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two-state solution
In the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the US Has Not Been a Force for Peace
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force.
Dec 12, 2024
The retiring United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process has insightfully identified a major reason the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues to boil and to entail widespread death and destruction.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland criticized the international community for relying on short-term fixes such as improving quality of life in occupied territory or diversions such as seeking peace deals between Israel and other Arab states. The crescendo of bloodshed during the past year underscores the ineffectiveness of such approaches.
Needed but not employed was a concerted and sustained diplomatic effort to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state. “What we have seen,” said Wennesland, “is the failure of dealing with the real conflict, the failure of politics and diplomacy.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Much of Wennesland’s criticism was directed at the international community as a whole, but his points would apply especially to the United States, the patron of the party to the conflict that controls the land in question and resists Palestinian sovereignty.
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force. This was true with the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel, the first full-scale Arab-Israeli war after Israel conquered in 1967 what is now the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights.
The central feature of former U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy was a huge airlift of military supplies to Israel. Nixon and Kissinger, viewing the conflict in Cold War terms, considered their policy a success by enabling Israel to turn the tide of battle while shutting the Soviet Union out of a meaningful regional role.
Fast forward to today, and the emphasis is still on military escalation. Israel, in its vain effort to “destroy Hamas” and strike down adversaries on its northern border, is more committed than ever to increasing death and destruction as its default approach toward any security problem. The United States has abetted this approach by gifting $18 billion in munitions to Israel since October 2023.
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria does nothing to discourage these tendencies and may instead encourage them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the events in Syria with celebration and self-congratulations, claiming that Assad’s fall was due to earlier Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah and Iran. The change of regime was an occasion for Israel increasing rather than decreasing its offensive military activity in Syria, including seizure of a previously demilitarized buffer zone along the Golan frontier and airstrikes in and around Damascus on the very weekend that rebels were entering the capital.
During the intervening years since the 1973 war, a couple of U.S. presidents did make genuine efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the necessary follow-up—largely the responsibility of subsequent administrations—did not occur.
After former President Jimmy Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin pocketed the resulting peace treaty with Egypt while ignoring the part of the accords dealing with the Palestinians. After former President Bill Clinton in 2000 laid on the table his "parameters" for a deal, the two sides came closer than ever to a peace agreement, but an Israeli election ended the negotiations and the new Israeli government did not return to the table.
The current impending change in U.S. administrations offers little or no hope for positive change on this subject. After social media posts by President-elect Donald Trump that said nothing about diplomacy and instead talked about “all hell to pay” if Israeli hostages were not released by his inauguration on January 20, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “strong statement.”
Ignoring that Israel has both the power and the land and is inflicting many times more suffering on innocent civilians than anything Hamas has done, Netanyahu said that Trump’s statement “clarifies that there is one party responsible for this situation and that is Hamas.”
Echoes of a 1973-style Cold War mentality can be heard today in much discussion of U.S. policy toward the Middle East and overwhelmingly in Israeli rhetoric. The main bête noire this time is Iran, reducing the influence of which is a constantly invoked rationale for hawkish and military-heavy policies.
The Middle East is not the only region that has demonstrated the fallacy of the notion of deescalating a conflict through military escalation. As Wennesland puts it, “Politics is what ends war, and diplomacy is what ends war.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Nor does it mean seeking agreements for the sake of agreements, motivated in large part by a desire to wave supposed accomplishments before a domestic constituency. This was true of the so-called "Abraham Accords," which were not peace agreements at all but instead were largely about Israel not having to make peace to enjoy formal relations with other regional states, with which Israel was not at war anyway.
It was true as well of the enormous priority that the Biden administration put on seeking a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia, which, even if it had materialized in the form the administration envisioned, would not have served either U.S. interests or the cause of Middle East peace. The administration’s effort along this line was counterproductive not only in further reducing any Israeli incentive to make peace with the Palestinians but also, as President Joe Biden himself admitted, in probably being an additional motivation for Hamas to attack Israel last October.
