israel shocked the world, and members of the local Jewish community quickly voiced fears that they could be next.

As the attack unfolded, Ovadya Isakov, a prominent Jewish rabbi from the region and spokesperson for the Dagestani Jewish community, told the Russian news site Podyom that all 700 to 800 families, the last of Dagestan’s mountain Jewish community that traces its origins to the seventh century, may have to leave for other parts of Russia. But, he added: “Is it even worth leaving, since Russia is not our saviour, there have also been pogroms in Russia?”

A solidarity service is held in Moscow on 15 October for Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Grigory Shvedov, the editor of Caucasian Knot, a news website covering the region that recently published a timeline of attacks on local rabbis in Dagestan, said: “Antisemitism was always there.”

He added: “It is not something new. A lot of people, whole generations of Jews left, I know some people from the community and they’re saying that they always felt that antisemitism. We don’t still, thank God, have any stories about attacks against the local communities. Because that could happen any second.

“The most serious threat right now are not moods and actions connected to visitors from Israel,” he said, referring to events at Makhachkala airport. “The real threat is in a change of target from anti-Israel, to antisemitic. Both the national and regional security services would not be able to protect individual Jews from attacks.”

Rabbi Isakov knows this better than most. He barely survived an assassination attempt in 2013, when a gunman shot him in Derbent. And his house had also been vandalised in 2007.

As officials in Dagestan and Moscow sought to project an air of calm this week, Isakov disappeared from public. Calls to his office this week went unreturned.

Earlier he had said: “I don’t feel safe, although the synagogue is guarded.” He recalled how a local police officer had suggested to one of the rabbi’s congregants that she was complicit in the deaths of children in Palestine. “And at any time you can expect something worse.”

Researchers say they have seen a decline in antisemitism across Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, with recorded attacks against Jewish people and places in Russia in single digits each year. But Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Centre, an independent polling organisation, a “dormant antisemitism that also, especially in disenfranchised groups, can be activated when people are extremely agitated”.

In the Tsarist era, widespread antisemitism propelled pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots, against Jewish communities in cities such as Chișinău, Odesa and Białystok as authorities did little, or participated in the looting and killing.

Vladimir Putin holds a meeting of his security council after the riot in Makhachkala. Photograph: Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin pool/EPA

There was official antisemitism during the Soviet era under Joseph Stalin and his successors, such as Leonid Brezhnev. The atmosphere sometimes reflected Soviet relations with Israel, becoming harsher when Moscow broke off diplomatic relations after the 1967 six-day war.

Yevgenia Albats, a Russian journalist based in the US, said casual antisemitism was “everyday life” in her childhood in the 1960s. Russians in the Moscow trams and shops would refer to her and her sister as zhidovochki, a pejorative term for Jewish girls, and schoolmates would snatch away the red “pioneer” scarves worn by the communist youth movement, telling them: “You Jews can’t be pioneers.”

Since the 7 October Hamas raid into Israel, she said she had seen a broad propaganda campaign on television of antisemitic content that she believed was meant to curry favour with Iran and other countries critical of Israel and the US.

“[Putin] is always trying to establish some sort of anti-American unity, just the way there was during the cold war,” she said. “Putin wants to become a leader of the global south. They decided that’s the right moment, the world is once again about to divide into two parts. That’s what drives Russian propaganda.”

As a child, the story goes, Putin had a friendly rapport with neighbours who were Orthodox Jews, and he has generally avoided antisemitic jokes. But that has changed in the past few years. When Anatoly Chubais, his former economic adviser, was rumoured to have received Israeli citizenship, he mockingly called him “some Moshe Israeilevich”.

“I think there is a direct relationship between such jokes and high-level officials and the perception of permissiveness as far as attacks against Jews are concerned,” said Tanya Lokshina, an associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division.

Russian officials have allowed themselves far more aggressive rhetoric about Jews, with the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, saying last year that, “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood,” as he brushed aside a question about the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Jewish background. “Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews,” he added.

Alexander Verkhovsky, the director of the Sova centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, said: “The authorities used to clamp down on antisemitic rhetoric, but we have seen a change since the war in Ukraine. We saw a similar jump in antisemitism in 2014 during the Donbas fighting. When state propaganda becomes more aggressive, antisemitism rises.”

Several days before the riots at Makhachkala airport, anonymous Telegram channels published the addresses of synagogues in Stavropol, Krasnodar, Sochi, Nalchik and Derbent, as well as photos of the rabbis, including Isakov.

Yet authorities still appeared to be taken by surprise when, days later, some of the same Telegram channels began to call on Dagestanis to intercept the arriving flight from Tel Aviv at the Makhachkala airport, setting the stage for the riots.

“The authorities were not ready. They have all the instruments to fight the religious dissidents, political dissidents, the foreign agents … but they are not prepared to fight against direct action,” said Shvedov, the Caucasian Knot editor. “I think for officials it is an absolute mistake in their work, this came out of the blue for them.”

Lokshina drew a parallel to the coup launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, whose troops managed to seize the city of Rostov and begin a march on Moscow under the nose of the Russian military.

“It’s like little fires everywhere,” Lokshina said. “And where is the next fire going to be?”

Proposed resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

“Binationalism” and “Binational state” redirect here. For uses outside the Israeli–Palestinian context, see Two Nations theory, Multinational state and Consociationalism.

