In the face of a seemingly intractable war between Hamas and Israel, two fantasies have arisen as “solutions” that will being peace. Neither will work, and we know they won’t work.
The first is that if Israel only approved a two-state solution—one Palestinian and the other Israeli—this would help end the war. But that’s pure nonsense for a variety of reasons. Do I need to list them? First, the Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution, and never have; they’ve rejected it repeatedly. They want a one-state solution, and that one state would be Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea. What about the Jews? Well, they wouldn’t survive long in such a state, for, to the Palestinians, the object of a one-state solution is the end of Israel.
Nor do the Israelis want a Palestinian state abutting their country, for they now have a well-deserved fear that this would simply continue the terrorism from Palestinians that’s plagued Israel for decades. Hamas, as you know, have threatened to repeat an October 7th like even over and over again.
Which brings up the second question of who would govern a Palestinian state, and the proposed but equally futile solution: the Palestinian Authority.
That’s risible for several reasons. If Hamas still exists at the end of this war, then that’s who would be in charge, for the people of Gaza, as well as Palestinians in the West Bank, prefer Hamas over the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA might be marginally better than Hamas at running a Palestinian state, but it’s not an honest broker: the PA supports terrorism as well, also aims at a single state, and has the infamous “pay for slay” program that rewards Palestinian terrorists who kill Jews.
In truth, neither side now wants a two-state solution, and neither side has an honest broker to negotiate one. Nevertheless, ignoramuses like Blinken, egged on by Biden, somehow think that the magic words “two states” will bring lasting peace. That’s insane. (I once promoted the two-state solution myself, but that was before October 7.)
Now, in an article at The Hill, Nitsana Darshan-Leinter, an Israeli attorney and human-rights lawyer who defends victims of terrorism, explains why one solution that liberals are now suggesting—governance of a Gaza (and probably the new Palestinian state) by the PA—is hopeless.
(The Hill is a widely-read nonpartisan site, and, according to Wikipedia, is second only to CNN in online readership for a political venue.)
Here’s Darshan-Leitner’s argument, which begins with some history:
. . . Most Western leaders, including President Biden, are calling for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to assume control of the Gaza Strip and its 2.2 million inhabitants. Pinning Gaza’s future on the PA is a recipe for surefire disaster.
The PA was the byproduct of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the wishful thinking that terrorists could be rehabilitated into becoming responsible statesmen. Then-President Bill Clinton, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, hoped that an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict along with billions of dollars of American and European Union tax money could convince, and bribe, Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and the heads of the other Palestinian fronts to test drive self-governance and create a peaceful future of coexistence for their people.
The U.S. leader hoped that Arafat would abandon his AK-47 for the democratic principles of Washington, Jefferson and Madison. Yitzhak Rabin dreamed that Oslo would provide the Palestinian people with the rewards of living side-by-side with the Jewish state. Both men were wrong, and their optimism resulted in 30 years of incessant conflict and unspeakable suffering.
In 1994, as part of the Oslo Accords, Israel ceded governance of the Gaza Strip and major cities in the West Bank to the newly established Palestinian Authority. Arafat, the head of the PLO’s Fatah faction, was the self-appointed PA president for life and apparently had no intention of swapping land for peace, even after he was repeatedly offered the framework for a two-state solution, including East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Arafat’s PA never ended its war against Israel, even though under the treaty they had become Israel’s partners for peace.
Since 1994, the State Department’s USAID has sent more than $5.5 billion to prop up the PA. The CIA and other federal agencies have spent untold billions more to prop up the PA’s numerous security agencies, but that training and the funds were merely used to facilitate and finance the mechanisms of terror rather than to combat it. It took legal action by the human rights NGO that I founded to help force the Congress to stop the PA from using American taxpayer money from paying stipends to the terrorists and their families as a reward for murdering Jewish civilians.
Yes, the U.S. taxpayer supplied rewards to Palestinians for killing Jews. And now Arafat has been replaced by another proponent of terrorism, Mahmoud Abbas.
