The Illusionary ‘Two-State Solution’

Every time one hears American and European political leaders insist that Israel embrace a two-state solution, a number of questions come to mind. Is this an attempt to appease their Muslim citizens, some of whom engage in violent protests against Israel? In the US, is it an effort by Democrat officials to demonstrate their fealty to the cause of the Arabs in Gaza and Judea and Samaria in order to gain votes in this election year? Or is it ignorance of the origins of the two-state solution, and why it continues to be rejected by the Arabs.

 To understand why the two-state solution is an illusion and a deflection, and ultimately an impediment to providing a real solution to the conflict, let us examine why the two-state was proposed and why it has never been implemented.

In response the six-month-long Arab general strike demanding an end to Jewish immigration in 1936, the British government appointed The Palestine Royal Commission (known as the Peel Commission head by Lord Peel), to investigate the causes of unrest among Palestinian Arabs and Jews, and suggest modifications to the British Mandate.

In July 1937, the British issued the Palestine Royal Peel Commission that concluded: “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State.”

When the Peel Commission recommended partition, the Arabs repudiated the British plan. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, said that the defeat of the partition plan would not placate the Arabs. They would not cease the war until all the Zionists were killed and Palestine became a completely Arab State. Nothing could divert them from this solution.

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed partition would deprive the Arabs of all of their rights. ”No single Arab will ever consider, let alone accept it.”  They did not regard the Jews “a party to the problem, they are mere thugs and usurpers who came under the shadow of spears and trickery to a land which does not belong to them.…”

On November 29, 1947, two-thirds of the members of the UN General Assembly voted for a resolution to partition Palestine into two independent states—one Arab and one Jewish, which had been recommended by the majority of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). Thirty-three states voted in favor of the resolution, 13 against with ten abstaining.

Before the UN voted in support of a Jewish state, historian Jeffrey Herf notes, an American working as a research analyst for the Central Intelligence Group, a successor to the OSS and forerunner to the CIA in Beirut, reported about the Muslim Brotherhood activities in Palestine and the danger the group posed for the future: Alba M. Kerr, an American analyst for the Central Intelligence Group, reported about the Muslim Brotherhood activities in Palestine and the danger they posed for the future:

“The significance of this new development is two-fold, for this is the first direct evidence of an organized Islamic movement and therefore it constitutes a threat to permanent peace since no harmony can exist where political differences are based on sectarian differences. Already Maronites are pleading for protection against this absorption, and young progressive Arab nationalists here deplore the rapid growth of the Muslim Brotherhood because they realize the need for Arab unity and want to abolish sectarian bonds; so there is a strong possibility of a Holy War (Jihad)….”

When the Jewish Agency representatives David Horowitz and Aubrey Eban, later Abba Eban, made a final attempt to seek a compromise in a meeting with Arab League secretary Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha on September 16, 1947. Pasha told them candidly:

The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It’s likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand, we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions…. At all events, the problem now is only soluble by the force of arms.”

The Arab UN delegates rejected the resolution, refused to be obligated by the decision and reserved the right to take appropriate actions to thwart its implementation. Cairo’s Al-Ahram added: “The Palestine Arabs will launch a relentless war to repel this attack [partition plan] on their country, especially as they know that all the Arab countries will back and assist them, supplying them with men, money and ammunition.”

After David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel a Jewish state on May 14, 1948, the military forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon and a group from Saudi Arabia launched a united attack to destroy Israel. Six thousand people, one percent of Israel’s Jewish population, were killed in the war for Israel’s independence.

Arab failure to destroy Israel by force has led the Arabs to adopt the Marxist-Leninist “people’s war” strategy employing political and military methods used so effectively in China and Vietnam, according to historian Joel Fishman. Since the late 1960s, the political campaign has sought to divide Israeli society and delegitimize the country through incitement in Arab textbooks and media, and demonize her at the UN by branding Israel a racist and pariah state.

Nation-building and state creation are not what the Palestinian Arab leadership has ever wanted to pursue. For almost a century, they have preferred to have their citizens in Judea, Samaria and Gaza remain hapless “while they bask in international sympathy and enrich themselves from the proceeds of their self-inflicted plight.”

Furthermore, as Efraim Karsh noted, achieving statehood would have ruined this “paradise” by instantly transforming the Palestinian Arabs from being the world’s supreme victim, into a conventional nation-state, thus ending “decades of unprecedented international indulgence.” It would have also exposed the PLO’s fallacious claim of being “’the sole representative of the Palestinian people’” (already debunked by Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory in Gaza) and would have compelled any governing power to accept “for the first time in Palestinian [Arab] history, the principles of accountability and transparency.”

One of the reasons for the failure to establish a nation-state can be found in a conversation Arafat had with former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania toward the end of the 1970s. At the meeting, Arafat said that “the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state…. A Palestinian state would be a failure from the first day.” Creating a state “was only something for a future generations.” Having a government would have impeded “the Palestinian struggle against Israel,” he further argued, since all governments are limited by laws and international agreements.

“A war of terror is your only realistic weapon,” Ceausescu advised Arafat. While operating in the shadows, Arafat could orchestrate limitless operations throughout the world while keeping his name and government “pristine and unspoiled, ready for negotiations and further negotiations.” He could then denounce the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians with feigned outrage, which is precisely what he did according to Muhammad Al-Daya, Arafat’s longtime bodyguard. In a BBC TV Arabic interview Al-Daya revealed that Arafat would lie when denouncing bombings in Israel. Arafat “would condemn the bombing in his own special way, saying: ‘I am against the killing of civilians.’ But that wasn’t true,” said Al-Daya.

Promoting a two-state solution obscures the fact that the present administration has done nothing constructive to free the hostages and instead obstructs Israel from winning the war against its enemies. As law professor Avi Bell explains:  “Biden has never made any efforts to force the release of the hostages, and if he were serious about the hostages, he wouldn’t repeatedly say (as [Kamala] Harris does) that Hamas is entitled to hold on to the hostages without penalty until Israel agrees to a ceasefire deal.

 His policy aim is to reach a ceasefire, get Israeli troops out of Gaza, and hand Gaza over to a Fatah-Hamas consortium of Palestinian terrorists as a down-payment on a “two-state solution,” while forcibly restraining Israel to prevent Iran from suffering any real harm for its proxy war/terrorism/proliferation, and hopefully, to topple the Netanyahu government and push his camp to defeat in the subsequent elections. For Biden-Harris, the hostages are tools and PR props to be used in achieving those political aims, and Biden-Harris have given every indication that release of hostages outside of steps that achieve those aims is not particularly desired.”