By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Debating Israel

The history of what is now Palestine and Israel is a complicated one that started when the Hashemite Sherif Hussein and notably also his son Faisal I bin Hussein teamed up with the British, the result of which was that for a brief period in 1920, Faisal I bin Hussein became the King of Syria which supposed to have included what is now Palestine and Israel.

Moving forward today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in Israel with a narrow, extreme right-wing coalition has shattered even the illusion of a two-state solution. Members of his new government have not been shy about stating their views on what Israel is and what it could be in all the territories it controls: a Greater Israel defined not just as a Jewish state but one in which the law enshrines Jewish supremacy over all Palestinians who remain there. As a result, it is no longer possible to avoid confronting a one-state reality.

A cogent postmortem of the two-state solution would have begun by asking whether it was alive. The answer is no. The reason relates not only to the 450,000 Israelis who have settled beyond the borders established after the 1967 war and the rise of the Israeli right but also—and more fundamentally—to Palestinian opposition. Well before a single settlement was established, the Palestinians violently rejected the two-state offers of 1937 and 1947. Their rejection of two-state plans in 2000, 2001, and 2008 merely reiterated this long-standing Palestinian policy.

Because they deny that the Jews constitute a people, Palestinian leaders have never accepted the United States’ formula of “two states for two peoples.” They never committed to the “end of claims, end of conflict” principle integral to any peace agreement, and they never ceased seeking to destroy Israel’s Jewish character through the return of millions of Palestinian refugees. No Palestinian leader has ever demonstrated the will or the ability to reconcile with Jewish statehood, and none would likely survive long if they did. The Palestinians have not indicated that they intend to build the kinds of stable, transparent institutions that form the foundations of a modern state, that they remain committed to creating the “secular, democratic” polity envisioned by the charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or that they can sustain sovereignty over any areas allotted to them without ushering in chaos. Realizing these facts, many Israeli leftists have concluded that the Palestinians never wanted a two-state solution; they wanted only Israel’s dissolution.

A clear-sighted examination of the demise of the two states would also have traced Israeli public opinion from the early 1990s, when most Israelis favored that outcome, to today, when far fewer do. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005, which the Israeli government undertook in the hope of peace, yielded only thousands of terrorist rockets targeting Israeli civilians. The glow of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s was similarly eclipsed by the suicide bombings of the second intifada between 2000 and 2005 and the murder of 1,000 Israelis—more than ten times the losses the United States suffered in the 9/11 attacks, as a proportion of the population.

Finally, a sound analysis would have acknowledged the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in history and the lack of legitimate and capable Palestinian leadership. And it would have accepted that even centrist Israelis would rather live with a status quo that has proved corrosive but sustainable for 56 years than die in a failed multinational state such as Iraq, Lebanon, or Syria.

If Palestinians are discouraged by Israeli settlement building, Israelis are disgusted by Palestinian textbooks that teach children to slaughter Jews. Consequently, many Israelis recognize what the philosopher Micah Goodman calls “Catch-67,” the belief that although the absence of a Palestinian state might challenge Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, the creation of a Palestinian state threatens its very existence. A Palestinian state run by a president who for the past 17 years has been too frightened of his fellow Palestinians to stand for reelection is likely to devolve into a Gaza-like terrorist state overnight, bringing every Israeli town within the rocket, perhaps even rifle range.

But not just the authors’ analysis is flawed, so too are their recommendations. They believe that the United States can force the country to forfeit Jewish independence by slashing the annual $3.8 billion in aid it sends to Israel. The notion is ludicrous. Although Washington once supplied almost half of Israel’s defense budget, that share is now less than one-fifth. And U.S. aid to Israel remains broadly popular among Americans, many thousands of whom work in industries it subsidizes.

Similarly risible is the authors’ suggestion that Israel could be pressured into relinquishing its Jewish identity if Washington ceased defending it at the United Nations. In 2022, the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel more frequently than they condemned all other countries combined; the threat of a more lopsided record would hardly prod Israelis into sacrificing their identity. And browbeating an ally will not help Washington bolster its dwindling influence in the Middle East, underscored in early 2023 by China’s mediation of a rapprochement deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

A better course would have been for the authors to consider how even a diplomatically depleted United States could help the cause of peace. It could seek to strengthen the Palestinian economy and infrastructure, launch technological and infrastructure projects, and help increase the number of Palestinian workers entering Israel each day. Simultaneously, the United States could resist efforts to change the status quo—precisely the Biden administration’s position—until political conditions allow for stronger initiatives. Meanwhile, viable alternatives to the two-state solution could be considered, including plans for federations, condominiums, and trusteeships.

The authors ignore all such options. Although they stress the need for “possible alternatives,” they explore the only patently unworkable plan. Instead of striving to understand Israel’s complex reality, they rail against “Jewish supremacy,” a term coined by the Nazis and later adopted by the Ku Klux Klan; implicitly support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel; and cite Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and professors of Middle East studies—all considered blatantly anti-Israel by many—to label Israel an “apartheid state.” Failure to grant full citizenship and equal rights to all Palestinians in the occupied territories “will complicate Israel’s relations with the rest of the world,” the authors claim, ignoring Israel’s burgeoning ties with China, India, and African countries. By refusing to assign virtually any responsibility to the Palestinians—for rejecting peace offers, valorizing terror, and sending payments to imprisoned murderers of Jews—the authors reduce them to props in an Israeli morality play.

The article should be required reading in any course on the United States' tragic history in the Middle East. It helps explain how American policymakers who think like the authors could convince themselves that democracy could be imposed on the region by force, that the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was a peacemaker, and that Iran could become a responsible regional power. It shows how failure to confront Middle Eastern realities impedes peace and often leads to disaster.

 

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