Mahmoud Abbas — Arafat’s successor, and the current PA president known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mazen — is 88 years old and serving the 19th year of a four-year term. He is corrupt, ineffective and a promoter of virulent antisemitic conspiracies. A pro-Palestinian pundit appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” recently commented that “Abu Mazen does three things every day, he sleeps, he smokes, and when he wakes up, he says something dumb about the Holocaust.” Abu Mazen has been a feckless leader of an authoritarian fiefdom where nepotism is rife, public funds are used to enrich government officials and their family enterprises, and the welfare of the Palestinian people is a distant afterthought.
The corruption of the PA is well known. Both PA and Hamas leaders are millionaires or even billionaires, and that money came from corruption, including levying taxes on goods coming into the Palestinian Territories. Abbas’s net worth is estimated at $100 million, and many of the Hamas leaders, who live in luxury in Qatar, have even more. Rife with corruption and scheming for a one-state solution, these organizations cannot be honest brokers for a two-state solution.
As Darshan-Leitner notes, the corruption of the PA is one reason why Hamas is more popular than the PA, even in the West Bank. If there’s to be one elected force to Rule Them All, it would be Hamas.
If you encounter one of those misguided people who tout the two-state solution as a cure-all, particularly one governed by the PA, just point them to this article. Part of its peroration:
How then, one must ask of the U.S. State Department and the UK’s Foreign Office, can anyone expect the PA to govern a war-torn Gaza Strip and rehabilitate the lives of more than 2 million people who have been reared on intimidation, radicalization, terror, conflict and self-inflicted suffering?
Western diplomats have argued that the PA must assume a central role in governing the post-war reality because anything would be better than Hamas. But that is like saying one form of terminal cancer is better than another — neither guarantees anything more than continued misery and mortality. Israeli border communities, evacuated at the start of the war, will not agree to return home if the PA is placed in charge again. A post-Hamas Gaza will require capable hands to erase the legacy of the terror state from where the Oct. 7 attacks were financed, planned and executed.
. . . For 30 years, the PA has failed its benefactors and partners in peace and, most tragically, betrayed the Palestinian people. Fantasizing that the PA will be Israel’s sheriff and can solve the gargantuan problems of post-Oct. 7 Gaza is a mistake of epic proportions that will only guarantee continued bloodshed and misery for all sides. Hope is not a strategy.
In the absence of honest brokers on both sides, I have no confidence in a two-state solution—not until the political situation changes drastically. Those who promote such a solution are simply ignorant—or so desperate to end the war in the face of world opinion against Israel that they’ll grasp at any solutinon. Blinken and Biden are among these straw-graspers.
h/t: Malgorzata
The problem with these arguments is that they ignore the basic reality – two different cultures are rooted in the same land, and as the last 80 or so years have shown, neither has been willing to make concessions to promote peace between them. I agree that the PA and the current Israeli leadership are not interested in doing so, making progress impossible. So how to affect change? A modest suggestion – given Israel’s desire to normalize relationships with the gulf states and vice versa, how about working towards that goal, with Saudi Arabia and others taking an active role in promoting Palestinian reform, while the United States and Europe use their influence to move Israel towards becoming more focused on regional stability? I know this may be a pipe dream, but I do think it’s worth serious consideration.
There was progress with Saudi Arabia but with now the Israeli leadership ruling out a two state solution Saudi Arabia has said no deal.
But Israel has been willing in the past to accept a Palestinian state, trading land for peace. The Palestinians reject it because they don’t want any Israeli Jewish state. They want a single Caliphate with the Jews gone. Against that it’s hardly surprising that hard-line Israelis propose a single Jewish (+ existing Arab citizens) state with the Palestinians gone or at least cowed into docility, disarmed, and disenfranchised.
