The Two-State Solution: the
Pacifier Slogan
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
The ‘two-state solution’ phrase was first coined in the 1947
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 to create two independent
states in historical Palestine.
Israel has been created and recognized within undefined
borders and the phrase today implies whether and how to create
the second state. The “two-state” solution has different
meanings for the different parties involved in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
For the Palestinians, it means a sovereign state in all the
West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and the refugees right of
return to their homes in Israel proper; for the Israelis, it
means a slightly different version of the status quo in the
occupied lands, a self-rule over disconnected enclaves or
“Bantustans” that have the façade of a state with a president,
ministers, legislative council, Judiciary, ambassadors and
security forces that control the population and guarantee
Israel’s security, but no control over Jerusalem, the borders,
water resources, shore and airspace. The recognized state of
Israel on 78 percent of Palestine has not fulfilled the
ambitions of the Zionists who have been striving to have all
of Palestine. The Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper wrote on
November 28, 2007 that Israel plans to create a Palestinian
state that consists of “tiny Bantustan on four or five
cantons, all encircled by Israeli settlements. Israeli control
of the entire land, whether for religious, national or
security reasons, is a given”. And for the US, the “two-state”
solution has been used mainly as a public relations slogan to
manage the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
Palestinians and their supporters.
and
pacify
the
On March 12, 2002, while the US was massing troops and war
machines in the Arab Gulf states preparing for the invasion of
Iraq, a member of the Arab League; and the Israeli military
was embarking on far reaching measures against the
Palestinians
under occupation including assassinations,
detentions and demolitions, the US submitted the so called
“the Bush vision of two-state solution” proposal to the UN
Security Council. All Council members (Syria abstained)
adopted Resolution 1397 that affirmed Bush vision. The
Resolution that was welcomed by most Arab states especially
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco also called for
immediate cessation of all acts of violence.
The so called “Bush vision” was adopted by the policy makers
of the “Quartet”, a formulation that had been created by the
US, Russia, the EU and the UN to help reach a peaceful
resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Quartet
launched a “Roadmap” plan to end the hostilities and establish
a new basis for communications between the Israelis and the
Palestinians based on the US “Two-State” vision. The Roadmap
provides a plan for the progression toward peace in three
phases on the basis of performance, and like Oslo agreements,
it deferred the permanent status issues to the final phase.
The government of Israel noted that the Roadmap would be
implemented subject to fourteen political and security
reservations including that neither the Saudi initiative nor
the Arab initiative serve as a basis for the political process
and the Palestinians should publicly declare their
“renunciation of the right of return” and accept Israel’s
right “to exist as a Jewish state”. Israel has practically
rejected the Roadmap basic premises with its unacceptable
caveats and prerequisites. But Bush Administration promised to
take into account Israel’s reservations at the implementation
stage. While the US was supporting and defending Israel’s
policies that rendered the Palestinian version of the “twostate solution” impossible to implement, the “two-state
solution” became mainly a slogan phrase used by President Bush
and his Secretary of State to pacify the Palestinians and the
US Arab allies.
A month after the adoption of the UN Security Council 1397
Resolution, the Arab League summit in Beirut adopted a Saudi
Arabian proposal that has been referred to as the “pan-Arab
peace initiative”. It calls on Israel to withdraw to the 4th
of June 1967 lines, the establishment of an independent
sovereign Palestinian state and a just resolution of refugee
problem, in exchange for full recognition and blanket
normalization with Israel by all Arab states. The summit was
followed by then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah address to the
Israeli people reminiscent of President Sadat address on his
historic visit to the Knesset.
The Arab initiative that was only a common statement of
principle for a political settlement and the appeal by the
Saudi leader were meant to send a message mostly to the US
that the Arab regimes were for peace and true partners in the
campaign against extremism. But the Israeli government under
Sharon roundly dismissed the initiative and the Saudi public
statement. Israel spurned the opportunity to seriously discuss
the ideas put forth by the Arab leaders, and instead,
activated its superior military power against the Palestinian
insurgency (Second Intifada) by imposing collective punishment
and inflicting daily injuries on innocent Palestinians.
By rejecting the Roadmap and the pan-Arab peace initiative,
Israel was the real rejectionist in the conflict. Faith of the
Palestinians in Israel’s intentions to accept a just “twostate solution” by peaceful means was eroded. Professor Ze’ev
Maoz, a critic of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians
wrote in 2006 that “Israel’s history of peacemaking has been
largely reactive, risk avoidance,… that stands in contrast to
its proactive and trigger happy strategic doctrine”. Since the
creation of Israel, its leaders assert that all Palestine
belongs exclusively to the Jews; and a two-state solution
where the indigenous Palestinians would have a sovereign state
in the center of their land will be a constant threat to the
state of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion summarized Israel’s position regarding peace
with the Arabs in 1949 when, according to the historian Benny
Morris, Ben-Gurion told his minister of foreign affairs, Moshe
Sharett that “Israel will not discuss a peace involving the
concession of any piece of territory”. In his book, “An
Israeli in Palestine”, Professor Jeff Halper writes that many
Arab leaders including Husni Zaim of Syria, King Abdullah the
First of Jordan, Adib Shishakli of Syria, Gamal Abdel Nasser
of Egypt, Abdel Hakim Amer of Egypt, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and
West Bank Palestinian leaders offered to solve the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict but the Israeli leaders
steadfastly refused to reciprocate. Another Israeli historian,
Avi Shlaim wrote in his 2001 book that there was “evidence of
Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel
from September 1948 on”.
