Two-state solution is an oxymoron

Oxymoron
“A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction”
OED

If I have a cup of tea
And stir in two sugars
Such that the substances are blended
One suspended in the other,
That is a solution.

If I were to separate
The sugar from the tea
That is a precipitate
In terms of chemistry.

Do you get me.

So to make the dividing line
Between Israel and Palestine
A wall, solves nothing at all.

A wall entrenches the problem
Creates boundaries between peoples
A wall does not dissolve them.
Not a solution,
But a Two-State Precipitate
Based on one of Europe’s great
Intellectual mistakes.

Herder and Fichte
Have a lot to answer for.
The idea that
People of a common culture
And field of communication
Should form a single polity
A territory called Nation
Is calamitously mistaken
In one critical assumption,
That people don’t move.

They do
And they take their culture with them
And mix and change and rearrange
You might complain or try contain
Or blame it all on immigration
But there’s a basic problem with mobility
For the geography of ethnic nations.

So the Two-State Precipitate
Proposes to erect a boundary
Name some ways as alien
Who say they’ve been there
Since way back when,
The others say you have to go
You can’t win
And you know
That’s when the bloodshed begins.
It’s the same in the Balkans, India
Rwanda, Ireland, Sudan,
Them is alien and it’s not their land
It’s made complications
Since the idea began
Because morality and trust
Only extend to Us.

In the 17th century
Europe left a third of its people dead
In disagreements over whether Jesus
Was present in communion bread.
And learnt to our prosperity,
That theocracies
Tend to be belligerent
And victimise minorities,
Righteously.

So as more burned at the stake
It became widely known
That one should always keep separate
The Church and the Throne.

So what do we bequeath
To post-war refugees,
Fiefdom over monotheists
And a poisoning creed,
Theocratic Ethnic Nationalism.

It was only ever going to end up
A magnet for zealous lunatics
With an imperfect appreciation
Of scripture,
Intuitions like Fichte
Steeped in persecution myths
And an Old Testament notion of power,
The picture looks dour.

Because the moderates will stay
Wherever they have spread
But fanatics will flock the motherland
Justify attacks on other clans
As part of a greater plan
To cleanse their god-given land
And create
The Two-State Precipitate.

Theocratic Ethnic Nationalism is the solution
To long term peace in the Middle East
If
Long term peace in the Middle East
Is a problem
And you want to get a war on
Otherwise
“Two-state solution” is an oxymoron.

Written: 2011