A party to a dispute has no incentive to negotiate for half a loaf if he believes he can take the whole loaf by force at tolerable cost (which can be acceptably very high for jihadists.) A party has also no reason to trust the results of a negotiation if the other side says he will violate whatever agreement he can intimidate his adversary into making and later take the whole loaf that way. And if leaving even crumbs for the Jews is an unforgivable rebuke to Mohammed, it is immoral to concede even those, much less half a loaf.
For Europe and the U.S. to “influence” Israel toward a focus on regional stability would mean, at a first minimum, they would actively defend Israel against efforts to violate her borders and render her uninhabitable. Once they’ve made a pledge to do that, as allies do with treaties, then we can talk about the region, is what I would say were I PM of Israel.
“The Palestinians reject it because they don’t want any Israeli Jewish state.” Now ironically both side agree that they don’t want the other side to have a state.
YES Leslie, again I agree with you.
The word “caliphate” does a lot of the heavy lifting here. Fortunately, ISIS gave us an object lesson on the broad outline of what a Caliphate actually is. The Taliban did also but they were/are more wishy washy crowd pleasers. Amateur hour.
ISIS was where it is at, THOUGH even they didn’t get to put it totally into practice if you look at the requirements under sharia. Imagine ISIS-land but more oppression, more misery, more poverty (“Allah will provide” Osama b.L.) never ending expansion war (as required, only temporary truces).
I could write an article about it if I wanted my life deranged forever and to be stabbed.
D.A.
NYC
You seem to be ignoring Israel handing over Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Doesn’t that count as a gesture to promote peace?
You seem to forget that Israel continued to control border crossings, supply of electricity and water, and imposed fishing restrictions off the Gaza coast. In addition, wasn’t much of Sharon’s reasoning in the handover was about demographics and a fear that Israel might become majority Arab. I don’t think either side has been serious about a peaceful 2 state solution, and if at some points one was, the other wasn’t.
You make it sound as if those actions by Israel are bad things.
Because they are.
Snark for snark. Fair enough. But…
Canada controls its border with the United States. It prohibits imports of certain things it doesn’t want, guns notably, and permits exports only of commodities the United States is willing to pay for, which is pretty much everything, and doesn’t plan to use to harm us. Whether to allow export of bulk water to the United States, should it ever become technologically feasible, is a contentious topic in Canada rooted largely in anti-American spite. No one argues that Canada would not have the sovereign right to say No, though. Especially if the U.S. wanted us to pipe it to them for free.
As all maritime states do, Canada also restricts the fishing rights of foreign boats in its 200-mile economic zone which has led to disputes with the United States where those zones overlap.
Finally, I don’t want Canada to become majority Muslim, either. Can’t blame the Israelis for that.
So I have to say in all sincerity that from Israel’s point of view, those same actions are good things.
Do you really those restrictions are in any way comparable? I’m sure Israel is very happy about the measures, but there are two sides here. The original question was whether the disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was an attempt to seek peace. I pointed it that it probably wasn’t and your answers suggest that you don’t think it was either. Glad we agree
Then what’s the solution? I’m afraid Hamas will never be eliminated as there will always be some remnant that will spring up and according to some polls support for Hamas is increasing in Gaza.
As I see it there are four options:
1) Occupy Gaza indefinitely – It’s been tried before in the short term and failed.
2) Treat it like the West Bank with restrictions on movement – too similar to occupation and requires a large military presence.
3) Pressure Western and Arab countries to take in Palestinian refugees. The West may take some but Arab countries won’t
4) Annex Gaza as part of Israel. – not likely as it would add about 2 million more Palestinians to Israel.
I have no idea.
“Then what’s the solution?”
That is exactly what I keep asking myself. It is perhaps easy to point out how different proposals won’t work, but then what would? Or nothing ever will and we just have to accept that the cycles of violence and relative/apparent calm will continue forever, with the periods of violence getting increasingly worse and the periods of relative/apparent calm becoming shorter and shorter.
I doubt there will be one for decades to come. It will be, as you suggest, cycles of relative peace peace punctuated by violence.