Part of a series on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Israeli–Palestinian peace process
History
Camp David Accords	1978
Madrid Conference	1991
Oslo Accords	1993 / 95
Hebron Protocol	1997
Wye River Memorandum	1998
Sharm El Sheikh Memorandum	1999
Camp David Summit	2000
The Clinton Parameters	2000
Taba Summit	2001
Road Map	2003
Agreement on Movement and Access	2005
Annapolis Conference	2007
Mitchell-led talks	2010–11
Kerry-led talks	2013–14

The one-state solution is a proposed approach to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, according to which one state would be established between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Proponents of this solution advocate a single state in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.^[1][2] The term one-state reality describes the belief that the current situation in Israel/Palestine is de facto a single state.^[3] It is sometimes also called a bi-national state, owing to the hope that the state would be a homeland for both Jews and Palestinians.

Various models have been proposed for implementing the one-state solution.^[4] One such model is the unitary state, which would comprise a single government on the entire territory with citizenship and equal rights for all residents, regardless of their ethnicity or religion,^[4] similar to Mandatory Palestine. Some Israelis advocate a version of this model in which Israel will annex the West Bank but not the Gaza Strip and remain a Jewish and democratic state with a larger Arab minority.^[5] A second model calls for Israel to annex the West Bank and create an autonomous region for the Palestinians there.^[4] A third version would involve creating a federal state with a central government and federative districts, some of which would be Jewish and others Palestinian.^[5][6] A fourth model involves an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, a de facto two-state solution where both independent states share powers in some areas and Israelis and Palestinians have residency rights in each others’ nations.^[7][8]

Though increasingly debated in academic circles, the one-state solution has remained outside the range of official efforts to resolve the conflict, where it is eclipsed by the two-state solution. According to a 2017 survey, support for a one-state solution stands at 36% among Palestinians, 19% among Israeli Jews and 56% among Israeli Arabs.^[9] However, interest in a one-state solution is growing as the two-state approach has not managed to reach a final agreement.^[10][11][12]

Overview

Map of Israel showing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights

The “one-state solution” refers to a resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through the creation of a unitary, federal or confederate Israeli-Palestinian state, which would encompass all of the present territory of Israel, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and possibly the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights.

Depending on various points of view, a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is presented as a situation in which Israel would ostensibly lose its character as a Jewish state and the Palestinians would fail to achieve their national independence within a two-state solution^[13] or, alternatively, as the best, most just, and only way to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Support for a one-state solution is increasing^[when?] as Palestinians, frustrated by lack of progress in negotiations aiming to establish the two-state solution, increasingly see the one-state solution as an alternative way forward.^[10][11] In 2016, then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that due to expanding settlements, an eventual “one-state reality” was the most likely outcome.^[14]

In a 2021 survey of experts on the Middle East, 59 percent described the current situation as “a one-state reality akin to apartheid” and an additional 7 percent “one-state reality with inequality, but not akin to apartheid”. If a two-state solution is not achieved, 77 percent predict “a one-state reality akin to apartheid” and 17 percent “one-state reality with increasing inequality, but not akin to apartheid”; just 1 percent think a binational state with equal rights for all inhabitants is likely. 52 percent say that the two-state solution is no longer possible.^[15]

Historical background

Antiquity until World War I

The area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River was controlled by various national groups throughout history. A number of groups, including the Canaanites, the Israelites (who later became the Jews),^[16] the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Jews, Romans, Byzantines, Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, the British, Israelis, Jordanians, and Egyptians have controlled the region at one time or another. From 1516 until the conclusion of World War I, the region was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.^[17]

Ottoman and later British control

From 1915 to 1916, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, corresponded by letters with Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, the father of Pan Arabism. These letters, were later known as the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence. McMahon promised Hussein and his Arab followers the territory of the Ottoman Empire in exchange for assistance in driving out the Ottoman Turks. Hussein interpreted these letters as promising the region of Palestine to the Arabs. McMahon and the Churchill White Paper maintained that Palestine had been excluded from the territorial promises,^[18] but minutes of a Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting held on 5 December 1918 confirmed that Palestine had been part of the area that had been pledged to Hussein in 1915.^[19]

In 1916, Britain and France signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which divided the colonies of the Ottoman Empire between them. Under this agreement, the region of Palestine would be controlled by Britain.^[20] In a 1917 letter from Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, known as the Balfour Declaration, the British government promised “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, but at the same time required “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.^[21]

In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate for Palestine. Like all League of Nations Mandates, this mandate derived from article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, which called for the self-determination of former Ottoman Empire colonies after a transitory period administered by a world power.^[22] The Palestine Mandate recognized the Balfour Declaration and required that the mandatory government “facilitate Jewish immigration” while at the same time “ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced”.^[23]

