What Do Advocates of a Two-State Solution Actually Advocate? By John F. Di Leo
There are approximately 13.5 million people in the current geographical nation of Israel – about 9 million Israeli nationals and 4.5 million others known as “Palestinians” (primarily ethnic Egyptians and other Arabs who moved into the area early in the 20th century).
Due to some very peculiar agreements that would be unimaginable anywhere else on earth, this tiny country is currently divided into parts in which this external third of the population has been granted almost complete self-rule as “The West Bank” (actually, the provinces of Judea and Samaria) and “The Gaza Strip.” While these two areas are governed completely separately and somewhat differently, the rest of the world, out of ease or ignorance, refers to them together as the Palestinian Authority (PA).
It doesn’t work.
For a number of reasons that have been analyzed to death already, this artificial construct, the Palestinian Authority, is already a failed state, long before it has even achieved statehood.
In election after election, the residents elect the terrorist leaders of Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), as their representatives (and even when they aren’t elected, these terrorists just seize power anyway, as Hamas has done in Gaza, without serious objection from their subjects).
The area they control is governed exactly as one would expect places ruled by terrorists to be governed: with minimal emphasis on economic opportunity, living conditions and the rule of law, and instead, with primary emphasis on political power and a permanent state of war.
As the current conflict – a particularly hot moment within the constant conflict that has lasted the past century, to be honest – attracts more of the world’s attention than usual, the dream remedy known as “the two-state solution” returns to the fore.
Now, what all students of the Middle East should know already, though they often need to be reminded, is that the current map is already the result of a two-state solution. The British Mandate for Palestine of a century ago was first promised to be all Israel, then was debated, derailed, and divided as the years went on, as statecraft was practiced in country clubs and far-off retreats. The Mandate wound up split into an Arab state and a Jewish one, the Arab one substantially larger, with seaports in the Gulf of Aqaba, the Jewish one far smaller, but blessed at least with seaports on the Mediterranean.
Via Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The current map, in short, is the result of the two-state solution of the 1940s. Part of Israel – the lion’s share, in fact, geographically — has already been carved out to become a Palestinian state – first called Trans Jordan, now simply known as Jordan.
So, when people say they favor a two-state solution, the most honest response is to say, “It’s already been done; it’s already in place.” We forgive them for their incomplete understanding of history; we shake our heads at their naivete, but we accept it as the currency of the age, and we move on.
When foreign politicians – such as Joseph Biden and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken – publicly call for a two-state solution as the only true answer to the problem, they are not challenged.
They should be.
When called for today, the two-state solution is in fact a euphemism, not for a peaceful, unicorn-powered world of kumbaya-singing hippies, but for the one path sure to terminate the nation of Israel once and for all.
To favor a new two-state solution today – in other words, to favor permanently turning over some large portion of Gaza, Judea and Samaria to the politicians of the PA, really means that the advocates favor the most radical and destructive of positions. We know who such a new state would elect to rule it – the killers who lead Hamas, PIJ, and Fatah. To give them a state would mean to formally, intentionally, add another rogue state to the community of nations, as if the world didn’t have more than enough Somalias, Cubas and Venezuelas already.
We know where most of the lines would be drawn. There is no way to do it that would receive Arab support that didn’t leave Israel with the same kind of virtually indefensible borders that it had before 1967. It’s easy to forget, but when one looks at a map, it’s undeniable: the Arab geographical demands would leave the area in the same condition it was in before 1967, a condition that made a war unavoidable. To give the so-called Palestinians a nation along such lines is to render Israel indefensible, bisected in the middle by a strip of land so narrow, the country could be split in two in the first day of a conflict.
We know how the residents of the PA behave along their borders today. Ceasefire or no, they cannot resist the urge to lob chunks of concrete over the wall in hopes of crushing innocent Israeli pedestrians. They fire rockets at population centers, send suicide bombers into restaurants and nightclubs, shoot mortars at strip malls and buses. To give them a formal state would be to formally and permanently accept that this would forever be life along that border; it would never change.
We know human nature. All actions, all behavior, is precedent for the future. Knowing how the PA has behaved, reneging on agreement after agreement, ceasefire after ceasefire, especially since the unwise days of the Oslo Accords, the very idea of rewarding the PA’s continuous treachery with formal, permanent statehood should be unthinkable. To give them a state would be to set a global precedent that 30 years of intifadas and relentless bombings are acceptable, that the very classification of both one’s own civilians and one’s rival’s civilians as legitimate cannon fodder is no barrier to global approval of one’s cause.
We know with whom the PA leadership would side in the global struggle against Islamofascist terrorism. At a time when we have made such great strides toward peace in the Middle East – with last fall’s groundbreaking accords between the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco and Israel – there is true progress in the goal of isolating Iran and its jihadist acolytes on the world stage. To permanently reward the PA with statehood would be to reverse this course, and instead chalk up a significant victory for the terrorist psychopaths of Tehran.
Not that Messrs. Biden or Blinken would ever admit the above. It’s entirely possible they haven’t thought it through enough to realize it themselves.
But this is what it means to support the two-state solution today: To reward violence with statehood. To grant Iran a new ally. To send a message to terrorists worldwide that terror is indeed the path to victory. And to condemn the innocent civilians of the PA to permanent poverty, the innocent civilians of Israel to a permanent state of war, and both to an endless life of fear.
We must stop showing polite respect for the advocates of a two-state solution. It is high time we recognize the reality of their stance, and censure them for espousing positions so diametrically opposed to both American interests and the interests of the peoples most directly affected.
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