RE: “according to some polls support for Hamas is increasing in Gaza”
I’m very suspicious of such reports. I mean how do you conduct a methodologically sound poll in a place like Gaza where a war is being waged?
As to the claims that, in the West Bank, Hamas is now more popular than the PA:
I don’t doubt that Palestinians in the West Bank give credit to Hamas for “standing up to Israel”. But that does not necessarily imply that they want to be ruled by Hamas. After all, Hamas brought widespread death and destruction on the Palestinians it ruled (those in Gaza, by attacking Israel on Oct 7).
Also, I wonder whether West Bank Palestinians are aware of the fact that Hamas, before Oct 7, had fairly little support among Palestinians in Gaza. The [decidedly non-woke] US sociologist Musa al-Gharbi wrote this:
Musa al-Gharbi: If Truth Matters in the Conflict Between Israel and Gaza, Now’s the Time to Tell It.
Originally published 10/16/2023 by The Nation.
https://musaalgharbi.com/2023/10/16/truth-israel-gaza-war/
* I quoted al-Gharbi without reproducing the hyperlinks in this quote. The article is freely accessible at the given website.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
― Golda Meir, A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography
Thanks for this pertinent quotation from Golda Meir.
Alas, that will not happen in any of our lifetimes.
She seems to have forgotten the terrorism carried out by the Zionists in the years leading up to 1948. Both sides were guilty of that and I’m not sure you can say one side was “forced” by the other.
Again, my earlier article (posted here earlier) on the idea of a two state solution: https://themoderatevoice.com/the-suicidal-stupidity-of-a-two-state-solution/
– translated into Polish by Malgorzata (dzjenkuje)
After 10/7 I think there is ZERO chance of it ever happening for it would be the death of Israel. Forget for a moment they effectively HAD a state in Gaza for 17 years of Jew-free paradise: how’d that work out?
Again, we should be obliged to take the Pals at their (collective, representative) word: it isn’t about their own state, not a real estate thing, it is about the utter destruction of Israel.
Jesus – they shout this ALL. THE. TIME.
We don’t understand, for some brain damaged reason, their motivations and desires b/c they don’t align with OUR world view. If I hear “just like us” again I’ll eat my yarmulke.
And we REALLY don’t understand Islam.
Hopefully 10/7 was an effective lesson… but no. We’re that dumb.
Irritated (but warm) in Florida,
D.A.
usually NYC
Great reporting/analysis. Why can’t the NYT manage to do as well? Better to write about the Oscar wars and the problems with your sister in law. This is a mess that not even the Bible could manage. As an anthropologist interested in the formation. of “civilizations,” I am well aware that “civilization” is never civil but always a response to both overpopulation and competition between groups of people. It almost aways involves construction of walls or moving to defensible places, and organized warfare. It was true 4000 years ago and true today, and expansion is expensive both to defend and offend. AI is not going to make us love one another. Neither are demonstrating frat boys and jocks. Better armies, aircraft, missiles, and explosives will assist winners and losers. Peace on Earth? Never happen. That’s why humans are seldom humane. Think about Republicans. Who is their hero. It doesn’t have to make sense.
I agree that a Palestinian state governed by the PA is not viable—at least without significant changes. One necessary change that is difficult to imagine is the PA leadership (even after Abbas) accepting Israel’s right to exist. A second—also difficult to imagine—is a PA that has majority support of the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza. (I’m not sure about the West Bank, which would also be part of any proposed Palestinian state.) Without accepting the legitimacy of Israel, and without support from the Gazans, a PA-run Palestinian state can only fail.
One thing I have wondered for some time, however, is whether a Palestinian state next to Israel would be any worse than the terrorist state that they already have. An actual state might have to behave differently than a Hamas-led terrorist entity. A state would have financial and treaty obligations that provide constraints, and a state would be more subject to international pressures. Also, importantly, a Palestinian state would no longer be able to hide behind the claim that Gaza or the West Bank are under occupation, or subject to apartheid, or many of the other claims they have of being oppressed by Israel. The main alternative to a two-state solution, a one-state solution, has its own drawbacks that are well-known. (I have read of other types of arrangements that have been discussed as well.)
