One of the greater achievements Benjamin Netanyahu can chalk up to his credit is the final removal of a two-state solution from the table. Moreover, in his years as prime minister he has managed to remove the entire Palestinian issue from the public agenda.
In Israel and abroad, no one is interested in it anymore, other than paying lip service, at least for now. In the eyes of the right, this is a tremendous achievement. In the eyes of anyone else, this should be considered a disastrous development, with only the indifference toward it being even more disastrous.
Netanyahu is leaving us with only two long-term solutions, and no more: a second Nakba, or a democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Any other solution is unsustainable – no more than a delusion, like all its other predecessors, one intended to gain more time for the entrenchment of the occupation. Not that there’s much more to entrench: the occupation is deep, consolidated, strong and irreversible. But if you can consolidate it even further, why not? Removing the issue from the agenda will enable an official declaration of the death of the two-state solution, decades after it died de facto.
Netanyahu wished to suppress any talk of two states, and easily succeeded in doing so. It’s no wonder that both sides know full well that no serious, comprehensive solution has been proposed ever since the first settlers occupied the Park Hotel in Hebron in 1968. In any case, there is no room between the Jordan and the Mediterranean for two true nation-states, with all the trappings of independent states, including a military. At most, there is room, on a really good day, for a Jewish regional superpower and a puppet Palestinian state. One must respect people still fighting for two states in their forecasts, blueprints, tables and maps – but no database can change the glaring fact that no real Palestinian state will be established here. Without it, there is no two-state solution.
In killing this solution, Netanyahu has left us with only two possible solutions. The vast majority of Israelis, including Netanyahu himself, are relying on the perpetuation of apartheid for all eternity. Ostensibly, this now appears to be the most reasonable scenario. But the growing strength of the Israeli right, and the spirit of resistance among Palestinians, which has not completely dissipated, will not allow this to continue forever. Apartheid is a stopgap solution, possibly a long-term one – it has already been in place for over 50 years and it may persist for another 50 – but its end will come. How will it play out? There are only two possible scenarios. One is preferred by the extreme right, and horrifically, perhaps by almost all Israelis – a second Nakba. If things come to a head and Israel is faced with a choice of one democratic state for two peoples, or a mass expulsion of Palestinians in order to maintain the existence of a Jewish state, the choice will be clear for almost every Israeli Jew. The moment a two-state solution was taken off the table, they were left with no other choice.
It’s good that the two-state solution has been removed from the agenda, since the ongoing sterile involvement with it only caused damage. Here was a shelf-ready solution, so we’ll adopt it when the time is right. This provided consolation for the world and for the left and center camps in Israel, while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of violent settlers wielding significant political power, having delivered the coup de grace to this solution a long time ago. In a West Bank devoid of Jews, this solution had some flimsy chances, but not in a region in which settlers rule. The problem is that the five million Palestinians living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean are not going anywhere in the meantime.
The day will come, even if only in the distant future, that a gun will be held to our heads: a second Nakba, including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs, or one democratic state, with a Palestinian prime minister or defense minister, a common military, two flags, two anthems and two languages. There is no solution but these. Which will you choose?