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The Gaza War Won’t End by Imposing a "Solution" on Palestinians
The place to start is to demand a cease-fire and end the crippling occupation. Palestinian views should be heard. The burden should be placed on Israel and its policies that created this mess and not on victims.
Nov 18, 2024
One century ago, when Western European powers were planning to carve up the Arab East, the US attempted to convince them to take a different path. Supporting the belief that the peoples recently freed from colonial rule should have the right to self-determination, the US sent a commission of prominent Americans to survey Arab public opinion to discover what they did and did not want for their future. The commission concluded that the overwhelming majority of Arabs rejected division or partition of their region, European mandates over them, and the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. What they hoped for was a unitary Arab state.
The commission report also warned of conflict if the planned partition moved forward. The British Lord Balfour rejected these findings saying that the attitudes of the indigenous Arab population meant little to him, especially when weighed against the importance of the Zionist movement.
In the end, Lord Balfour got his way, and the dire prediction of the US commission has been borne out. The Arab East was partitioned, and a Mandate was established in Palestine, which the British used to foster Jewish immigration leading to the establishment of Israel. Since then, Palestinians have been dispossessed, displaced, and subjected to unceasing violence. Because they have resisted, the last century has been one continuous conflict culminating in the unfolding genocide in Gaza and crushing repression on the West Bank.
At present, the problem faced by the Palestinian people is that during the past three decades they have lost even more control over the circumstances of their lives. Since signing the Oslo Accords, Israel has taken steps to make impossible the establishment of a unified Palestinian state in the territories they occupied in 1967. The Israelis have severed what they call East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, distorting its economy and forcing its population to become dependent on Israel for employment and services. In the West Bank, the Israelis followed a plan to expand settlements and use “Jewish only” roads, infrastructure, checkpoints, and security zones to divide the Palestinian territory into small controlled areas. Gaza has been de-developed and subjected to economic strangulation for decades. It too has been cut off from the rest of Palestine. The dream of what had been hoped for after Oslo has been crushed.
Still, the Western world pays little attention to the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Instead, led by the US, plans are being put forward to govern the future of the Palestinians without the consent of the governed. What is being proposed is a Gaza ruled by a “reformed” Palestinian Authority, with security provided by an Arab-Islamic force, and nothing more than a commitment to negotiate a future two-state solution. The proposal is a non-starter for two reasons.
Despite being designed to meet Israel’s needs, Israelis themselves have rejected the terms of this “day after” concept. They refuse to leave Gaza or allow Palestinians to return to areas of Gaza from which they have been “cleansed.” The Israelis also reject the role of outside forces to provide security. And they are refusing to entertain any discussion of a Palestinian state that involves connecting the divided Palestinian areas, especially if that includes ceding land, removing settlers, surrendering security control, or expanding the role of the Palestinian Authority.
More importantly the “day after” plans fail to take into account Palestinian views.
Instead of prioritizing what Israel (or the US) wants or requires and imposing plans on the Palestinians to meet Israel’s security needs, a shift is needed to an approach that challenges those Israeli policies that have led to Palestinian displacement and anger; distorted Palestinian political and economic development; and made it impossible to build Palestinian institutions that can earn respect.
The place to start is to demand a cease-fire and end the crippling occupation. Palestinian views should be heard. The burden should be placed on Israel and its policies that created this mess and not on victims.
There are some encouraging signs that public opinion in the US is shifting in a more pro-Palestinian direction. Americans are more supportive of Palestinians, and more opposed to Israeli policies that violate Palestinian rights. They are receptive to changing policies that would help Palestinians. But this where the conversation gets stuck, precisely because there is no clear Palestinian vision for the future and no leadership that can articulate it.
With this in mind, a group of Palestinian businessmen commissioned Zogby Research Services to measure the impact of Israeli policies in Gaza, the threats facing those on the West Bank, and to ask Palestinians what they identify as the best path forward to achieve their rights and peace.
What the poll reveals is that despite the different circumstances the Israelis have imposed on the Palestinians in each of the three regions under their control, there remains the common threads of identity, desire for freedom, and unity that continues to bind them together. What they want is that the knee of the Israeli occupation be lifted off their backs so that they can finally have freedom and independence in land of their own. Because they have lost faith, in varying degrees, with the performance of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, they favor: holding a popular referendum to elect a new generation of leadership that can advance a new vision for Palestine; unifying the Palestinian ranks to create a functioning government that can earn respect and recognition; while continuing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in international bodies.
Of course, all of this must be developed further, but it is the better path to take precisely because it recognizes that instead of continuing to impose “solutions” on Palestinians, the place to begin is to ask them what they want, listen to what they say, and then work to make their aspirations a reality.
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Here's the Truth: It Is the Lack of a Two-State Solution That Most Threatens Israel
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.
Oct 06, 2024
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.
Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing “to guarantee Israel’s security” in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars.
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.
The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.
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.Keep ReadingShow Less
Palestinians Say US Responsible for Latest 'Massacre' of Children in Gaza
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, said Sunday after bombing that killed 100 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza City.
Aug 11, 2024
The office of the Palestinian Authority's president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to 'pieces,' according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency's spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration "responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel."
Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its "blind support" to Israel "that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly."
As Common Dreams previously reported, the bombing of the al-Tabin school complex came just hours after the U.S. State Department announced the release of $3.5 billion in military aid for Israel and made new weapons transfers available to help refresh the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stockpiles.
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, in an online post Sunday. "The ones used yesterday in the Al-Tabin School massacre sliced bodies to the point of making them unrecognizable. They are now identified by weight: 70kg bag = 1 adult. Revolting."
The head of Gaza's Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that the three bombs dropped on the school weighed 2,000 pounds each, matching the size of the MK-84 munitions provided by the thousands to the IDF by the United States over the last year.
"Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian killed among them women, children and older people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Saturday in response to the attack. "It's time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end. We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity."
The UN human rights office said the latest attack was "at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN [the agency] has recorded since 4 July. These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children."
Responding to claims by the IDF that the bombing was aimed at militants it claimed were using the facility, OHCHR said in a statement that "co-location by armed groups of military objectives with civilians" does not release Israel from its "obligation to comply strictly with [international humanitarian law], including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations. Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population it has forcibly displaced with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter."
Asked about the situation in Gaza on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, said during a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona that she and President Joe Biden have been working "around the clock" to secure a ceasefire deal that would see the fighting end and Israeli hostages held by Hamas returned safely.
Specifically about Saturday's bombing of the school complex, Harris said, "Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed."
"Yet again, there are far too many civilians who've been killed. Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas. But as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties."
-- Kamala Harris on Gaza pic.twitter.com/Ir0bysiFT9
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 10, 2024
Despite global outrage over Saturday's attack, the Israeli military overnight Sunday issued new evacuation orders for southern Gaza.
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