My question to the learned community: Might the establishment of a Palestinian state with all its drawbacks and risks (even the risk of it becoming a “failed state” like Libya), nonetheless be a better path than the path the region is now on? The responsibilities of statehood may change the calculus. This is a path that has not been tested.
Norman, your suggestion deserves consideration, if anyone could be found to agree with it. If Gaza became an official Palestinian state, Israel would just have to protect itself from it, as now, but would not have to take any responsibility for it. Its relationship with Gaza would be exactly like that of South Korea with the North. The border would be hermetically closed and there would be no trade or human movement across it. Gaza, just like NK, would have to find its own water, food, fuel and electricity and not rely on free supply from its wealthy neighbour. Israel could not blockade sea commerce into Gaza’s ports nor interfere with whatever Egypt allowed to flow across its land border. But there is no obligation to keep your own land border open. (The Oslo Accords and whatever arrangements they required are now and forever inoperative.)
With the responsibilities of statehood would come the clear risk of military annihilation if it provoked another war. If it was actually responsible for governing the state of Gaza (as the government of North Korea is) its government would no longer be able to blame its troubles on the imaginary ”occupation” by a foreign state. This would undercut those who likened 7 Oct to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and would make launching rockets and death squads across the international border more clearly an act of war. Of course the world would still applaud the killing of Jews. They would just have to find another idiom for seeking Judenrein. RTTS would still suffice.
(I’m just talking Gaza here. I can’t see statehood working in Judea & Samaria. Too much strategic territory involved to give it away. And Jews live there. The great thing about Gaza is that Israel doesn’t have to care what happens to it, other than the surviving hostages. It just has to care what it does.)
“A state would have financial and treaty obligations that provide constraints . . .”
Much like they do for Russia? Or Iran? Or North Korea? Or, going further back, a Germany? A Japan? Or going further back . . .
I appreciate this desire to organize the world by a set of mutually-binding, “freely-chosen” obligations. And coercive mechanisms—be they financial or diplomatic—are not without value. But that depends on what else a state might value. And who would do the coercion in the case of a hostile Palestinian state? The United Nations? Israel’s vast network of state allies? The United States? (Good luck with that in future Democratic administrations if polling of the under-35 crowd is valid and given the academic backgrounds of many who write, enact, and enforce policy.) Sadly, some opponents will respect only military might and the will to use it—treaties and obligations be damned. Could a Palestinian state be deterred? It is a fair question. But I wonder what arms would flow to a Palestinian state—defensive arms, of course—through completely legal trade with their allied partners. Or do “we” prohibit them from trading in arms and exercising a state’s right to self-defense? Would it be necessary that “we” so constrain them that they are a state in name only?
I do like that your proposal would eliminate several of the excuses paraded about by the Hamas apologists in the U.S. and elsewhere. I would look forward greatly to their new justifications for Palestinian violence against Israel and to their demands that Israel not respond.
Changing the subject slightly, with out interlocutor gracious permission, here is the type of crap that’s been going down in critical reporting about Israel that has also made it to the ICJ.
This refers to the commentary that Dr. Coyne I believe may have made (I can’t find it now!) about The Atlantic article noting mis-tranlations that have gone uncorrected in the biggest of “respectable” media:
“Credit to Yair for forcing the correction, but still revealing that this clear falsehood has been jumping from one major news outlet to another for over 3 months and was a central piece of evidence cited by South Africa in their ICJ complaint.”
https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1749511046308524268
I agree with Jerry that one has to be very pessimistic as to the feasibility of a 2-state solution. We know that Israeli society (as far as the conflict with the Palestinians is concerned) has moved to the right over the last 20 years because more and more Israeli don’t believe that Palestinians want to live in peace with a Jewish neighbor state. Obviously, the Oct 7 massacre has strengthened this impression.
