The two-state solution is both indefensible—and, worse, irresponsible and dangerous. - by Jim Sinkinson

...if you support the two-state solution—or know people who do—here’s a list of seven questions those advocates need to answer honestly and convincingly. Without answers—resolution of the huge problems absolutely preventing two states—the two-state solution is no solution at all.

Jim Sinkinson..
The Flame..
06 August '19..
Link: https://www.factsandlogic.org/two-state-solution-answer-these-7-tough-questions/

It's been an article of faith for most recent U.S. Presidents, Western European nations and many American politicians today that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be achieved through the so-called "two-state solution"—two states for two peoples living in peace and security.

Certainly, sympathy for the Palestinian people’s national aspirations is understandable, as is heartfelt sadness that they’re forced to live under the oppression of their leadership. Unfortunately, sympathy and pity alone can’t solve the intractable problems inherent in the two-state solution—and most adherents to the position seem to ignore these formidable obstacles and jump instead to a fantasy ending

So, if you support the two-state solution—or know people who do—here's a list of seven questions those advocates need to answer honestly and convincingly. Without answers—resolution of the huge problems absolutely preventing two states—the two-state solution is no solution at all.

1. Why won't the Palestinian Arabs recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people? This is the single greatest stumbling block preventing a Palestinian state. For 71 years, the Arabs have steadfastly refused to accept the Jewish state—preserving the hope that someday the Jews will be driven from the Holy Land. Indeed, according to a recent poll, 57% of Palestinians believe their main national goal should be a one-state solution, reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea. While it's clear that Western intellectuals want a two-state solution, does it make sense to insist on something Palestinian leaders or people don't want?

2. When will the two warring Palestinian factions—Hamas and Fatah—reconcile? Ever since Hamas, the totalitarian Islamist group, won Palestinian elections in 2006 and then violently seized Gaza, it has waged war with the "establishment" Fatah party in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank). Not only are Gaza and the West Bank separated geographically, but for 13 bitter years these two factions have failed to end hostilities, despite their own ardent efforts and those of other Arab nations, most notably Egypt. Until Fatah and Hamas declare peace, there's no entity with whom Israel can negotiate peace.

3. When will Hamas retract its sworn mission to destroy Israel? Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, is today allied with Iran, which itself advocates Israel's destruction and supports the Palestinian terrorists with tens of millions of dollars in annual aid. How can Israel achieve security when the Hamas charter and its every action focus on eliminating the Jewish state by military force?

4. When will the Palestinians hold national elections? Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005. He has now served 14 years without standing for election again, and neither Palestinians in Judea-Samaria nor Gaza have held national elections since 2006, effectively making both territories dictatorships. Above all, the Palestinians have no tradition of or institutional infrastructure to support democracy. Is this a sustainable model for the next Arab state?

Truth be told, the idea that “Netanyahu has killed the two-state solution” is silly - by Victor Rosenthal

...PM Netanyahu’s decision to extend Israeli law to the settlements in Area C would not have any effect whatever on Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian authority, and it does not change the status of the territories in which they are located. Israel will never abandon Judea and Samaria entirely, although it is possible that some part of them could become an autonomous Palestinian entity. But – for security, if for no other reason – Israel could never agree to a sovereign Arab state west of the Jordan, nor could it agree to the kind of massive withdrawal and dismantling of settlements that was envisioned in the Obama period.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
12 April '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/04/everyone-knows-but-everyones-wrong/

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Judea and Samaria referred to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” and Jewish settlements there called “illegal under international law.” But the territories are not “Palestinian,” they are not “occupied,” Jewish communities there are not illegal, and Israel is not oppressing millions of Palestinians who also live there.

PM Netanyahu’s promise to extend Israeli sovereignty to the settlements – and not, by the way, “to annex the West Bank” as so many headlines have it – has re-ignited debate about these issues. But nothing’s changed. Here are some popular but false statements about Judea/Samaria and the Jewish communities that have been established there:

1. The “West Bank” is “Palestinian land” which Israel is occupying

Judea and Samaria, like the rest of Israel and Jordan, were part of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th Century until the end of WWI. After the war, the League of Nations agreed to set aside this portion of the former Ottoman territory to be held in trust by Britain to become a national home for the Jewish people. Britain gave the eastern portion to Abdullah bin Hussein as a reward for his help and that of his father, Sharif Hussein of Hejaz, in the war; this would ultimately become Jordan. The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including what would become the State of Israel and Judea/Samaria and Gaza became the Mandate for Palestine.

