Professor S. Michael Lynk:

On the question of awareness among Israelis, I do not claim to be an expert on Israeli sociology, and particularly Israeli political sociology. I will keep my comments short on that. It is impossible to look at photographs and pictures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without coming across pictures of the 18 m wall that the Israelis have built, 85% of which is within occupied Palestinian territory and which was pronounced upon by the International Court of Justice in 2004. That wall not only keeps Palestinians out from being able to enter into Israel, as I have been told by Israeli colleagues and friends, it also keeps out Israeli imagination: they do not need to know what happens on the other side of the wall. "Us here and them there" has become an attitude, but not among all Israelis. There are lots of Israelis of conscience who are bothered deeply by the range of the conflict.

Let us look at the range of Israeli voting over the past four elections. There were four elections between 2019 and 2021. The parties that had a right or far-right agenda polled around two thirds of the seats, and it varied only within a couple of seats with each of these four elections that occurred. While 20% of the Israeli population are Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, this voting range tells me that for the Israeli voting population and particularly the Israeli Jewish population they are content with the present situation and endorse the idea of keeping Palestinians in the West Bank isolated. The way in which a significant number of Israelis wind up interacting with Palestinians since the wall was built more than 20 years ago are as military. In other words, in the form of military as soldiers. Virtually most Israelis between the ages of 18 and 21 are conscripted for three years to serve in the Israeli army. It is impossible to be able to be a soldier guarding a checkpoint and deciding to allow one car through every 20 minutes, carrying out night raids on refugee camps or arresting children in Hebron without thinking that the population you are governing and ruling over as a military power are somewhat lesser then you. It is going to take a long time to break down those kinds of impressions that Palestinians have of Israelis, which is defined by the occupation and is incomplete, and the impressions that Israelis have of Palestinians, which is defined by their domination of the Palestinians but which is also incomplete. We have a system that encourages stereotypical views of Jews by Palestinians, and views of Palestinians by Jews.

On the Chairman's comment about the one-state solution, and how it would work, this would be the kind of task that creative constitutional minds would wind up working on. On the positive side we have a number of positive examples of how multinational States have worked with some success. It is not without difficulty. I come from a multinational State that is not only French and English but now also recognises the nationhood of our indigenous peoples. It is not an easy country to govern but we have done it largely through solid democratic institutions that have wound up building trust by everybody, and where there is a sense of accommodation in that regard. Belgians do it, with some difficulty, the Swiss do it with some difficulty, but we can see that it is certainly becoming more catastrophic in multinational countries such as Sri Lanka or India. These are possible, however, and even though there are those who throw their hands up and say it is impossible to have a one-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians, each having a single vote and living as equals, that is in theory a much better starting point than what exists now or even what is proposed around domination.

I am not sure I entirely caught the Chairman's third question. It had to do with apartheid elsewhere.