Let's Get Real: Re-evaluating the Two-State Approach

President Obama is insisting on the creation of Palestine with a border separating it from Israel based on the ’67 lines plus swaps. In doing so he is ignoring United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which grants Israel the right to secure and recognized borders and does not demand a full retreat to the ’67 lines. He is also threatening to allow the UNSC to impose such borders on Israel, thereby circumventing his oft-stated insistence that all matters are to be negotiated between the parties.

Ben-Dror Yemini, writing in YNET, which is left of center and Netanyahu’s arch enemy, makes the case, “Given the upheaval in the Arab world, Obama needs to ask himself why he thinks a Palestinian state is viable right now; meanwhile, Israel’s right needs to understand that its actions are leading to a bi-national state.”

“According to Hamas’ official television station, ‘Christians, Communists and Jews must be eliminated down to the very last man.’ Hamas has the support of 61 percent of the Palestinians. Even if we assume that support for Hamas will fall, Hamas will take a violent stand against its opponents. Some of the Hamas leaders are talking about ‘the conquest of Rome and Andalusia.’

“Is Obama listening? Does Obama know that Hamas won the last election? Is it hard for Obama to understand that a Palestinian state would mean, in all likelihood, another Jihad state and more bloodshed? What gives him the illusion that a Palestinian state will become a model of stability? Where is there stability under one of the Jihad movements?

“Will Qassem Soleimani sit by quietly and allow peace to flourish? And what kind of agreement could be achieved anyway? Is there a Palestinian leader – even just one – who is willing to accept the peace proposals submitted by Obama, J Street or Meretz? After all, over the past decade or two, the Palestinians have rejected every offer of a two-state solution. So what agreement is Obama talking about?

“What is needed, therefore, is a reevaluation. We don’t need another failure. And this reassessment must take place both in Washington and in Jerusalem. A sober look at the situation will lead to the obvious conclusion – that under the current geopolitical circumstances, talk of a Palestinian state, which is likely to turn into a Hamas state, is delusional and evidence of a detachment from reality.”

Sounds a lot like the case that Netanyahu always makes. But contrary to Netanyahu, Yemini avers that “A peace settlement is a necessity.”

Yes, given Israel’s increasing defamation and de-legitimation, a peace settlement is needed but it is not available even on Obama’s terms. Furthermore any “peace settlement” would not be bankable or dependable. As Bibi never tires of repeating, although in another context, no deal is better than a bad deal. And that’s why he prefers to manage the conflict, rather than to solve it.

Yemini continues:

“The Palestinians need to be given a political horizon and hope – by means of an agreement that will be implemented gradually and cautiously, in keeping with changing circumstances. But for now, a Palestinian state is a recipe for endless bloodshed.”

How blind can Yemini be? The only political horizon the Palestinians will accept is one which wipes Israel off the map. Their goal is not to found a state, but to destroy a state. It is a total lie to say that that “Palestinians need to be given a political horizon and hope”. What they need is to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and to be liberated from their leadership who misdirects them and steals them blind. Even so he writes, “But for now, a Palestinian state is a recipe for endless bloodshed.”

Nevertheless, he argues that this doesn’t make the Right, right.

“Does this mean that the Israeli right is right? Far from so. The right is leading Israel into a reality of one large state. Rather than a Jewish state, Israel would become a bi-national one. Mixing populations that demand an expression of national independence – with each population group having a different ethos, a different language, a different religion, a different culture – is a recipe for bloodshed.

“This is what is happening in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. This is exactly what is happening now in eastern Ukraine. This is what happened in the 1990s in Yugoslavia. A brotherhood of nations was a nice idea in theory. But Yugoslavia split up, after years of bloodshed, into seven entities. It doesn’t work and it didn’t work in the heart of Europe.

“Why does the right want to force this mixture onto Israel?”

Martin Sherman shares this belief and accordingly, he is adamantly against giving citizenship to qualified Arabs in Judea and Samaria, were Israel to extend sovereignty to these lands as proposed by Caroline Glick and originally proposed by Mike Wise.  He writes “The only thing more dangerous, delusional and disastrous than the Left’s proposal for a two-state solution, is the proposal now bandied about by the Right – for a one-state solution.”

Instead he advocates for The Humanitarian Solution, as opposed to the Two State Solution which he calls "the political solution." In it he proposes to pay the Arabs to leave voluntarily.

Yes, it’s time for a reevaluation.

In Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech of 2009, in which he supported "two states for two peoples", he argued "The simple truth is that the root of the conflict has been - and remains - the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish People to its own state in its historical homeland.... The fundamental condition for ending the conflict is the public, binding and sincere Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People." In addition, he adds the caveats that Obama ignores, namely that the state be demilitarized and that Israel retains defensible borders.

Without this recognition, there can be no peace. That is why Israel insists on it.

Some progress seems to have been negotiated between Obama and Netanyahu pursuant to which the United States provided a cool reception on Friday to a new French initiative on a new Security Council resolution to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

"We're not going to get ahead of any decisions about what the United States would do with regard to potential action at the UN Security Council," a U.S. official told AFP, hours after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced the plans.

"We continue to engage with key stakeholders, including the French, to find a way forward that advances the interest we and others share in a two-state solution," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Of course this wasn’t a freebie.  Netanyahu’s announcement canceling the proposed 1500 units in Har Homa, in Jerusalem, and his announcement releasing the withheld tax money to the PA were probably the price paid.

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