The Arabs living in the Mandate were strongly opposed to Jewish sovereignty, and the British, from a combination of the desire to appease the Arabs to reduce their violence (which expressed itself against both Jews and the British rulers), the desire to keep “Palestine” under their control for strategic purposes, and sheer antisemitism, abandoned their responsibility to the Jewish people and tried to throttle Jewish immigration, while allowing Arabs from surrounding areas to enter.

In November 1947, the UN – which had assumed the obligations of the League of Nations – passed a resolution (UNGA 181) recommending the partition of the Mandate into a Jewish and Arab state. The Palestinian Jews were prepared to accept a truncated state (it would be the second truncation of the land originally set aside for the Jews), but the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations wanted all the territory to be under Arab sovereignty, and rejected the resolution.

It is important to note two things: first, the resolution, because it was passed by the General Assembly and not by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, was advisory, not mandatory. And second, because the recommendations were never implemented, they became moot.

The British, exhausted after WWII and tired of the attacks against their occupation forces by both Jews and Arabs, ended the Mandate in May, 1948, and went home. The Jews, who had used the Mandate period to build all the institutions required for a state – an army, an educational system, a labor federation, various state enterprises, and more – declared the State of Israel in the area assigned to them by the partition resolution. The Arabs, who could have done the same, did not do so. They redoubled their violent attacks on Jews. At the same time, the armies of five Arab nations invaded the area, intending to destroy the new state of Israel and take the land for themselves (and not to establish a state for the Palestinian Arabs!)

The war that followed ended with a cease-fire in 1949. The Arab nations would not agree to make a permanent peace or recognize the Jewish state, but they signed cease-fire agreements that demarcated the positions of their troops. These agreements explicitly stipulated that the cease-fire lines were not national borders. The areas of Judea/Samaria and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and in 1950 Jordan formally annexed the territory it had occupied and named it the “West Bank.” This is the first time that name was used to refer to what had previously been called “Judea and Samaria.”

A Palestinian state, just a Qassam rocket away, just like Gaza - by Dror Eydar

The Palestinians have never sought an independent state. All they ever wanted was for the Jews not to have one. Meanwhile, we speak up on behalf of our enemies and assign them ideals they have never held.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
08 March '19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/03/08/the-dinosaurs-and-the-palestinian-state/



1

You still hear serious people talking out loud about the two-state solution as a reasonable – even inevitable – possibility to the conflict between us and the Arabs of the region: dividing the good land and establishing an Arab state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, which could wind up connecting to the Hamas state in the Gaza Strip to the west and the state of Jordan to the east.

Exactly 100 years have passed since the division of the land was first suggested in the 1919 Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, after World War I. Eighteen years later, in 1937, the Peel Commission (convened to investigate the bloody events of 1936) proposed dividing the land, and a decade later, on Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. voted in favor of the partition plan. The Arabs refused, and their response was war.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded before the "occupation" of the 1967 Six-Day War. Its goal was to "liberate all the land from the Zionists." Our country was then quite small in size, and still the organization's terrorists wanted it. The goal hasn't changed; it has sometimes been disguised to delude naïve, liberal, self-righteous Jews in the West.

The Oslo Accords came into being after the PLO was on the mat after backing Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War. The Palestinians supported any murderous dictator who served their purposes. In Oslo, the government under then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put the dying organization on artificial life support and brought tens of thousands of terrorists whom we had armed into western Israel to force the division of the country and fulfill their dream of peace. If the Jews don't acknowledge their right to their own land and revive their sworn enemies from the ashes, we can expect nothing more from Europe or the U.S. That is how the organization of terrorists became the official, respectable representative of the supposed forthcoming Palestinian state.

2

It didn't happen. The Palestinian Arabs never asked for an independent state alongside ours; mainly, they wanted the Jews not to have a state. The Jews, for their part, insist on speaking on behalf of their enemies and attaching all sorts of nice ideas to them which they never held. Article 20 of the PLO charter decrees that the Jews are only a religion, not a nation, and therefore have no rights to a country of their own, and must return to the nations from which they arrived and live as Russian, Polish, Iraqi, or Iranian citizens. That article has never been changed. This is a fundamental Arab position; even Arab MKs do not recognize the Jewish people's right to national determination in their own land.