Disagreements over Jewish immigration as well as incitement by Haj Amin Al-Husseini led to an outbreak of Arab-Jewish violence in the Palestine Riots of 1920. Violence erupted again the following year during the Jaffa Riots. In response to these riots, Britain established the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry. The British Mandatory authorities put forward proposals for setting up an elected legislative council in Palestine. In 1924 the issue was raised at a conference held by Ahdut Ha’avodah at Ein Harod. Shlomo Kaplansky, a veteran leader of Poalei Zion, argued that a Parliament, even with an Arab majority, was the way forward. David Ben-Gurion, the emerging leader of the Yishuv, succeeded in getting Kaplansky’s ideas rejected.^[24] Violence erupted again in the form of the 1929 Palestine riots. After the violence, the British led another commission of inquiry under Sir Walter Shaw. The report of the Shaw Commission, known as the Shaw Report or Command Paper No 3530, attributed the violence to “the twofold fear of the Arabs that, by Jewish immigration and land purchase, they might be deprived of their livelihood and, in time, pass under the political domination of the Jews”.^[25]

How UN members voted on Palestine’s partition in 1947

Violence erupted again during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The British established the Peel Commission of 1936–1937 in order to put an end to the violence. The Peel Commission concluded that only partition could put an end to the violence, and proposed the Peel Partition Plan. While the Jewish community accepted the concept of partition, not all members endorsed the implementation proposed by the Peel Commission. The Arab community entirely rejected the Peel Partition Plan, which included population transfers, primarily of Arabs. The partition plan was abandoned, and in 1939 Britain issued its White Paper of 1939 clarifying its “unequivocal” position that “it is not part of [Britain’s] policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State” and that “The independent State [of Palestine] should be one in which Arabs and Jews share government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.”

The White Paper of 1939 sought to accommodate Arab demands regarding Jewish immigration by placing a quota of 10,000 Jewish immigrants per year over a five-year period from 1939 to 1944. It also required Arab consent for further Jewish immigration. The White Paper was seen by the Jewish community as a revocation of the Balfour Declaration, and due to Jewish persecution in the Holocaust, Jews continued to immigrate illegally in what has become known as Aliyah Bet.^[26]

Continued violence and the heavy cost of World War II prompted Britain to turn over the issue of Palestine to the United Nations in 1947. In its debates, the UN divided its member States into two subcommittees: one to address options for partition and a second to address all other options. The Second Subcommittee, which included all the Arab and Muslim States members, issued a long report arguing that partition was illegal according to the terms of the Mandate and proposing a unitary democratic state that would protect rights of all citizens equally.^[27] The General Assembly instead voted for partition and in UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended that the Mandate territory of Palestine be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish community accepted the 1947 partition plan, and declared independence as the State of Israel in 1948. The Arab community rejected the partition plan, and army units from five Arab countries – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt – contributed to a united Arab army that attempted to invade the territory, resulting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Establishment of Israel

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War resulted in Israel’s establishment as well as the flight or expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from the territory that became Israel. During the following years, a large population of Jews living in Arab nations (close to 800,000) left or were expelled from their homes in what has become known as the Modern Jewish Exodus and subsequently resettled in the new State of Israel.

By 1948, in the wake of the Holocaust, Jewish support for partition and a Jewish state had become overwhelming. Nevertheless, some Jewish voices still argued for unification. The International Jewish Labor Bund was against the UN vote on the partition of Palestine and reaffirmed its support for a single binational state that would guarantee equal national rights for Jews and Arabs and would be under the control of superpowers and the UN. The 1948 New York Second world conference of the International Jewish Labor Bund condemned the proclamation of the Jewish state, because the decision exposed the Jews in Palestine to danger. The conference was in favour of a binational state built on the base of national equality and democratic federalism.^[28]

A one-state, one-nation solution where Arabic-speaking Palestinians would adopt a Hebrew-speaking Israeli identity (although not necessarily the Jewish religion) was advocated within Israel by the Canaanite movement of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as more recently in the Engagement Movement led by Tsvi Misinai.

Palestinian views on a binational state

Prior to the 1960s, no solution to the conflict in which Arabs and Jews would share a binational state was accepted among Palestinians. The only viable solution from the Palestinian point of view would be an Arab state in which European immigrants would have second-class status. The Palestinian position evolved following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, when it became no longer realistic to expect the militarily powerful and densely populated Jewish state to disappear. Eventually, Palestinian leadership began flirting with the idea of a two-state solution.^[29] In 1979, Moshe Dayan contended that the Palestinian leaders were receptive of a one-state solution.^[30] According to a poll taken by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion in 2020, around 10% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that working towards a binational state should be a top priority in the next five years.^[31]

One-state debate since 1999

A poll conducted in 2010 by Israel Democracy Institute suggested that 15% of right-wing Jewish Israelis and 16% of left-wing Jewish Israelis support a binational state solution over a two states solution based on 1967 lines. According to the same poll, 66% of Jewish Israelis preferred the two-state solution.^[32]

Some Israeli government spokespeople have also proposed that Palestinian-majority areas of Israel, such as the area around Umm el-Fahm, be annexed to the new Palestinian state. As this measure would cut these areas off permanently from the rest of Israel’s territory, including the coastal cities and other Palestinian towns and villages, Palestinians view this with alarm. Many Palestinian citizens of Israel would therefore prefer a one-state solution because this would allow them to sustain their Israeli citizenship.^[33]

