1 The Reemergence of One-Statism

Palestinian Arab Islamic fundamentalists, of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad varieties, have always advocated the elimination of Israel and a one-state—a Muslim Arab state—solution for the Israel/Palestine problem. But over the past few years, Palestinian Arab intellectuals linked to the mainstream Fatah Party and living in the West have also begun talking openly about the desirability, or at least the inevitability, of a one-state solution—one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. This marks a break from their at least superficial espousal during the1990s of a two-state solution and a reversion to the openly enunciated policy of the Fatah and Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1960s and 1970s, as embodied in the Palestinian National Covenant, which posited the elimination of the Jewish state and the establishment in its stead