Mirage of the ‘Two State Solution’
A solution, a state, a mirage. Can there be a ‘two state solution’ if one state doesn’t exist?
Historically, the derivation of the term, “two state solution,” precedes the Oslo accords of 1993:
“The uniqueness of the Palestinian case lies in the fact that its project was interfered with by the Zionist colonial project and that the United Nations ended up settling on a partition, in 1947, which contravened the right to self-determination of the colonized peoples,” write José Abu-Tarbush and Barreñada in Palestine: From the Oslo Accords to Apartheid. As they conclude, the U.N. resolved a conflict generated by colonialism [Palestine was a British colony] in an “anomalous” way, which consists of dividing the territory in two so that one part is handed over to the settlers and the other to the indigenous population. This is the so-called “two-state” solution — one for the Jewish population and one for Palestinians.”
-Patricia R. Blanco, “Palestine: A state without full international recognition or absolute control of its territory,” El Pais, October 23, 2023
Fast forward to October 7, 2023.
Consider the ‘revisionist innuendo’ of the “two state solution” as a self-propelled myth, designed to cover up a failed relationship. Conversely, consider that gaining statehood for one removes the future security of the other. In this false premise scenario, there cannot be a “two state solution,” until there is a “no state solution.”
Further confounding the “two state solution” conversation is that each of the parties to the discussion — Hamas and Israel, and their backers — are claiming a moral “high ground:” Israel invokes the “Holocaust;” Hamas invokes “racist genocide;” the United States, supporter of Israel, invokes ‘9/11.’ Among all three moralizations, lies the self-propelled conviction, “this can happen again.” (1)
Recall the dilemma of the “glass half empty:” one sees a glass half-empty; another sees a glass half-full; a third sees a glass of water.
Listen to the voices who embrace this third posture, survivors of a stateless world inhabited by border inhabitants in mind only.
Though only 9 at the time, May Pundak knew that when her father was often away in the early 1990s, he was involved in some kind of mission for Israel, one so secret that she could not breathe a word about it to friends at school.
Her father, Ron Pundak, was in Norway conducting back-channel talks with Palestinians that resulted in the 1993 Oslo Accords, the foundation for the two-state solution that has long anchored the peace process, and that President Biden recently invoked as the answer to the latest war.
Now 38 and a human rights lawyer, Ms. Pundak wants to revamp the Oslo-centered process, which has been mostly stalled for three decades. While she labels her plan a “two-state solution 2.0,” it is in some ways a repudiation of the vision that her father and his generation had espoused.
“The two-state solution has become — and I say this with a broken heart — an empty shell,” Ms. Pundak said. “It started as a promise of freedom and liberation for Palestinians, but it has transformed into multiple systems of oppression, a lack of hope, lack of vision and lack of future.”
And “five miles away,”
Across the line that divides Israel from the West Bank, the same frustration is palpable in Rana Salman, a 39-year-old Palestinian activist who shares Ms. Pundak’s dream of a political settlement. Her father once commuted to Jerusalem, where he worked as a hotel cook. Now, Ms. Salman said, her family was stranded in its hometown, Bethlehem, by Israeli military roadblocks erected after the war broke out…
“Whether we accept it or not, we’re living together,” Ms. Salman said. “We work together. We have mixed cities. We’re always stuck with one-state, two-state. There should be a third solution.”
-Mark Landler, “Five Miles and a World Apart, Younger Activists Dream of a New Peace Process,” New York Times, November 16, 2023
Borders are a human invention. So, are wars. On the surface, wars are not about borders. Look again: wars are about maintaining barriers.
The latest iteration required first, claiming war (“We are at War”); second, selling war (“War is the only alternative”); third, defending war (“We will win this War”). This is a synopsis of deception, exposed by George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, which in the end is an artifice, a distraction, an entertaining of powerlessness. There is an abundance of public lying and personal agony to go around and yet the drip-drip of powerlessness continues: the honey of demagoguery is sustained.
The interconnected-ness of conflict is managed. So the rationalizer claims, ‘a stronger advocacy for peace and deterrence will follow.’ The specter of “when will this end” is offered. The future recedes. Hope and hollowness are trafficked:
What has changed since the Oslo Accords, both women said, is the viability of a deal based on the principle of separating Israelis and Palestinians. With nearly two million Palestinians living as citizens in Israel and more than 500,000 settlers carving up the West Bank, they said the two peoples were irrevocably intertwined, each clinging to a vision of a homeland on land claimed by both.
The answer, Ms. Pundak said, was neither a single state nor a simple division into two. Instead, it would be two states, confederated in a shared homeland. Her model is the European Union, which, as she noted, was composed of countries, like France and Germany, which had been at war with each other not so long before the bloc began to come together.
Currently, 54 members of the UN do not recognize Palestine as a state. (2) Of the UN Security Council members, the United States does not recognize Palestine as a state, and despite the majority of votes in the General Assembly, the US — in support of Israel’s right to “defend itself” — has vowed to veto any resolution for Palestine statehood as a rebuke of this right. Most recently, this position was manifested in the US refusal to join the international community in condemning the Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, beyond the perimeters outlined by the Oslo Accords.
The attending myths of the recent conflagration between Israel and Hamas began early. As early as a fortnight following the attack on Jewish settlements in Gaza on October 7, US media falsely claimed, “this was Israel’s 9/11,” a poor and tasteless analogy. (3)
Like others, I, too, was taken in.