In the past decade, the basic condition laid down for negotiations with the Palestinians – recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people – is not designed to win their recognition of us. We don't need it. It functions as a litmus test for how honest their intentions are. If there is no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, then even after the land is divided, the Arabs will continue to talk about Israel in terms of colonialism and an apartheid state because they would be able to point to the Law of Return, for example, as a "racist law" that gives Jews preference in obtaining citizenship when they make aliyah.

The New York Times’ New Favorite Israel Talking Point - by Ira Stoll

...That’s not to say there’s no part of eastern Jerusalem that might eventually serve as some sort of Palestinian Arab capital. But the idea that that’s all the Palestinians have been waiting for, and that it’s Trump and Netanyahu who suddenly and recently made it impossible, is just not supported by the facts. The Times can repeat this claim as often as it wants to, but that doesn’t make it true.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
11 December '18..

The New York Times has a new favorite talking point about Israel.

The talking point has cropped up recently in almost identical terms in two places.

A December 7 opinion piece by Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, headlined “Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism; American Jews have nothing to fear from the new congressional critics of Israel,” includes the claim that “Now, however, Israel has foreclosed the possibility of two states, relentlessly expanding into the West Bank and signaling to the world that the Palestinians will never have a capital in East Jerusalem.”

A news article in New York Times print editions of December 7 includes the same claim, contending, “Palestinian officials were incensed by Mr. Trump’s decision last year to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move they feared could undermine their efforts to establish East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.”

The Goldberg piece is problematic for reasons I hope to get into some other time, but, for now, let’s stick with the nonsense about how turning “East Jerusalem” into “the capital of a future Palestinian state” was totally plausible until either Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Trump or the combination thereof supposedly scuttled the idea.

This is nonsense for at least four reasons.

(Continue to Full Column)

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Two States and Hamas Rockets - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The latest clash with Hamas shows just how irrelevant the ongoing effort to force more Israeli territorial withdrawals is to the reality the Jewish state faces.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 November '18..

Does it really matter what started the shooting at the border between Israel and Hamas-run Gaza? To outward appearances, it looks like it was something of an accident when a routine security operation inside Gaza went awry and Israeli troops were fired upon, leading to bomb strikes to extricate them. That was followed by the largest barrage of rockets fired at Israel since the war that took place in the summer of 2014.

Hamas’s decision to launch hundreds of rockets, which has resulted in the death of one man (a Palestinian working inside Israel) and the wounding of more than two dozen Israelis so far, is being discussed in the international media as just one more episode in an endless “cycle of violence,” in which the Jewish state is as guilty as the Islamist terror groups that rule Gaza.

But whether this episode leads to a further escalation of fighting or a return to relative quiet—as the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly hopes by agreeing to a cease-fire on Tuesday—the ongoing violence demonstrates that it would be utter folly for the Trump administration to push for a new round of peace negotiations with the Palestinians anytime soon.

The problem isn’t a lack of negotiations, it’s the lack of conditions that could possibly lead to a comprehensive peace that dictates that Trump’s foreign-policy team will be wasting its time—and perhaps raise expectations in a way that could lead to more bloodshed—if it pushes ahead with plans to foster what U.S. President Donald Trump has called the “deal of the century.”

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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These murders were brought to you by the two state solution. The next ones will be too. - by Daniel Greenfield

...These murders were paid for by the peace process. They were funded by the supporters of the two state solution. The solution that has solved nothing except how Islamic terrorist groups pay killers to murder fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, at a supermarket, at work or on the way home.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
09 October '18..

”May Allah send the message I am longing for," Ashraf Walid Suleiman wrote on his Facebook page.

Then he went on to murder two Israelis, tying the hands of Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, a receptionist working toward her law degree, and the mother of a 16 month old baby, and Ziv Hajbi, the father of twin boys, before shooting them at close range.

A 58-year-old woman was left with a gunshot wound in the stomach after she burst in on the Islamic terrorist while he was busy doing Allah’s work.

That was the message from Allah that Ashraf, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were looking for.

"The Palestinian people everywhere praise the heroic operation," Hamas wrote, gloating over the heroism of tying up a 28-year-old receptionist before killing her. The Palestinian Authority will be paying a salary to Ashraf if he’s captured alive and will be making payments to his family if he’s killed.

At the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas, the unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, and the boss of Fatah and the PLO, which control the terrorist entity, called terrorists, “hero martyrs”.

"By Allah, even if we have only a penny left it will only be spent on the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people,” Abbas had declared in July.

