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It is
The Lack of a Two-State
Solution That Most Threatens
Israel Jeffrey D. Sachs & Sybil Fares | October 6, 2024 | Common Dreams As a result of its belligerence and intransigence, Israel is now almost completely ostracized by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands. Israel rejects
the two-state solution because
it claims that a sovereign
state of Palestine would
profoundly endanger Israel’s
national security. In fact, it
is the lack of a two-state
solution that endangers
Israel. Israel’s illegal
occupation of Palestinian
lands, its continuing
apartheid rule over millions
of Palestinians, and its
extreme violence to defend
that rule, all put Israel’s
survival in jeopardy, as
Israel faces dire threats from
global diplomatic isolation
and the ongoing war, including
the war’s massive economic,
social, and financial costs. There
are three basic reasons for
Israel’s opposition to the
two-state solution, reflecting
a variety of ideologies and
interests in Israeli society. The
first, and most mainstream, is
Israel’s claim that
Palestinians and the Arab
world cannot live alongside it
and only wish to destroy it.
The second is the belief among
Israel’s rapidly growing
religious-nationalist
population that God promised
the Jews all of the land from
the Euphrates to the
Mediterranean, including all
of Palestine. We
recently wrote about that
ideology, pointing
out that it is roughly 2,600
years out of step with today’s
realities. The third is
straightforward material gain.
With its ongoing occupation,
Israel aims to profit from
control over the region’s
freshwater resources, coastal
zones, offshore natural gas
deposits, tourist
destinations, and land for
settlements. These
various motives are jumbled
together in Israel’s continued
intransigence. Yet taken
individually or as a package,
they fail to justify Israel’s
opposition to the two-state
solution, certainly not from
the perspective of
international law and justice,
but not even with regard to
Israel’s own security or
narrow economic interests. Consider
Israel’s claim about national
security, as was recently
repeated by PM Benjamin
Netanyahu at the United
Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu
accused the
Palestinian Authority, and
specifically President Mahmoud
Abbas, of waging “unremitting
diplomatic warfare against
Israel’s right to exist and
against Israel’s right to
defend itself.” After
Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman
Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs, standing
beside Palestinian Prime
Minister Mohammad Mustafa,
replied to Netanyahu in a press
conference: All of us in the Arab world here want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Earlier
this year, the Bahrain
Declaration in May 2024 of
the 33rd Regular Session of
the Council of the League of
Arab States, on behalf of the
22 member states, re-iterated: We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.
Israel
claims that even if the Arab
states and Iran want peace,
Hamas does not, and therefore
threatens Israel. There are
two crucial points here.
First, Hamas accepted the
two-state solution, already 7
years ago, in their 2017
Charter. “Hamas
considers the establishment of
a fully sovereign and
independent Palestinian state,
with Jerusalem as its capital
along the lines of the 4th of
June 1967, with the return of
the refugees and the displaced
to their homes from which they
were expelled, to be a formula
of national consensus.” This
year again, Hamas proposed to disarm
in exchange for
Palestinian statehood on
the 1967 borders. Israel, in
turn, assassinated the Hamas political
chief and cease-fire
negotiator, Ismail
Haniyeh. Second,
Hamas is very far from being a
stand-alone actor. Hamas
depends on funds and arms from
the outside, notably from
Iran. Implementation of the
two-state solution under UN
Security Council auspices
would include the disarmament
of non-state actors and mutual
security arrangements for
Israel and Palestine, in line
with international law and the
recent ICJ ruling, which
Iran voted in favor of at
UN General Assembly. The
giveaway that Hamas is an
excuse, not a deep cause, of
Israel’s intransigence is that
Netanyahu has tactically if
quietly supported Hamas over
the years in a divide
and conquer strategy.
Netanyahu’s ruse has been to
prevent the unity of different
Palestinian political factions
in order to forestall the
Palestinian Authority from
developing a national plan to
forge a Palestinian state. The
whole point of Netanyahu’s
politics for decades has been
to prevent the emergence of a
Palestinian state using any
argument at hand. Israel
and its boosters often claim
that the failure at Camp David
in 2000 proves that the
Palestinians reject the
two-state solution. This claim
also is not correct. As
documented by many, including
Clayton E. Swisher in his meticulous
account in The
Truth About Camp David: The
Untold Story about the
Collapse of the Middle East
Peace Process, the Camp
David negotiations in 2000
failed owing to Bill Clinton’s
last-minute approach to deal
making, combined with then
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak’s political cowardice in
failing to honor Israeli
obligations under the Oslo
Accord. As
time ran out at Camp David,
Clinton was a dishonest
broker, as were the blatantly
pro-Israel US negotiators, who
refused to acknowledge
Palestine’s legal claim to the
borders of 4 June 1967, and
prevarications about
Palestine’s right to its
capital in East Jerusalem. The
“final offer” abruptly pushed
by the Israelis and their
American backers on the
Palestinians did not secure
basic Palestinian rights, nor
were the Palestinians given
time to deliberate and respond
with alternative proposals.
The Palestinians were then
falsely blamed by the
Americans and Israelis for the
failure of the negotiations. Israel
persists with its
intransigence because it
believes that it has the
unconditional backing of the
United States. Through decades
of large campaign
contributions and assiduous
lobbying, the
Israel lobby in the United
States not only controls votes
in the Congress, but also has
also placed arch-Zionists in
top positions in every
administration. Yet due to
Israel’s brutality in
Palestine and Lebanon, the
Israel Lobby has lost its
ability to control the
narrative and votes across
mainstream American
society. Trump,
Biden, and Netanyahu all
believed that Israel could
“have it all”—Greater
Israel and peace with
the Arab states, while
blocking a Palestinian
state—through a US-brokered
normalization process. The
Abraham Accords (which
established diplomatic
relations of Israel with
Bahrain and the UAE) was to be
the role model for normalizing
relations between Israel and
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
This approach was always
cynical (as it aimed to block
a Palestinian state) but is
surely delusional now. The
Foreign Minister of Saudi
Arabia has made crystal clear
in his op-ed
in the Financial Times on
October 2, that
the two-state solution is the
only pathway to peace and
normalization. A two-state solution is not merely an ideal; it is the only viable path to ensuring Palestine, Israel and the region's long term security. Uncontrolled escalatory cycles are the building blocks of wider war. In Lebanon, we are witnessing this firsthand. Peace cannot be built on a foundation of occupation and resentment; true security for Israel will come from recognising the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
Israel’s
ongoing intransigent
opposition to the two-state
solution, recently reiterated
by a vote of the Knesset,
has become the greatest danger
to Israel’s own security.
Israel is now almost
completely ostracized by the
international community, and
also faces grave economic and
military threats as the
regional war expands. As just
one indicator of the emerging
economic disarray, Israel’s
credit rating is already
plummeting, and Israel
is likely to lose its
investment grade credit
rating very soon,
with dire long-term economic
consequences. Nor
does Israel’s violent pursuit
of its extremist vision serve
US security or US interests,
and the American people oppose
Israel’s extremism. The Israel
Lobby is likely to lose its
grip. Both the US public and
the US deep state are very
likely to withdraw their
uncritical and unconditional
support for Israel. The practical elements of peace are at hand, as we recently spelled out in detail. The US can save the region from an imminent conflagration, and the world from a possible global war of great powers. The US should drop its veto of Palestine’s membership in the UN, and support the implementation of the two-state solution under the auspices of the UN Security Council, with enforcement of mutual security for both Israel and Palestine on the basis of justice and international law. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-two-state-solution |