Some Israeli Jews and Palestinians who oppose a one-state solution have nevertheless come to believe that it may come to pass.^[13] Israeli Prime Minister Olmert argued, in a 2007 interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, that without a two-state agreement Israel would face “a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights” in which case “Israel [would be] finished”.^[34] This echoes comments made in 2004 by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who said that if Israel failed to conclude an agreement with the Palestinians, that the Palestinians would pursue a single, bi-national state.^[35] In November 2009, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat proposed the adoption of the one-state solution if Israel did not halt settlement construction: “[Palestinians must] refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals. … It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us.”^[36]

Support for a one-state solution is increasing^[when?] as Palestinians, frustrated by lack of progress in negotiations aiming to establish the two-state solution, increasingly see the one-state solution as an alternative way forward.^[10][11] In April 2016, then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that because of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s policy of steady expansion of settlements, an eventual “one-state reality” with Israeli Jews no longer in the majority was the likely outcome.^[14]

Arguments for and against

In favor

Today, the proponents for the one-state solution include Palestinian author Ali Abunimah, Palestinian writer and political scientist Abdalhadi Alijla, Palestinian-American producer Jamal Dajani, Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarazi,^[37] American-Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper, Israeli writer Dan Gavron,^[38] Lebanese-American academic Saree Makdisi,^[39] and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy.^[40][41] The expansion of the Israeli Settler movement, especially in the West Bank, has been given as one rationale for bi-nationalism and the increased infeasibility of the two-state alternative:

“Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network, the same electricity grid and the same international borders… The one-state solution… neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character. For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing.”^[42]

They advocate a secular and democratic state while still maintaining a Jewish presence and culture in the region.^[43] They concede that this alternative will erode the dream of Jewish supremacy in terms of governance in the long run.^[43]

Hamas has at times ruled out a two-state solution, and at other times endorsed the possibility of a two-state solution.^[44][45] Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Al-Zahar has been cited saying he “did not rule out the possibility of having Jews, Muslims and Christians living under the sovereignty of an Islamic state.”^[46] Islamic Jihad for its part rejects a two state solution. An Islamic Jihad leader Khalid al-Batsh stated that “The idea cannot be accepted and we believe that the entire Palestine is Arab and Islamic land and belongs to the Palestinian nation.”^[47]

In 2003, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi proposed a one-state solution known as the Isratin proposal.^[1]

The left

Since 1999, interest has been renewed in binationalism or a unitary democratic state. In that year the Palestinian activist Edward Said wrote, “[A]fter 50 years of Israeli history, classic Zionism has provided no solution to the Palestinian presence. I therefore see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way with equal rights for all citizens.”^[48]

In October 2003, New York University scholar Tony Judt broke ground in his article, “Israel: The Alternative” in the New York Review of Books, in which he argued that Israel is an “anachronism” in sustaining an ethnic identity for the state and that the two-state solution is fundamentally doomed and unworkable.^[49] The Judt article engendered considerable debate in the UK and the US, and The New York Review of Books received more than 1,000 letters per week about the essay. A month later, political scientist Virginia Tilley published “The One-State Solution” in the London Review of Books (followed in 2005 by a book with the same title), arguing that West Bank settlements had made a two-state solution impossible and that the international community must accept a one-state solution as the de facto reality.^[50][51]

Leftist journalists from Israel, such as Haim Hanegbi and Daniel Gavron, have called for the public to “face the facts” and accept the binational solution. On the Palestinian side, similar voices have been raised. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert argued, in a 2007 interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, that without a two-state agreement Israel would face “a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights” in which case “Israel [would be] finished”.^[34]

John Mearsheimer, co-director of the Programme on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, says the binational solution has become inevitable. He has further argued that by allowing Israel’s settlements to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, the United States has helped Israel commit “national suicide” since Palestinians will be the majority group in the binational state.^[52]

Rashid Khalidi wrote in 2011 that the one-state solution was already a reality, in that “there is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, in which there are two or three levels of citizenship or non-citizenship within the borders of that one state that exerts total control.” Khalidi further argued that the “peace process” had been extinguished by ongoing Israeli settlement construction, and anyone who still believed it could result in an equitable two-state solution should have his “head examined”.^[53]

In 2013, professor Ian Lustick wrote in The New York Times that the “fantasy” of a two-state solution prevented people from working on solutions that might really work. Lustick argued that people who assume Israel will persist as a Zionist project should consider how quickly the Soviet, Pahlavi Iranian, apartheid South African, Baathist Iraqi and Yugoslavian states unraveled. Lustick concludes that while it may not arise without “painful stalemates”, a one-state solution may be a way to eventual Palestinian independence.^[54]

The Israeli right

Area C of the West Bank, controlled by Israel, in blue and red, December 2011

In recent years, some politicians and political commentators representing the right wing of Israeli politics have advocated annexing the West Bank, and granting the West Bank’s Palestinian population Israeli citizenship while maintaining Israel’s current status as a Jewish state with recognized minorities. Proposals from the Israeli right for a one-state solution tend to avoid advocating the annexation of the Gaza Strip, due to its large and generally hostile Palestinian population and its status as a self-governing territory without any Israeli settlements or permanent military presence.^[55] Some Israeli politicians, including former defense minister Moshe Arens,^[56] and former President Reuven Rivlin^[57] and Uri Ariel^[58] have voiced support for a one-state solution, rather than divide the West Bank in a two-state solution.^[59] Moshe Dayan, on the back of Camp David Accords, felt that an opportunity for a one-state solution with “liberal autonomy” for the Arabs and open borders was within reach, but squandered nevertheless.^[30]