As for what diplomacy does mean, it includes the concerted and sustained use of diplomatic energy, policymaking bandwidth, and political capital to address directly the core issues underlying a conflict and bring about a result that makes a difference. In the Middle East context, that result needs to include Palestinian self-determination and an end to occupation.
Correct understanding of diplomacy also speaks to what a foreign policy of restraint means. It does not mean isolationism. In areas such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can mean an increase in diplomatic involvement and in the priority that policymakers give to the goal being sought. As the restraint-minded Quincy Institute puts it in its statement of principles, the United States “should engage with the world” and pursue peace “through the vigorous practice of diplomacy.”
Much damage from the policies that Wennesland laments has been done and cannot easily be reversed. The Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied territories, which tsk-tsks from the United States have done nothing to stop, have led many observers—though not Wennesland—to believe that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
But even if the requirement of Palestinian self-determination could be achieved only through a one-state solution that provides equal rights for all, the same principle—that peace can be achieved only through vigorous diplomacy and not military escalation—applies.
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Emboldened by Trump Win, Israeli Minister Vows West Bank Annexation in 2025
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Nov 12, 2024
Anticipating even greater U.S. support following Republican President-elect Donald Trump's White House return in January, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday ordered officials to prepare to illegally annex the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 2025.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionist Party. "The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria."
Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank and is used by proponents of annexation and the creation of a Greater Israel, which would include all of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon and parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move," Smotrich said.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has repeatedly denied annexationist ambitions during the tenure of U.S. President Joe Biden—signaled that annexation would be back on the agenda in light of Trump's victory, according to Israeli state broadcaster Kan.
Smotrich said Monday that he has directed officials in the Ministry of Defense and Civil Administration "to actually prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty" to the lands Israel has occupied and colonized after invading and conquering the West Bank and other Palestinian territories in 1967.
Israel's occupation and settlements are illegal under international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice in The Hague—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—in July issued an advisory opinion affirming that the 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of apartheid.
Smotrich declared his intention to work "with the new administration of President Trump and with the international community to implement Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
In a swipe at the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Israel and provided diplomatic cover for its war on Gaza and against Palestinian statehood—Smotrich said Monday that "we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over settlements in Judea and Samaria" during Trump's first term. "Now, it's time to act," he asserted.
While Netanyahu's government may find a willing partner in Trump—who calls himself "the best friend Israel has ever had"—most of the rest of the world is staunchly opposed to Israeli annexation. Nearly 150 nations recognize Palestinian statehood; in May, the United Nations General Assembly voted 143-9 to upgrade Palestine's U.N. status to observer state.
In September, European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned that "not only is there no pause in the war in Gaza, but what looms on the horizon is the extension of the conflict to the West Bank, where radical members of the Israeli government—Netanyahu's government—try to make it impossible to create a future Palestinian state."
Israel has already unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. While the U.N. and most countries' governments consider these moves—and Israeli settlements in the annexed territories—unlawful, the first Trump administration recognized them as legal. In February, the Biden administration reversed the so-called "Pompeo doctrine" and reverted to the State Department's legal opinion from 1978-2019: that settlements are inconsistent with international law.
Netanyahu has openly boasted about thwarting the so-called "two-state solution" and has repeatedly advocated full Israeli control of Palestine.
"From every area we evacuate we have received terrible terror against us. It happened in southern Lebanon, it happened in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria," the prime minister said earlier this year. "The state of Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan River. Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea."
More than 700,000 Jewish settlers have colonized the West Bank since 1967, according to Israeli estimates.
Settlers often destroy property and attack Palestinians, sometimes in mobs that carry out deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into fleeing so their land can be stolen. As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 900 Palestinians including over 200 children in the West Bank since January 2023, according to the most recent figures from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Last month, Smotrich and other far-right senior Israeli officials including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke at a conference advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—which numerous critics say is already underway—to make way for Jewish recolonization of the embattled coastal enclave.
Proponents pointed to West Bank settlements as the example to emulate. But Smotrich has even greater ambitions.
"It is written," he said in a recent interiew, "that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus."
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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
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