J.L. Magnes and the Promotion of Bi-nationalism in Palestine

Abstract

As hostility to Israel has intensified in the Western world in recent times (especially within the Trade Union movement, academia, intellectual circles, and the political elite) there has been a noticeable increase in the call for a bi-national solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict as a viable alternative to a two-state solution. The Palestinian commentator Ahmad Samih Khalidi explained in a 1998 article in Prospect magazine that bi-nationalism entails an agreed equal sharing of the whole land [of Palestine] between two peoples . . . on the basis of equality between its citizens rather than ethnicity or national/religious origin.