In 2013, Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely argued that Jordan was originally created as the Arab state in the British Mandate of Palestine and that Israel should annex the West Bank as a historic part of the Land of Israel.^[60] Naftali Bennett, Prime Minister of Israel, included in many Likud-led coalitions, argues for the annexation of Zone C of the West Bank. Zone C, agreed upon as part of the Oslo Accords, comprises about 60% of West Bank land and is currently under Israeli military control.^[61]

In a 2014 book The Israeli Solution, The Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick challenged the census statistics provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and argued that the bureau had vastly over-inflated the Palestinian population of the West Bank by 1.34 million and that PCBS statistics and predictions are unreliable. According to a Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) study,^[62] the 2004 Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza stood at 2.5 million and not the 3.8 million claimed by the Palestinians. According to Glick, the 1997 PCBS survey, used as the basis for later studies, inflated numbers by including over three hundred thousand Palestinians living abroad and by double-counting over two hundred thousand Jerusalem Arabs already included in Israel’s population survey. Further, Glick says later PCBS surveys reflect the predictions of the 1997 PCBS survey, reporting unrealized birth forecasts, including assumptions of large Palestinian immigration that never occurred.

Based on this study, Glick argued that annexation of the West Bank would only add 1.4 million Palestinians to the population of Israel. She argued that a one-state solution with a Jewish majority and a political system rooted in Jewish values was the best way to guarantee the protection of democratic values and the rights of all minorities.^[63]

The demographic statistics from the PCBS are backed by Arnon Soffer and quite similar to official Israeli figures. Sergio DellaPergola gives a figure of 5,698,500 Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2015, while the core Jewish population stood at 6,103,200.^[64]

Against

Critics^[which?] argue that it would make Israeli Jews an ethnic minority^[65][66] in the only Jewish country. The high total fertility rate among Palestinians accompanied by a return of Palestinian refugees, would quickly render Jews a minority, according to Sergio DellaPergola, an Israeli demographer and statistician.^[67]

Critics^[which?] have also argued that Jews, like any other nation, have the right to self-determination, and that due to still existing antisemitism, there is a need for a Jewish national home.^[68][69]

The Reut Institute expands on these concerns of many Israeli Jews and says that a one-state scenario without any institutional safeguards would negate Israel’s status as a homeland for the Jewish people.^[13] When proposed as a political solution by non-Israelis, the assumption is that the idea is probably being put forward by those who are politically motivated to harm Israel and, by extension, Israeli Jews.^[13] They argue that the absorption of millions of Palestinians, along with a right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the generally high birthrate among Palestinians would quickly render Jews an ethnic minority and eliminate their rights to self-determination.^[13]

Israeli historian and politician Shlomo Ben-Ami, who served as Foreign Minister of Israel, dismissed the one-state solution as “ivory tower nonsense” and said that it creates a “South Africa situation without a South Africa solution.”^[70]

In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Hussein Ibish claimed that it is not realistic for Israel to be compelled to accept a binational solution with full right of return for refugees through international pressure or sanctions. According to Ibish, if a one state solution was to happen, it would come as a result of the status quo continuing, and the end result would be a protracted civil war, with each intifada more violent than the last, and the conflict growing more and more religious in nature. Ibish speculated that in such a scenario, it could even go beyond an ethno-national war between Israelis and Palestinians into a religious war between Jews and Muslims, with Israeli Jews ending up under siege and relying on their nuclear weapons for protection.^[71]

Academia

Some scholars had argued that a one-state solution is supported by “anti-Israel” advocates.^[72]

Scholars of the Middle East, including New Historian Benny Morris, have argued that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East.^[73] Morris has dismissed claims that a binational state would be a secular democratic state and argues it would instead be an authoritarian, fundamentalist state with a persecuted Jewish minority, citing the racism and persecution minorities face throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and in particular, the fact that Jews in Islamic societies were historically treated as second-class citizens and subject to pogroms and discrimination. In his book One State, Two States, he wrote “What Muslim Arab society in the modern age has treated Christians, Jews, pagans, Buddhists, and Hindus with tolerance and as equals? Why should anyone believe that Palestinian Muslim Arabs would behave any differently?” Pointing to specific examples of violence by Palestinian Muslims towards Palestinian Christians, Morris writes that “Western liberals like or pretend to view Palestinian Arabs, indeed all Arabs, as Scandinavians, and refuse to recognize that peoples, for good historical, cultural, and social reasons are different and behave differently in similar or identical sets of circumstances.” Morris notes the differences between Israeli Jewish society, which remains largely Westernized and secular, and Palestinian and Israeli-Arab society, which according to Morris is increasingly Islamic and fundamentalist, with secularism in decline. He also pointed to Hamas‘ 2007 takeover of Gaza, during which Fatah prisoners were shot in the knees and thrown off buildings, and the regular honor killings of women that permeate Palestinian and Israeli-Arab society, as evidence that Palestinian Muslims have no respect for Western values. He thus claimed that “the mindset and basic values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of binational statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds.”

