Elliott Abrams: The Two-State Delusion
Everyone knows what to do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Arrange the “two-state solution.” That has been a commonplace for decades, going back to the Oslo Accords, all the international conferences, the “Roadmap,” and the efforts by a series of American presidents and their staffs of ardent peace processors.Joe Biden Hates Israel
In the West, the call for a “two-state solution” is mostly a magical incantation these days. Diplomats and politicians want the Gaza war to stop. They want a way out that seems fair and just to voters and makes for good speeches. But they are not even beginning to grapple with the issues that negotiating a “two-state solution” raises, and they are not seriously asking what kind of state “Palestine” would be. Instead they simply imagine a peaceful, well-ordered place called “Palestine” and assure everyone that it is just around the corner. By doing so they avoid asking the most important question: Would not an autocratic, revanchist Palestinian state be a threat to peace?
No matter: The belief in the “two-state solution” is as fervent today as ever. The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it’s the “only solution” and Britain’s defense minister chimed in that “I don’t think we get to a solution unless we have a two-state solution.” Not to be outdone, U.N. Secretary General Guterres said, “The refusal to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people, are unacceptable.” The EU’s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said recently, “I don’t think we should talk about the Middle East peace process anymore. We should start talking specifically about the two-state-solution implementation process.” What if Israel does not agree, and views a Palestinian state as an unacceptable security threat? Borrell’s answer was that “One thing is clear—Israel cannot have the veto right to the self-determination of the Palestinian people. The United Nations recognizes and has recognized many times the self-determination right of the Palestinian people. Nobody can veto it.”
In the United States, 49 Senate Democrats (out of 51) just joined to support a resolution that, according to Sen. Brian Schatz, is “a message to the world that the only path forward is a two-state solution.” Biden administration officials have been a bit more circumspect in public. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in January, Secretary of State Blinken told his interviewer, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, that regional integration “has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called for “a two-state solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” And President Biden meandered around an important security point: “there are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that … don’t have their own military; a number of states that have limitations, and so I think there’s ways in which this can work.”
The Biden administration, then, joins all enlightened opinion in saying there must be a Palestinian state, but adds that it must not have an army. No other precondition seems to exist for the creation of that state once the Palestinian Authority has been “revamped” or “revitalized” so that it becomes “effective.” And most recently, Blinken has asked his staff for policy options that include formal recognition of a Palestinian state as soon as the war in Gaza ends. This would be a massive change in U.S. policy, which for decades has insisted that a Palestinian state can only emerge from direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But the pressure is growing, it seems, to skip niceties like negotiations and move quickly to implement the “two-state solution.”
There are three things wrong with this picture. First, none of the current proposals even acknowledges, much less overcomes, the obstacles that have always prevented the “two-state solution.” Second, the “effective governance” reforms fall very far short of creating a decent state in which Palestinians can live freely. And most important, any imaginable Palestinian state will be a dangerous threat to Israel.
A second, almost as atrocious, low point in Blinken’s speech was his reiteration of Biden administration policy that Israel not allow Gazans to leave Gaza. In what war is the population of the war-torn country not allowed to leave? Much like the U.N. has been falsely claiming refugee status for Palestinians for 75 years so that they can continue to be used as political pawns, the United States’ refusal to allow Gazans to leave serves only one purpose: to make it harder for Israel to “de-Nazify” the radicalized Palestinian population, to allow whatever remains of Hamas to survive, and to add fuel to its obsession with a “two- state solution.”Seth Mandel: The Lazy Fantasy of a ‘Palestinian Mandela’
The U.S. wants all areas depopulated because of the war to be repopulated, thereby making it impossible for Israel to repopulate its southern towns/cities. So effectively, a security zone with Gaza would mean a reduction in Israel’s territory.
Blinken also demanded that no action be taken in the North against Hezbollah, effectively turning Northern Israel into a similar security zone, precluding 80,000 Israelis there from returning to their homes.
Lastly, he invoked the atrocious line about a “cycle of violence” and reaffirmed the administration’s demand for a “two- state solution.”
It's not a “cycle of violence” when thousands of animalistic, sub-human, monsters murder, brutally rape, and mutilate thousands of civilians, followed by a war targeting those responsible for the atrocities. And, at this point does anyone seriously believe that a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, in the heart of central Israel, plus territory in Gaza, wouldn’t be a death sentence for Jews?
More recently, Blinken was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. While there, he was interviewed by the New York Times’ resident Israel hater, Thomas Friedman. Incredibly, Blinken seemed to say that the Israelis of today are the terror loving Palestinians of yesterday:
“The profound difference now, I think, is in the mindset of leaders throughout the Arab world and in Muslim countries, and in a way it’s a reversal, it’s a flip, as you know so well better than anyone. When in previous times we came close to resolving the Palestinian question, getting a Palestinian state, I think the view then – Camp David, other places – was that Arab leaders, Palestinian leaders, had not done enough to prepare their own people for this profound change. I think a challenge now, a question now: Is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions? Is it prepared to have that mindset?”
Did you get that? After thousands of Israelis were murdered, raped, mutilated, and wounded, America’s Secretary of State is blaming Israel for not being as gracious as the Arabs who murdered us for decades before 10/7.
Israel, after decades of giving up territory, not utterly destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, not attacking Iran and its proxies (another demand of the Biden administration), prioritizing Arab civilian life at the cost of IDF soldiers, all while 136 Israelis are still being held hostage and brutalized, is not enough for this administration.
Israelis have the wrong “mindset.”
Some friend to Israel.
Hamas’s latest negotiating ploy is to ask for Israel to release Marwan Barghouti, a popular Fatah leader who is serving a handful of life sentences for murder. Barghouti is often compared by the press and his Western admirers to Nelson Mandela, because his admirers have very active imaginations.
Freeing Barghouti is the “break glass in case of emergency” option for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The belief is that he has become both popular enough and moderate enough to lead the Palestinian Authority after Mahmoud Abbas, who is still alive and refuses to hold elections and therefore cannot be replaced by the Palestinian Mandela or the Australian Ghandi or the Ecuadorian Martin Luther King or the Scandinavian Dalai Lama or anyone else.
In the absence of any other changes, therefore, what freeing Barghouti would accomplish is the further destabilization of the Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank. Hamas thinks this is a great idea. The Israelis are unconvinced.
Barghouti’s advocates in the West like to tout his support for a two-state solution. But Barghouti’s starting position is at the 1967 lines, from which Israeli-Palestinian negotiations moved on a decade and a half ago, so perhaps his supporters like him because he’d actually undo some of the progress made toward a two-state solution.
The other pro-Barghouti talking point has long been his renunciation of some violence in some places. (This is why calling him “the Palestinian Mandela” is deeply insulting to Nelson Mandela.)
Barghouti was the most prominent signer of a coalitional letter known as the Prisoner’s Document back in 2006. It was a manifesto of sorts for incarcerated Palestinians of various parties and stripes, including Hamas. That manifesto trumpets “[t]he right of the Palestinian people to resist and to uphold the option of resistance of occupation by various means and focusing resistance in territories occupied in 1967 in tandem with political action, negotiations and diplomacy whereby there is broad participation from all sectors in the popular resistance.”
This is the great compromise document. It boils down to: Kill Jews in the West Bank, Gaza, and at the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, but inside “Israel proper” just call general strikes and marches intended to bring the economy to a halt. Because Barghouti is a man of peace who has learned his lesson, apparently.
How could anyone say no?