Two days later, Yotam Ovadia, heading home to prepare a romantic dinner for his wife, was stabbed to death.

“The heart breaks at the sound of your little son calling ‘Abba, Abba.’ ('Daddy, Daddy')," his father-in-law said at his funeral.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Actually, Mr. President, two states won’t ‘work best’ - by Stephen M. Flatow

There may be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in our generation; not all international conflicts have one. But certainly whittling Israel down to nine miles wide is not the answer.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
08 October '18..

How did U.S. President Donald Trump go from “People have been talking about [the two-state solution] for so many years now; it so far hasn’t worked” in February to last week’s “I like a two-state solution. That’s what I think works best”?

The answer, as with so many things involving Donald Trump, is that we just don’t know. But one thing is certain: He didn’t arrive at this new position after looking at any actual maps of what Israel would look like if a Palestinian state were created.

Because nobody who realizes that establishing a Palestinian state would reduce Israel to just nine miles wide could possibly advocate such an outcome—except, of course, somebody who seeks to facilitate Israel’s destruction.

Take a look at a map of Judea-Samaria (the “West Bank”).

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Netflix's ‘Fauda’ and the two-state scenario - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The obstacle to peace remains Palestinian ideology, not how many settlers can be evicted from their homes.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
21 August '18..

In the international hit Israeli TV series “Fauda,” the head of the Palestinian Authority security service is a fictional character named Abu Maher. Played by Qader Harini, an Arab actor from eastern Jerusalem, Abu Maher is reconciled to peace and coexistence, and therefore willing to cooperate with the Israelis to combat Islamist terror.

In an episode of the show’s second season (this is not a spoiler for the main plot line, so you can keep reading even if you haven’t watched the series), Abu Maher takes his son—a student who sympathizes with Hamas—to lunch on the Jaffa beach inside Israel. He tells the youngster to look at the skyscrapers of neighboring Tel Aviv. Those mighty buildings and the industry, creativity, power and wealth they represent, he says, show the permanence of Israel. The Jews are interested in life rather than death, and since they can’t be defeated, Abu Maher believes that the Palestinians must choose peace.

I’m sure I’m far from the only audience member who saw that scene and pondered what life would be like if the actual head of the P.A. was someone like the fictional Abu Maher, instead of Mahmoud Abbas or the other real-life Fatah functionaries who are still fixated on the century-old war against Zionism (in which they have yet to admit defeat). With such a person leading the Palestinians, a two-state solution might indeed be possible.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Halevi and a two-state solution. Where more than the Devil is in the implementation - by Vic Rosenthal

...I believe that the Jewish state has a legal, moral and historical right to all of the Land of Israel that the Palestinians do not have (although they do have human rights and ought to have at least a limited right of self-determination). I have argued this at length elsewhere. But that’s not the point. The point is that implementing partition of the Land of Israel would risk national suicide. There’s no rush. Perhaps the best “solution” is not to look for a political agreement, but just to keep the status quo with small modifications as needed. If you must have a program, there are other options than partition for an end game. So could we stop insisting on this one?

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
16 April '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/04/the-devil-is-in-the-implementation/

Yossi Klein Halevi is a wonderful writer. I recommend his book Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation to anyone who wants to appreciate the nuances of Israel’s political tribes.

But like many wonderful Israeli writers on such subjects, his brain is stuck.

It is stuck on the horns of the dilemma Micah Goodman calls Catch-67: if Israel tries to absorb all of Judea and Samaria, it will either have to undemocratically deny the franchise to the Arab population or become an unstable binational state (or both). But on the other hand, if Israel gives up Judea and Samaria, it will have to deal with a security nightmare in which terrorists will be in easy shooting range of Israel’s most populated regions. A Gaza times ten. Neither choice is acceptable. Stuck.

So how does he get unstuck? Like many Jewish intellectuals, he sees the demographic problem as worse than the security problem, and opts for partition. In a recent Wall Street Journal article (unfortunately behind a paywall) he argues that both sides have legitimate aspirations to possess all of the land; but although partition is unjust for both, it is the only practical solution.

I strongly disagree with him about the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations (so does Yisrael Medad, here), but that isn’t what I want to discuss in this post. I want to look at one small piece of the issue that is a show-stopper for everyone that takes a similar pro-partition line: the question of implementation.