According to Morris, the goal of a “secular democratic Palestine” was invented to appeal to Westerners, and while a few supporters of the one-state solution may honestly believe in such an outcome, the realities of Palestinian society mean that “the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for the goal of a Muslim Arab–dominated polity to replace Israel.” Morris argued that should a binational state ever emerge, many Israeli Jews would likely emigrate to escape the “stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Arab world and its treatment of minority populations”, with only those incapable of finding new host countries to resettle in and Ultra-Orthodox Jews remaining behind.^[74]

It has even been argued that Jews would face the threat of genocide. Writing on Arutz Sheva, Steven Plaut referred to the one-state solution as the “Rwanda Solution”, and wrote that the implementation of a one-state solution in which a Palestinian majority would rule over a Jewish minority would eventually lead to a “new Holocaust“.^[75] Morris argued that while the Palestinians would have few moral inhibitions over the destruction of Israeli-Jewish society through mass murder or expulsion, fear of international intervention would probably stymie such an outcome.^[74]

Some critics^[which?][76] argue that unification cannot happen without damaging or destroying Israel’s democracy. The vast majority of Israeli Jews as well as Israeli Druze, some Israeli Bedouin, many Israeli Christian Arabs and even some non-Bedouin Israeli Muslim Arabs fear the consequences of amalgamation with the mostly Muslim Palestinian population in the occupied territories, which they perceive as more religious and conservative. (All Israeli Druze men and small numbers of Bedouin men serve in the Israel Defense Forces and there are sometimes rifts between these groups and Palestinians).^{[77][failed verification]} One poll found that, in a future Palestinian state, 23% of Palestinians want civil law only, 35% want both Islamic and civil law, and 38% want Islamic law only.^[78] This negative view of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza prompts some critics to argue that the existing level of rights and equality for all Israeli citizens would be put in jeopardy with unification.^[79] Benny Morris echoes these claims, arguing that Palestinian Muslims, who would become the ruling majority in any such state, are deeply religious and do not have any tradition of democratic governance.

In response to the common argument given by proponents of the one state solution that Israel’s settlements have become so entrenched in the West Bank that a Palestinian state is effectively impossible, scholars such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky have countered that it is far more unrealistic to expect Israel to accept a one-state solution that would spell the end of Zionism than it is to expect it to dismantle some settlements. Nathan Thrall has argued that Israel could implement a unilateral withdrawal at any time of its choosing and that the facts on the ground suggest that a single state is a remote possibility, writing that:

Israelis and Palestinians are now farther from a single state than they have been at any time since the occupation began in 1967. Walls and fences separate Israel from Gaza and more than 90% of the West Bank. Palestinians have a quasi-state in the occupied territories, with its own parliament, courts, intelligence services and foreign ministry. Israelis no longer shop in Nablus and Gaza the way they did before the Oslo accords. Palestinians no longer travel freely to Tel Aviv. And the supposed reason that partition is often claimed to be impossible – the difficulty of a probable relocation of more than 150,000 settlers – is grossly overstated: in the 1990s, Israel absorbed several times as many Russian immigrants, many of them far more difficult to integrate than settlers, who already have Israeli jobs, fully formed networks of family support and a command of Hebrew.^[80]

Shaul Arieli has likewise argued that the settlement enterprise has failed to create the appropriate conditions to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state or to implement the annexation of the West Bank. He has noted that the settlers comprise only 13.5% of the West Bank’s population and occupy 4% of its land, and that the settlement enterprise has failed to build up a viable local economic infrastructure. He noted that only about 400 settler households were engaged in agriculture, with the amount of settler-owned farmland comprising only 1.5% of the West Bank. In addition, he wrote that there are only two significant industrial zones in the West Bank settlements, with the vast majority of workers there Palestinian, and that the vast majority of settlers live near the border, in areas that can be annexed by Israel with relative ease in territorial exchanges, while still allowing for the formation of a viable Palestinian state. According to Arieli, 62% of the settler workforce commutes over the Green Line into Israel proper for work while another 25% works in the heavily subsidized education system of the settlements, with only a small percent working in agriculture and industry. About half of the settlements have populations fewer than 1,000 and only 15 have populations greater than 5,000. According to Arieli, the settlement movement has failed to create facts on the ground precluding an Israeli withdrawal, and it is possible to implement a land exchange that would see about 80% of the settlers stay in place, necessitating the evacuation of only about 30,000 settler households, in order to establish a viable and contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank.^[81][82][83]

This sentiment has been echoed by Shany Mor, who argued that in 2020, the geographical distribution of settlers in the West Bank had not materially changed since 1993, and that a two-state solution is actually more feasible now than it was in the past due to the disentanglement of the Israeli and Palestinian economies in the 1990s. According to Mor, nearly all the population growth in the settlements between 2005 and 2020 was concentrated in the Haredi settlements of Beitar Illit and Modi’in Illit, due to their high birth rates.^[84]

Journalists

One major argument against the one-state solution is that it would endanger the safety of the Jewish minority, because it would require assimilation with what critics fear would be an extremely hostile Muslim ruling majority.^[13] In particular, Jeffrey Goldberg points to a 2000 Haaretz interview with Edward Said, whom he describes as “one of the intellectual fathers of one-statism”. When asked whether he thought a Jewish minority would be treated fairly in a binational state, Said replied that “it worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don’t know.”^[85]

