‘Two-states’ is not impossible, but not now, and not this way
In his speech promising to recognize Palestinian statehood in September (if Israel fails to end the war in Gaza and commit to a two-state solution), British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared the intentions behind this move:
Our goal remains a safe and secure Israel, alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.
Nothing revolutionary or surprising there. This has been the boiler plate line by Israel’s Western allies for many a year. Except, “recognizing” a not-yet-existent “Palestine” moves us no closer to that goal. In fact, it achieves nothing other than send the message to the Palestinians that the atrocities of October 7 are ultimately redounding to their advantage.
A viable, durable two-state solution requires a lot more than virtue-signaling “declarations” by Western democracies. It needs three ingredients:
- An Israeli government willing, in principle, to accept an independent Palestinian state in part of the historic Land of Israel.
- A Palestinian leadership willing to accept the permanence of an independent Jewish state in part of historic Palestine.
- An Arab world willing to endorse and support a genuine two-state solution: a Palestinian nation-state alongside a Jewish-nation state.
Ingredient number one we do not currently have, but it’s not impossible that it could arise following Israeli elections next year.
Ingredient number two is also currently absent, but unlike number one, there is little possibility of it appearing courtesy of the ballot box. Even if the Palestinian Authority does see fit to finally hold free and fair elections (recall: Mahmoud Abbas is in the midst of the twentieth year of his four-year term as president), there is no leadership-in-waiting that has signaled the willingness to embark on the wholesale refurbishment of Palestinian media, education and politics required. Palestinian society must be decisively reoriented in the direction of acknowledging there are two peoples indigenous to this land; the Jewish historical claim is legitimate. It will be a multi-year project to undo decades of anti-Zionist and antisemitic conditioning.
About ingredient number three, the jury is out. The UAE and, at times, Saudi Arabia, have made many of the right noises, including much of what’s written in the so-called ‘New York Declaration‘, but one specific devil in the details remains: the continued insistence of a “right of return of Palestinian refugees”, which, if fully implemented, would mean the two states would be one newly established Palestinian state, alongside an Israel that has just become another Palestinian state after the “return” of millions of descendants of refugees from 1948.
Starmer’s message “to the terrorists of Hamas” was welcome:
They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.
And I have no complaints about his criticism of Israel’s annexation plans. Like much else that’s being pushed by the Smotrich/Ben-Gvir tag team, this is an idea designed to further their ideological agenda at the expense of Israeli democracy; subverting the founding liberal values of Zionism and the State of Israel.
But there’s nothing in Starmer’s speech about what’s needed from the so-called “moderate” Palestinian leaders. President Mahmoud Abbas, who has lied about Israel’s intentions to ‘desecrate’ the Al-Aqsa Mosque; who claimed – shortly before October 7 actually – that the Holocaust was a result of the Jews’ moneylending, remarks that then-US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield termed ‘hateful and antisemitic.’ The late-Martin Indyk, a veteran of peace process and a long-time advocate of Abbas’s ‘moderate’ credentials, tweeted in response: ‘I have been despairing about how to respond to Abu Mazen’s profoundly antisemitic diatribe. How could someone who has treated me as a personal friend for three decades at the same time harbor such hateful views of my people?’
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has understandably focused the minds of world leaders, but it has tragically pushed them to think – once again – of the Palestinians as only the helpless victims of Israeli decisions rather than, as history as proven, largely the agents of their own stateless predicament. This predicament will not be solved by gesture politics, especially gestures that continue the disastrous, 30-year pattern of incentivising the Palestinians to choose violence over compromise.