Halevi writes,

Like a majority of Israelis—though the numbers are dropping, according to the polls—I support the principle of a two-state solution, for Israel’s sake no less than for the Palestinians. Extricating ourselves from ruling over another people is a moral, political and demographic imperative. It is the only way to save Israel in the long term as both a Jewish and a democratic state—the two essential elements of our being. Partition is the only real alternative to a Yugoslavia-like single state in which two rival peoples devour each other.

But in order to take that frightening leap of territorial contraction—pulling back to the pre-1967 borders, when Israel was barely 9 miles wide at its narrowest point—we need some indication that a Palestinian state would be a peaceful neighbor, and not one more enemy on our doorstep. The practical expression of that goodwill would be Palestinian agreement that the descendants of the refugees of 1948 return to a Palestinian state and not to Israel, where they would threaten its Jewish majority.

We know, and Halevi notes, the depth of Palestinian hatred for Israel and that “the relentless message, conveyed to a new generation by media and schools and mosques, is that the Jews are thieves, with no historical roots in this land.” We know, from our experience with Gaza and South Lebanon, how easy it is for a terrorist organization like Hamas or Hezbollah to establish itself in areas from which Israel withdraws. We know that the geography of the Land of Israel, with the commanding high ground of Judea and Samaria makes a pre-1967 sized Israel almost indefensible.

No Palestinian leadership has ever indicated that it is prepared to give up the “right of return.” Indeed, this idea – that all of the land from the river to the sea has been unfairly taken from them – is the single essential ideological principle of Palestinian identity. Any Palestinian agreement to two-state plans has always been hedged as temporary, as in the PLO’s “phased plan” or Hamas’ proposal of a temporary truce. Palestinian leaders deny that there is a Jewish people, or that it has a historical connection to the land. This implies that there is a strong possibility that the Palestinian side will not negotiate in good faith or keep its side of the bargain.

The Second Partition Plan that died when the Arabs rejected it - by Sheri Oz

...The Second Partition Plan was conceivable because the 1947 Jews somehow could not believe that we no longer needed to ask anyone for permission to live and breathe. The longevity of the Two-State-Solution Myth is because many of us still cannot get that we are a sovereign nation and need not beg others to recognize our right to exist as such. 

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
28 March '18..

Once upon a time, there was a huge piece of land that was taken under wing by arrogant European has-been empires when they successfully destroyed a rival empire. They divvied up the land and told the world they would hold it in trust for the indigenous peoples of those regions.One of these was named the Mandate of Palestine by the trustees. It was supposed to be a homeland for the Jewish people given that it was sitting on our ancestral lands.

The neighbours did not like what they saw — those Jews! “There goes the neighbourhood,” they exclaimed!

The Arabs protested to the British, who then cut up the land into a larger piece and a smaller piece, using the Jordan River as a convenient dividing line. They did not ask the Jews which piece they wanted – you know, unlike the wise parent of two children fighting over the last piece of cake. The parent tells one kid to cut the cake and the other kid gets to choose his or her half. In this case, the Jews were unconcerned with the difference in size between the two pieces of the Mandate. If given the choice, they would have selected the piece they got in any case, for that was the piece with the bulk of the lands of historical significance to us:

The Jews were prepared to continue the work they had already begun in developing the infrastructure of their new modern state. However, the Arabs just could not let it go. So the British came up with what came to be called The Partition Plan. It was really the SECOND partition plan, the first having already been executed and the keys to the newly invented kingdom having been given to the Hashemites in the 1920s, the deal signed finally in 1947.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Truth Be Told, Belief in Palestinian Openness to Two-State Solution Amounts to Insanity - by Prof. Efraim Karsh

Rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Uri Avnery retreats into a counterfactual fantasyland.

Prof. Efraim Karsh..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 654..
23 November '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/belief-palestinian-openness-two-state-solution-insanity/

I never thought I would concur with anything written by veteran Israeli “peace” activist Uri Avnery, but I find myself in full agreement with his recent prognosis that “sheer stupidity plays a major role in the history of nations” and that the longstanding rejection of the two-state solution has been nothing short of grand idiocy.

But it is here that our consensus ends. For rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Avnery retreats into the counterfactual fantasyland in which he has been living for decades. “When I pointed this out [i.e., the two-state solution], right after the 1948 war,” he writes, “I was more or less alone. Now this is a worldwide consensus, everywhere except in Israel.”