Imagining what might ensue with unification, some critics^[86] of the one-state model believe that rather than ending the Arab–Israeli conflict, it would result in large-scale ethnic violence and possibly civil war, pointing to violence during the British Mandate, such as in 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936–39 as examples. In this view, violence between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is inevitable and can only be forestalled by partition. These critics also cite the 1937 Peel Commission, which recommended partition as the only means of ending the ongoing conflict.^{[87][original research?]} Critics also cite bi-national arrangements in Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Pakistan, which failed and resulted in further internal conflicts. Similar criticisms appear in The Case for Peace.^[88]

Left-wing Israeli journalist Amos Elon argued that while Israel’s settlement policy was pushing things in the direction of a one-state solution, should it ever come to pass, “the end result is more likely to resemble Zimbabwe than post-apartheid South Africa”.^[89]

Echoing these sentiments, Palestinian-American journalist Ray Hanania wrote that the idea of a single state where Jews, Muslims, and Christians can live side by side is “fundamentally flawed.” In addition to the fact that Israel would not support it, Hanania noted that the Arab and Muslim world don’t practice it, writing “Exactly where do Jews and Christians live in the Islamic World today side-by-side with equality? We don’t even live side-by-side with equality in the Palestinian Diaspora.”^[90]

On the aftermath of any hypothetical implementation of a one-state solution, Gershom Gorenberg wrote: “Palestinians will demand the return of property lost in 1948 and perhaps the rebuilding of destroyed villages. Except for the drawing of borders, virtually every question that bedevils Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations will become a domestic problem setting the new political entity aflame…. Two nationalities who have desperately sought a political frame for cultural and social independence would wrestle over control of language, art, street names, and schools.” Gorenberg wrote that in the best case, the new state would be paralyzed by endless arguments, and in the worst case, constant disagreements would erupt into violence.^[85]

Gorenberg wrote that in addition to many of the problems with the one-state solution described above, the hypothetical state would collapse economically, as the Israeli Jewish intelligentsia would in all likelihood emigrate, writing that “financing development in majority-Palestinian areas and bringing Palestinians into Israel’s social welfare network would require Jews to pay higher taxes or receive fewer services. But the engine of the Israeli economy is high-tech, an entirely portable industry. Both individuals and companies will leave.” As a result, the new binational state would be financially crippled.^[85]

Public opinion

Demonstration against Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv-Yafo, June 6, 2020

A multi-option poll by Near East Consulting (NEC) in November 2007 found the bi-national state to be less popular than either “two states for two people” or “a Palestinian state on all historic Palestine” with only 13.4% of respondents supporting a binational solution.^[91] However, in February 2007, NEC found that around 70% of Palestinian respondents backed the idea when given a straight choice of either supporting or opposing “a one-state solution in historic Palestine where Muslims, Christians and Jews have equal rights and responsibilities”.^[92]

In March 2010, a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that Palestinian support had risen to 29 percent.^[93]

In April 2010, a poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre also found that Palestinian support for a “bi-national” solution had jumped from 20.6 percent in June 2009 to 33.8 percent.^[94] If this support for a bi-national state is combined with the finding that 9.8 percent of Palestinian respondents favour a “Palestinian state” in “all of historic Palestine”, this poll suggested about equal Palestinian support for a two-state and one-state solution in mid-2010.^[93][94]

In 2011, a poll by Stanley Greenberg and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion and sponsored by the Israel Project revealed that 61% of Palestinians reject a two state solution, while 34% said they accepted it.^[95] 66% said the Palestinians’ real goal should be to start with a two-state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state.

Views of current situation

In a 2021 survey of experts on the Middle East, 59 percent described the current situation as “a one-state reality akin to apartheid“.^[15]

Position of other countries

Iran supports a one-state solution in which Palestine becomes the sole legitimate government of Israel.^[96]

See also

References

Further reading

• Ali Abunimah (2007). One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli–Palestinian Impasse. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-8050-8666-9.
• Bakan, Abigail B.; Abu-Laban, Yasmeen (2010). “Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the ‘One-State Solution’: The Case for an Apartheid Analysis”. Politikon. 37 (2–3): 331–351. doi:10.1080/02589346.2010.522342. S2CID 145309414.
• Bisharat, George E. (2008). “Maximizing Rights: The One State Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”. Global Jurist. 8 (2). doi:10.2202/1934-2640.1266. S2CID 144638321.
• Alan Dershowitz (4 August 2006). The Case for Peace: How the Arab–Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-04585-5. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
• Faris, Hani (2013). The Failure of the Two-State Solution: The Prospects of One State in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85773-423-5.
• Farsakh, Leila (2011). “The One-State Solution and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Palestinian Challenges and Prospects”. The Middle East Journal. 65 (1): 55–71. doi:10.3751/65.1.13. S2CID 144766409.
• Caroline Glick (4 March 2014). The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East. Crown Forum. ISBN 978-0385348065. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
• Susan Lee Hattis (1970). The Bi-National Idea in Palestine during Mandatory Times. Haifa: Shikmona. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
• Leon, Dan. “Binationalism: A Bridge over the Chasm.” Palestine–Israel Journal, July 31, 1999.
• Lustick, Ian S. (2019). Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-5195-1.
• Martin Buber; Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (1994). A land of two peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-07802-1. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
• Munayyer, Yousef (2019). “There Will Be a One-State Solution”. Foreign Affairs. 98: 30.
• Reiner, M., “Palestine – Divided or United? The Case for a Bi-National Palestine before the United Nations” Lord Samuel; E. Simon; M. Smilansky; Judah Leon Magnes. Ihud Jerusalem 1947. Includes submitted written and oral testimony before UNSCOP; IHud’s Proposals include: political, immigration, land, development (Reprinted Greenwood Press Reprint, Westport, CT, 1983, ISBN 0-8371-2617-7)
• Said, E. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Granta Books, London: 2000
• Virginia Q. Tilley (2005). The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli–Palestinian Deadlock. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7336-6.