Reflecting on my blindness, I discovered that America media had a choice: to research historical context for resolving border reclamations, such as what occurred in Northern Ireland, where a peace endures, or to ante up militarism and dark intents, such as describing the attack of October 7, as “Israel’s 9/11.” The latter choice prevailed. The press did not mention the analogy to Ireland — as if any connection to “the Good Friday Peace” is heterodoxy. (4)
By invoking “9/11,” we also invoke “9/11's” response — the “Global War on Terror” — a catastrophic implosion of American values, (5) which has spawned an increase in domestic terrorism and repression. Overnight, it seemed the streets of America exploded with groups labelled as ‘anti-Semitic’ and rife with Islamophobia. Very quickly did we arrive at owning the attacks/reprisals occurring in Gaza, in the West Bank, along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
There was another dimension to my blindness — it was reinforced by a subtle media framing of the Hamas attacks. At first, I labeled this media effort cynically, as the selling of ‘Bibi’s War.’ What evolved, once the framing gave way, was the justifying of ‘Bibi’s War.’
I marveled at the blatant dismissal by the Israeli military leadership of the hostage question and the victims — how are we going to get the hostages out and returned to their families? The military had no answers, suggesting that diplomats were at work and any mention could subvert their efforts.
The Israeli intelligence was secretive, reluctant to reveal how Israel allowed this to happen. Who was not on watch?
In the first 72 hours after the first attacks were reported American media outlets presented interviews with spokespeople for the IDF, followed by interviews with hostage families and survivors. In the rush to know, America audiences were being served a one-sided framing of the war and the events unfolding in Gaza. Missing was the “glass of water.” Visible were the frustrations and dashed hopes of the hostage families and their friends: where is the effort and will to get the hostages released?
Defending ‘war’ was demonstrated in the media space by a public shame game of watching and blinding, punctuated by false narratives, accusations, reveals. After October 7, a bombing/missile campaign ensued. First, the mosques, then the schools, then the hospitals, the obvious civilian targets, against a backdrop of the tunnels, the caches of arms and ‘human shielding’. The ginned-up photos. The media narrative kept narrowing, reducing, repeating. A case for defending a militarization along makeshift “defense perimeters” was promulgated.
West Bank settler security squads were being issued assault-style weapons as violence against Palestinian residents increased. (6)
To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as have been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence — as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers — for generations.
If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians. This story is measured in decades, not weeks; it is not one war, but a continuum of destruction, revenge and trauma.
Dalia Hatuqa, “This War Did Not Start a Month Ago,” Opinion, New York Times, November 18
Beyond the “blame game” and recriminations, mindful witnesses will assess “how this war is different,” as if an innovative and yet-to-be-imagined resolution is at hand. Along a historical dimension, is war different? Recall a time when America was not a country, not yet a state, and settlers in Deerfield, Massachusetts were attacked in 1704 by local tribes and their French consorts. There were killings and hostages abducted and taken to Montreal, to resettle in compromised enclaves bereft of community. Many formed families with their captors. More palisades, more “skirmishes,” more violence wreaked on innocents followed. (7)
There are aspirations that a ‘Northern Ireland peace’ could evolve beyond the current devolution.
Any kind of shared future is most likely a longer way off than it was a month ago. But Palestinians already knew that. Was the day before Hamas’s attacks considered peace? Maybe for Israelis it was, but for Palestinians it wasn’t.
To lift the weight of history, acknowledge the past.
November 21
Notes
1-Comment: The notion of claiming a moral “high ground,” to justify violence on civilians has been forcefully documented by Steven Coll in a recent opinion piece in The New Yorker, “Hostage-Taking and the Use of Children and the Vulnerable in War,” November 15, 2023.
2- “In 2011, relations worsened as the Palestinians sought UN membership for a Palestinian state, which the U.S. government and Israel regarded as a unilateral act. Obama told Abbas that the United States would veto any UN Security Council move to recognize Palestinian statehood.[46] The Palestinian efforts shifted to the UN General Assembly, which voted in November 2012 to admit Palestine as an observer state, while the United States voted against the resolution, and has continued to not recognize Palestine as a state.” -“US Palestine Relations,” Wikipedia
3- The first mention of “Israel’s 9/11,” was attributed to The Times of Israel, October 8, and subsequently picked up by the American press. At a news conference, shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated that ‘this was not 9/11, but 1000 9/11’s.’
4- An exception to citing the Ireland conflict was an opinion piece written by Roger Cohen, “Between Israeli and Palestinians, a Lethal Psychological Chasm Grows,” Opinion, New York Times, November 20, updated November 21. The absence of historical context of Cohen’s reference is mystifying:
“A political and military struggle between two national movements for the same land can be resolved by compromise, at least in theory. France and Germany settled their differences in Alsace-Lorraine. Peace came to Ireland. But absolutist claims of divine right to territory appear impossible to reconcile.”
5- Garrett M. Graff, “After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong,” Atlantic, September 8, 2021
6- For documentation on the distribution of arms to settler “security forces,” see “Israeli Settler Attacks on West Bank Palestinians Have Escalated Since October 7, UN Says,” PBS News Hour, November 20, 2023.
Also, Edward Wong and Patrick Kingsley, “US Officials Fear American Guns Ordered by Israel Could Fuel West Bank Violence,” New York Times, November 5, 2023
7- “Deerfield Massacre,” Wikipedia
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