Ignoring the vainglorious (mis)appropriation of the two-state solution by the then 25-year-old Avnery, this assertion is not only unfounded but the inverse of the truth. Far from being averse to the idea, the Zionist leadership accepted the two-state solution as early as 1937 when it was first raised by a British commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel.

And while this acceptance was somewhat half-hearted given that the proposed Jewish state occupied a mere 15% of the mandate territory west of the Jordan river, it was the Zionist leadership that 10 years later spearheaded the international campaign for the two-state solution that culminated in the UN partition resolution of November 1947.

Likewise, since the onset of the Oslo process in September 1993, five successive Israeli prime ministers – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu – have openly and unequivocally endorsed the two-state solution. Paradoxically, it was Yitzhak Rabin, posthumously glorified as a tireless “soldier of peace,” who envisaged a Palestinian “entity short of a state that will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its control,” while Netanyahu, whom Avnery berates for rejecting the two-state solution, has repeatedly proclaimed his support for the idea, including in a high-profile 2011 address to both houses of the US Congress.

By contrast, the Palestinian Arab leadership, as well the neighboring Arab states, have consistently rejected the two-state solution from the start. The July 1937 Peel Committee report led to the intensification of mass violence, begun the previous year and curtailed for the duration of the commission’s deliberations, while the November 1947 partition resolution triggered an immediate outburst of Palestinian-Arab violence, followed six months later by an all-Arab attempt to destroy the newly proclaimed State of Israel.

Palestine is indeed “occupied” by shadows of its own making - by Asaf Romirowsky

...Palestinian acceptance of the two-state solution was a means of appeasing the West and its stated desire for all parties to live in peace according to democratic, national ideals. But for Arafat in his day and now for Mahmoud Abbas, the two-state solution was a mechanism with which to buy time until the Palestinians can finally overcome and defeat Israel. The language of “occupation” plays a key role.

Dr. Asaf Romirowsky..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 606..
07 October '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/palestine-occupation-strategy/

A consistent Palestinian strategy for seeking statehood while blaming Israel for its absence has been codified through the narrative of “occupation.” The anniversary of the 1967 war brought this to the forefront in endless accusations regarding the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank. There is even an assertion that Gaza is still “occupied.”

Occupation is a Palestinian tool to avoid negotiations, since “no tactical brilliance in negotiations, no amount of expert preparation, no perfect alignment of the stars can overcome that obstacle.” Nor is progress in Palestinian economics, institution-building, or civil society possible, because – as Nabeel Kassis, Palestinian Minister for Finance, put it – “Development under occupation is a charade.” Even the Palestinian Authority’s own repression and crackdown on freedom of the press is, according to Hanan Ashrawi, caused “of course [by] the Israeli occupation.” And despite the palpable underdevelopment of Palestinian institutions and civil society, Europe must keep funding them, since “Preparedness for several possible scenarios with a long-term focus on functioning institutions is what is required from the EU and other donors in Palestine.”

In 2011, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas put forward the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) at the UN, we saw this process in action. The approach is specifically designed to prevent any direct negotiations with the State of Israel. Some Palestinian supporters even opposed the UDI precisely because Palestine “lacks the most essential elements of statehood: independence and sovereignty, and effective control over its territory. The fact is that Israel, the occupying power, has the final say in most matters affecting the destiny of the Palestinian people.”

Despite the high-sounding rhetoric about the declaration, which followed the 1998 Palestinian “Declaration of Independence,” its goal was to put the onus for a Palestinian state on the UN. But Palestinians are already treated by the UN like no other entity, whether state or people. Vast financial and administrative resources are dedicated to the “Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” Despite these efforts, which have cost many millions and have lasted almost 70 years, long predating the 1967 “occupation,” there is still no Palestinian state.

Palestinians and their supporters want to have the occupation both ways. It is the trump card for their own refusal to negotiate and failure to develop their own society, but it is also a useful tool for further internationalization of the conflict and prolongation of their international welfare status.

Sidelined by reality, J Street rewrites history to create ‘Palestine’ - by Stephen M. Flatow

...For the past 22 years, they have been residents of the Palestinian Authority, and they vote in Palestinian elections. They will never be Israeli citizens, will never vote in Israeli elections, and will never threaten Israel’s Jewish demographic majority. The old arguments for Palestinian statehood lie in tatters. The U.S. government's position simply reflects that reality. J Street, unable to face reality, is trying to change history to suit its agenda.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
29 August '17..

