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Opinion: Israeli Consul General Jacob Dayan on the one-state solution

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Beirut-based journalist Ahmed Moor wrote in his Sept. 17 Blowback article that decades of colonization of Palestinian land and other maltreatment by Israelis have made a two-state solution impossible. Below is a response by Jacob Dayan, Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles:

Ahmed Moor asserts that Israel is making it virtually impossible for the reality of a two-state solution to come to fruition. His entire theory is based on the assumption that two distinctly different peoples can coexist as one in Israel. One of the reasons behind the assertion is that Moor claims Israel/Palestine is already one state and should remain so. Moor knows better. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and does not have to look far for an example of a failed one-state solution. For many years Lebanon was the only example in the Middle East of two people living in one state. The Muslims and Christians of Lebanon have a dreadful history in the region. Just ask the 7 million Lebanese Christians who fled the country and are currently living outside Lebanon. They know firsthand the horrors of the bloody internal war between the Muslims and Christians.
A historical perspective: Lebanese Christians experienced a backlash in 1991 after the end of the Lebanese civil war. Since the end of the war, Christians in northern and central Lebanon have been under social and political oppression by Syrian forces. And in the south, Hezbollah has its way with them. Yet the mainstream media hardly provide us with updates about the 1.5 million Christians still living and suffering in Lebanon today.

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Not only is this an atmosphere in which people -- Christians and Muslims -- don’t trust each other; it is also an atmosphere that harbors alienation and fear from militant groups surrounding the area. That is not the kind of environment we want to create in Israel and its future neighboring state, Palestine. For the safety, security and well-being of all of its people, each state will have its own governing body and its own institutions to protect its borders. So the best possible outcome for coexistence is still the two-state solution.

Update, 9:21 a.m., Tuesday: A previous version of Dayan’s response incorrectly stated that the Lebanese civil war ended in 1985.

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