Distorted Perception of the Two-State Conundrum

According to the liberal press, the major stumbling block to a two-state solution is the right-wing Zionist ideology that Netanyahu champions. After all, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has long stated his desire for such a solution to the conflict. Indeed, Abbas’ predecessor Yasir Arafat was also in favor of a two-state solution. This liberal vision is the opposite of reality and as long as it is maintained, there is no hope for a solution.

The Palestinian leadership has historically had no commitment to a permanent two-state solution. In 1937, it rejected the Peel Commission’s recommendation that two states be created with Israel obtaining only 12 percent of Palestine. In 1947, it rejected the two-state partition plan that led to the creation of the state of Israel as they defeated Arab armies from five nations. And after three more unsuccessful military campaigns, Arafat finally agreed to negotiate a two-state solution. However, he never provided an alternative to the framework offered by the Israel government. Instead, verified by the leader of Islamic Jihad and his wife, Arafat initiated the Al Aqsa Intifada, often called the Second Intifada by liberals to disguise its aspiration of reclaiming the entirety of Palestine.

Besides ideological considerations, one reason why Arafat walked away at Camp David was the issue of the right-of-return; something liberals rarely mention when discussing road blocks to a two-state solution. When the Nakba was first articulated in 1948, it had nothing to do with refugees. It was solely the emergence of a Jewish state on Arab lands that was the catastrophe. In 1958, the Nakba was commemorated by radio stations of the United Arab Republic calling on the world’s Arab and Muslim states to hold a symbolic five minutes to mourn the establishment of Israel without any mention of the refugees.

This original characterization of the Nakba continues today among Islamists, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It continues throughout the Muslim world where in 2022, the rate of refusal to recognize Israel was over 90% in Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, and Tunisia. It continues among today’s activists who label Israel as a colonial, settler state. Thus, it is the Palestinian activist community and their supporters who are ideologically committed to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

As for the secularist like Arafat, he made the right-of-return a non-negotiable demand. To strengthen this position, he shifted the meaning of the Nakba to the war’s creation of a refugee population. In the 1990s, many of the original refugees were still alive and, for them, the two-state solution offered nothing. Living in squalid refugee camps for forty years, only a generous right-of-return would better their lives.

Now another thirty years later, few of the actual refugees are alive but there are over six million descendants. In 2023, the UN Human Rights Commission demanded that the right-of-return should continue to be given priority. Political scientist Nour Cherif contends, “The romanticised memories of exile and life before the Nakba are transmitted to future generations, who, although they no longer recognize them¬selves in these testimonies, use them as a driving force to claim the right of return.”

Refugees live in squalid conditions because there has been few attempts to integrate them into the countries in which they reside. Kuwait was one country that did give sufficient individual rights to Palestinian refugees. Over the next forty years, over 300,000 were fairly well integrated. However, in 1991, Arafat sided with Iraq when it invaded Kuwait, leading the country to engage in ethnic cleansing: forcing all Palestinians to migrate, mostly to Jordan.

Most critically, Lebanon and Jordan have refused to extend citizen rights to all their Palestinian refugees. In Lebanon, though born there as were their parents, all Palestinians are stateless and face severe restrictions. An UNRWA report stated:

Palestine refugees in Lebanon are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political, and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational, and social services, and face significant restrictions on their right to work and right to own property.

Even in Jordan, Palestinians who have citizenship are not integrated socially, politically, or professionally. A 2016 report concluded,

Although certain Palestinians have “made it” in Jordanian society, … as a whole, they suffer economic discrimination in areas such as appointments to positions in the Government and the military, in admittance to public universities, and in the granting of university scholarships.

Moreover, Palestinians who came to Jordan from Gaza, estimated to now number 640,000, are not able to gain Jordanian citizenship. “Despite having lived in the country for decades — and even being born there — Jordan hasn’t granted them citizenship,” reported Shirin Jaafari. As a result, “Palestinians from Gaza are three times more likely to be living under the poverty line compared to other Palestinians in Jordan.” Adding Kuwaiti refugees, close to one million Palestinians living in Jordan are stateless, with most living marginal lives.

Palestinian refugees suffer deprivations because of political priorities. Rula Alhroob, a former member of the Jordanian Parliament and chair of the human rights committee, said her advocacy for extending benefits to Palestinian refugees was met with fierce opposition within the government. When we talk about civil rights, political rights, and so on, they would say, “Well, we don’t want to help Israelis achieve their goals by giving those people access to all types of activities and normal living so that they could forget about their right of return.”

As Jalal Al-Husseini explained,

The camps had to remain temporary places, statutorily isolated from neighbouring municipalities. The prohibition imposed on refugees to build any floor in the housing units illustrates this desire to preserve the temporary nature of the camps.

Most Palestinian activists implicitly support these efforts to undermine attempts to better the lives of refugees in the countries in which they reside. They do so because maintaining support for the right-of-return is a priority, as it keeps the goal of eliminating the Jewish state alive.