The U.S. government's reluctance to demand the immediate creation of a Palestinian state has sent J Street into a panic. With its candidates having been defeated in elections on both sides of the ocean, and its proposals crumbling in the face of reality, J Street is trying one last desperate strategy: rewriting history so that it appears Palestinian statehood has been supported by everybody, everywhere, for as long as anyone can remember.

Asked by reporters Aug. 24 about the Palestinian state issue, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, "We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. That’s the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it.”

Nauert's statement was simple, logical, and reasonable. But her failure to pledge a full-throated endorsement of the Palestinian agenda sent J Street into a tizzy. The J Street leaders fired off an overheated press release that declared, “For more than two decades, responsible Israeli and Palestinian leaders, U.S. presidents of both parties and virtually the entire international community have understood that a two-state solution is the only viable way to end the conflict."

Literally, everything in J Street's declaration is erroneous.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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A politically incorrect (but realistic) diagnosis - by Yoram Ettinger

...Arab attitudes toward Israel derive from the 14-century-old Islamic ‎intolerance of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and other "infidels," who claim ‎sovereignty in "the abode of Islam." The key issue has never been the size, ‎but the existence of the "infidel" Jewish state on land that is supposedly ‎divinely ordained to be ruled by Islamic believers.

Yoram Ettinger..
Israel Hayom..
17 July '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=19443

Political correctness suggests that the resolution of the Palestinian issue is ‎predicated on a dramatic Israeli land concession and the establishment of a ‎Palestinian state: the two-state solution.‎

Moreover, political correctness has subordinated Middle East reality and long-‎term national security to the achievement of the holy grail of peaceful ‎coexistence between Jews and Arabs west of the Jordan River. In the process, ‎the "holy grailers" have oversimplified the highly complex, unpredictable, ‎violent, intolerant, fragmented Middle East. This is the same school of ‎thought that misperceived the Arab tsunami, in 2011, as an Arab Spring, a youth revolution and a transition toward democracy. ‎

Political correctness has preferred talk and assessment-based "hope" over ‎centuries-old, well-documented realism. ‎

While political correctness has failed to advance peaceful coexistence, it has ‎forced the Arabs to outflank Western pressure on Israel from the maximalist ‎side, radicalizing their demands, and further intensifying the obstacles to ‎peace.‎

Political correctness resembles a surgeon who focuses on the spot of the ‎surgery while ignoring the medical history of the entire body and its bearing upon ‎the surgery. ‎

For instance, the sustained Arab war against the Jewish state has taken place ‎in the Middle East, which has featured a systematic, regional state of war, ‎terrorism, subversion, provisional one-bullet regimes, tenuous agreements, ‎limited cease-fires and the lack of civil liberties since the seventh-century ‎appearance of Islam. These have been almost entirely intra-Islamic, intra-Arab ‎wars, reflecting the (so far) unbridgeable ethnic, tribal, cultural, religious, ‎historical, ideological battles that have dominated the region, totally unrelated ‎to Israel. ‎

The Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue are not "the Middle East ‎conflict" or the top priorities for Arab policymakers. ‎

Gaza as the Ultimate Indictment of ‘Two-Statism’ - by Martin Sherman

The real humanitarian solution to the plight of Gaza lies not in its reconstruction, but in its deconstruction.

Martin Sherman..
Algemeiner.com..
23 June '17..

“…the prospective Palestinian state is bound to be a failed and repressive entity, and a permanent danger to its Israeli and Jordanian neighbors.”

— Elliott Abrams, briefing to the Middle East Forum, June 15, 2017.

“Hamas wants Israel to supply it with electricity ‘or else,’ but there is no reason why Israel should submit to Hamas extortion. It is not Israel’s obligation to satisfy the needs of a population that continues, through its ongoing support of Hamas, to pursue Israel’s destruction.”

— Efraim Inbar, “Gaza in the Dark Is Not So Terrible,” June 18, 2017.

“What is the point of raising and spending many millions of dollars to rebuild the Gaza Strip just so it can be destroyed in the next war? It’s a harsh question. Given the region’s tragic history, it is also inevitable.”

– New York Times Editorial, October 10, 2014.

Once again Gaza is in the news.

Once again the specter of “humanitarian disaster” hovers over the population on the coastal enclave, the hapless victims of the hopelessly ill-conceived endeavor to foist statehood on the Palestinian Arabs.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Actually, the Two State Solution Is Immoral, Racist And Inhumane To The Arabs - by Sheri Oz

...I am NOT talking about Israel’s security and I am NOT talking about us leaving our holy sites in their hands (even though I am against this) — I am talking about the humanitarian crisis that would characterize the lives of those left behind the wall that would mark the permanent border between us and them.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 May '17..