Immediately after the 1967 war, King Hussein of Jordan was
willing to enter into peace talk only if Israel withdraws from
the occupied lands. And the Palestinians of the West Bank were
ready to discuss peace if that meant an independent
Palestinian state. Israel’s response to King Hussein and the
West Bank Palestinians was annexation of East Jerusalem and a
program for confiscating Palestinian lands and building
settlements.
President Sadat proposed in 1971 to the UN Jarring Commission,
Egypt’s willingness to enter into a peace agreement with
Israel, but Prime Minister Golda Meir dismissed Sadat
overture, thus forcing Egypt to wage the 1973 war to liberate
Sinai. And Sadat attempted to resolve the Palestinian issue in
1978, but Israel refused to consider offering anything for the
Palestinians more than limited autonomy.
In their 1988 declaration of independence, the PLO leadership
recognized Israel within the Green Line, but Israel refused
the gesture. And in the 1993 Oslo peace agreements, the PLO
submitted in writing their recognition of Israel as a
legitimate state, but Rabin was only willing to recognize the
PLO as a negotiation partner.
President Clinton’s 2000 permanent status initiative for
solving the conflict curtailed the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of a proposed Palestinian state, and granted
Israel’s security the highest priority, but the initiative
drew criticism from members of Israel’s military and the
Knesset. Senior Israeli military columnist Ze’ev Schiff wrote
in Haaretz that “the Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz had
said the US proposals posed a threat to the state”. Makor
Rishon daily newspaper quoted the Israeli Knesset Member
Rehavam Ze’evi on December 29, 2000 asking Prime Minister Ehud
Barak to reject President Clinton initiative because “there is
a law in Israel which rules that anyone acting to transfer
territory from the state to the enemy is to be deemed a
traitor, which is punishable by death”.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated on many occasions his
support to the two-state solution, but under his watch the
newly built settler units in the West Bank increased by 69
percent in 2008 compared to 2007, and the settler population
in the West Bank grew by 25,000. The figures do not include
the more than 250,000 settlers living in East Jerusalem,
according to Peace Now group. Olmert accepted the 2007
Annapolis conference decision to enter into negotiations with
the Palestinians for reaching the two-state solution by the
end of 2008. But the two-state solution offer made by Olmert
after 12 months of negotiations was disconnected enclaves in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His military carried out the
barbarous massacres of the starved and besieged refugees in
Gaza.
Professor Halper attributes the Israelis’ intransigence prior
to 1967 war to their success in negotiating the armistice
agreements that left Israel in a politically, territorially
and militarily superior position. Ben Gurion was quoted
telling a visiting American journalist saying in 1949, “I am
not in a hurry and I can wait ten years”. If Israel was
confident after the 1948 war and the signing of the armistice
agreements, it should be even more confident and less
concerned about the Arab military threat after the 1967 war,
the signing of the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties, the
signing of the Oslo agreements and the end of the Iraqi
belligerent regime.
President Barack Obama has reaffirmed the US commitment to the
two-state solution, but on the matters that count, he has
continued the Bush administration failing policies. He
promised to listen but his envoy, George Mitchell, did not
take the time to visit and listen to the latest victims of the
Israeli aggression on Gaza even after three tours to the
region. Neither Obama nor Mitchell condemned the attacks on
Gaza that resulted in the death of 1,300 Palestinians
including women and children. Obama is following Bush
administration’s policy of dividing the Palestinians into
moderates and extremists and talking only to those Bush called
moderates. President Obama caved to the pro-Israel lobby in
Washington by withdrawing the nomination of his choice as head
of the NSC, Charles Freeman, because he does not support the
Israeli right wing extremists’ agenda. The US under Obama
continues to use the “two-state” solution phrase only as a
pacifier slogan for the Palestinians and their supporters.
The irony is that, despite the fact that it was Israel that
destroyed the Palestinian society, colonized and confiscated
their land then refused to consider the Palestinians and Arab
peace overtures, the Israeli governments and their supporters
in the US succeeded over the years in presenting the Arabs and
the Palestinians as intractable enemies, warmongers, hell-bent
on Israel’s destruction.
-Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D, is a
political analyst. He contributed this article to
PalestineChronicle.com.