In the current war, if Israel does not eradicate Hamas from Gaza, then Hamas will continue to rule there and prepare for another Oct 7-style massacre (though it would take at least 10 years to get its act together; and next time Israel will be much better prepared) while continuing to teach Palestinian children to hate the Jews so that Hamas will not lack soldiers in the future and continuing to engage in various terrorist attacks on Israel (shooting rockets, sending terrorist into Israel to kill random Israel civilians, etc.)
If Israel succeeds in eliminating Hamas from Gaza, it will have to govern the strip thereafter – about 2 million Palestinians, hardly any infrastructure and buildings left undamaged or undestroyed … it’s hard to wrap once head around the idea of Israel governing Gaza while it is populated by Palestinians. Maybe the PA will be installed in Gaza even though it’s deeply unpopular, deeply corrupt and does not want peace with Israel either. But it’s less bad than Hamas and it has fewer members passionate about dying as martyrs.
Could Gaza be governed by an Arab peace-keeping force? Which Arab countries would want to get involved in such a mission. I don’t know.
I had a similar thought. The international community, but the Arab community in particular, need to reckon with the fact that Gaza is a failed state. We need an international coalition of peace-keeping forces, but one ideally heavily populated by neighboring Arab countries with an interest in preserving a peaceful co-existence, to intervene. Given the history and conditions, this would need to be a decades-long intervention, most likely.
If they would only talk more. If we would talk more. Host a conference. Publish some papers. Negotiate, or pretend to. Then meet again. Get an agreement on paper. Take some photos. Reporters. We need reporters there. Publish another piece. [Professor So-and-So has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. He is a frequent contributor on . . .]
And the wheel spins. I share David’s frustration with the apparent inability of so many to take Palestinian leaders (and Iranian and others) at their word: they want the Jews dead and Israel gone. I experienced similar frustration post-9/11 when many of the same policy and academic crowd would barely consider even the possibility that maybe religious fanaticism really did have something to do with it.
I once heard a colleague quip that the “faith in talk” crowd consisted mostly of people who had never been beaten up on the playground and been forced to fight back. Perhaps more than a grain of truth to this.
Hamas just rejected Israel’s offer of a two-month ceasefire in return for the release of all the hostages. They remain Hamas’s only bargaining chip. My guess is that a lot of them are already dead.
With reference to the important Musa al-Gharbi article referenced by Peter under
comment #2, a similar point was made by Daniel Pipes, also no PA apologist.
Daniel Pipes: The population of Gaza has undergone a unique experience since 2008: used as cannon fodder not to win a war but to be victims that Hamas can exploit for international sympathy. This miserable experience, which has included repeated bombings from the air, finds a significant portion of Gazans wanting to live normal lives, i.e., not make war on Israel. I hope the Israelis will turn Gaza over to such people and let them administer the territory. Think of this as a miniature version of what the Allies did in Italy after 1945. Israel needs to find Gaza’s Alcide De Gasperi.*
* DP note: A non-Italian reader will likely find the example of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer more familiar.
Forgive me a second comment. The Biden/Obama delusion about the “moderate” PA represents the familiar institutional obsession with any other institutions that exist, have an official title, and a telephone number. Is it possible that some anti-Hamas Gazans could form an organization with a title, a telephone number, and perhaps even some contacts in magic places, such as Oslo (home of the magic spell of “peace process”) or one of the Gulf emirates? I realize that such individuals risked immediate execution while Hamas was in charge. But has the IDF now cleared Hamas out of northern Gaza sufficiently for such individuals to make themselves known? Just a question.
Israeli’s are living next to an asylum of religious fanatics, their self serving leadership has a place, and that is, in one of the deepest tunnels they seem to like so much. Then plug it! they deserve no less.
The money they have ‘saved’ on behalf of the citizens of Gaza, West Bank can then be used to deprogramme the population to some semblance of sane living without lies and coercion.
But Jerry, then what do you suggest as a solution, if neither one nor two states work? Kill all Palestinians and destroy Gaza?