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Siavash Sobhani had applied for a new passport in February.

Despite being born in the United States and practising medicine for over 30 years in the country, a 62-year-old doctor from Virginia has shockingly been stripped of his citizenship due to his late father’s status as an Iranian diplomat at the time of his birth. According to the Washington Post, Siavash Sobhani found out he was stateless after a letter from a State Department official informed him that he was granted US citizenship by mistake when he was an infant. The letter explained that those born in the US to parents with diplomatic immunity don’t automatically acquire US citizenship. 

“This was a shock to me,” Mr Sobhani told the Washington Post. “I’m a doctor. I’ve been here all my life. I’ve paid my taxes. I’ve voted for presidents. I’ve served my community in Northern Virginia. During Covid, I was at work, putting myself at risk, putting my family at risk. So when you’re told after 61 years, ‘Oh there was a mistake, you’re no longer a US citizen,’ it’s really, really shocking,” he added. 

Mr Sobhani had applied for a new passport in February. He expected no difficulties in the procedure as he had renewed his passport several times previously without problems. However, this time, he did not receive a new passport. Instead, the doctor received a letter from the State Department saying that he should not have been granted citizenship at the time of his birth because his father was a diplomat with the Embassy of Iran. The letter also directed the doctor to a website where he could apply for lawful permanent residence. 

Speaking to the outlet, Mr Sobhani pointed out that the fact he was indeed a US citizen was confirmed over and over again throughout his life, every time his passport was renewed. So naturally it was “a shock” to him when he was told that after 61 years, he was no longer a US citizen. 

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Me Sobhani told the publication that he has applied for permanent residence, as instructed. He has spent more than $40,000 on legal fees. However, he worries that he could wait in limbo as he still doesn’t know when his case might be resolved. 

“I’m waiting for an interview, but does that mean I wait another year for an interview? Then another three years for the next step? Then another 10 years before I can travel outside of the country?” he said. 

At 62, the doctor said that he has already started to think about retirement. He told the outlet that he and his wife planned to spend this year exploring other countries in hopes of finding a community where they could buy a home. However, now, he can’t even visit his friend in London who recently had a stroke, or his father-in-law, who lives in Lebanon and is seriously ill. “If he passes away, I can’t even go to his funeral,” Mr Sobhani said. 

Former President Donald Trump may look to blame Vladimir Putin for interference in the 2016 U.S. election if it can keep him out of prison, according to a legal filing reported by Politico.

Trump still leads the pack in the Republican primaries but faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could lead to a prison sentence. He also faces a civil suit in New York that could hurt his business empire.

Trump has repeatedly avoided agreeing with U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin had interfered on his behalf during the 2016 presidential election. In Helsinki in 2018, Trump said he didn’t” see any reason” to disbelieve the Russian leader’s assurances Moscow did not interfere.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump (L) chats with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Danang, Vietnam on November 11, 2017. Trump’s lawyers may use Putin to help the former president’s legal case centered on his attempts to subvert the 2020 election. MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/Getty Images

Trump’s false claims that the next election in 2020 was stolen from him spurred some of his supporters to try to overthrow the Electoral College vote and sparked rioters to storm the Capitol. It triggered a federal indictment obtained by special counsel Jack Smith focused on his attempt to subvert his loss.

Despite Trump’s insistence that Putin had nothing to do with his 2016 victory, which he had termed the “Russia hoax,” Politico has flagged an excerpt of his attorneys’ filing disputing Smith’s claims that the ex-president had damaged Americans’ faith in the electoral system—because Putin did it first.

“Trump wants people to know that it was Russia, not him, who caused Americans to distrust the election system,” wrote Politico’s Kyle Cheney on X (formerly Twitter) next to a screen grab of the legal filing.

“He will make this case by relying on intelligence community assessments he and his allies have constantly maligned and disputed,” he added.

The excerpt Cheney highlighted said that Smith’s office “falsely alleges that President Trump eroded public faith in the administration of the election.”

It noted how the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) also “uses strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion to foreign influence—that is, foreign efforts to ‘undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.'”

The filing went on to argue that Trump “is entitled to the detailed information supporting the conclusions in the 2016 Election ICA,” which can “demonstrate to a jury that he did not create or cause the environment that the prosecution seeks to blame him for.” Newsweek has contacted the Trump team and the Kremlin for comment.

Trump once described Putin as “very smart” in the wake of the Russian leader’s launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In January 2023, Trump suggested on Truth Social he trusted the Russian leader more than the “lowlifes” who work in U.S. intelligence. “Who would you choose, Putin or these Misfits?” posted Trump, referring to the intelligence community.