I wouldn’t wish the Two State Solution on my worst enemies. Yet that is what leftist organizations in Israel and abroad are doing – wishing the Two State Solution on our neighbours. They cry out for us to stop the “occupation”, arguing that the occupation is immoral and oppressive to the Arabs living in the Palestinian Authority (PA). They want us to separate from the Palestinian Arabs, with them on one side of a permanent border and us on the other side. They claim that this is the only humane way to preserve the Jewish majority and democracy in Israel and at the same time provide the Palestinian Arabs with the autonomy to which they think they have some kind of right.

Yet the autonomy they offer is a sub-state. Granted, it would be called The State of Palestine, but it would not patrol its own border with Jordan, for example, (Israel would) and it will not be allowed to have an army. Whether or not it will have an airport remains to be seen, and the huge numbers of currently internationally recognized “refugees” will not be allowed in. The only way for the PA to sign such a humiliating “peace treaty” would be for the Arabs to finally accept that they were defeated by Israel in 1967. If this is the deal, then it will be largely a capitulation by the Arabs, largely a unilateral deal not all that different from when we unilaterally left Gaza.

And we only have to look to Gaza to see what is immoral, racist and inhumane to the Arabs living there after we divorced them.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution? Actually most Palestinians say otherwise. - by Daniel Polisar

Western statesmen and politicians have long asserted that the two-state solution commands majority support on the ground. Most Palestinians say otherwise.

Daniel Polisar..
Mosaicmagazine.com..
03 April '17..

Last December, while defending the Obama administration’s decision to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry laid out the options facing Israelis and Palestinians:

[I]f the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic—it cannot be both—and it won’t ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution. Most on both sides understand this basic choice, and that’s why it’s important that polls of Israelis and Palestinians show there is still strong support for the two-state solution—in theory. They just don’t believe that it can happen.

In emphasizing the “strong” popular support on both sides for a two-state solution, Kerry was following in his own footsteps. Whether in public statements or in private meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he had repeatedly cited polling evidence to advance his case for a two-state solution throughout his four-year tenure at the State Department.

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Daniel Polisar is executive vice-president and a member of the faculty at Shalem College in Jerusalem. A Ph.D. in political science, he focuses on the challenges of liberalization in the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s constitutional development, and Palestinian and Israeli public opinion.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Uncle Max and that inevitable two-state solution discussion at the seder table - by Vic Rosenthal

It’s time to say “dayenu” to the 2-state solution. The starting point must be defensible borders, not a Palestinian state. Of course the Palestinians would find this approach unacceptable, but they also find any 2-state deal that doesn’t provide for the ultimate replacement of the Jewish state with an Arab one equally unacceptable. So why does it matter? Why do you think we followed Moshe out of comfortable Egypt and into the desert, Uncle Max? It wasn’t in order to create ‘Palestine’!

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
31 March '17..







So we are sitting around the seder table with our American Uncle Max and he says,

[I] remain convinced that a two-state solution is the only outcome that would quell ongoing incidents of violence, maintain Israel as a secure, Jewish and democratic state, and provide a just and stable future for the Palestinians.

Having had the traditional four cups of wine, my first, immediate reaction would be to say something about 1993 calling and wanting its policy back. But actually this and other surprisingly stupid things appeared in a letter signed by 191 members of the US Congress, read at AIPAC by Nancy Pelosi, and sent to Donald Trump.

Many things have happened in the past 24 years, both in the US and especially in the Middle East, but for these (mostly Democratic) lawmakers, nothing has changed. One wonders exactly what could happen that would change their minds, which seem to have accepted the necessity of an additional partition of the land of Israel as an article of faith.

My second thought is an almost overwhelming feeling of fatigue over the fact that this irrational and dangerous idea will not go away, and that I am yet again forced to argue about it.

So, pay attention, Uncle Max. I am not going to repeat this like the verses of Had Gadya.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The peace process that Greenblatt is here to reincarnate died 17 years ago - by Caroline Glick

...Rabin believed that Israel would emerge stronger from his decision to recognize the PLO, one way or another. Either Israel would achieve peace. Or Israel would get the Americans and the Europeans off its back once the PLO made clear that it was lying about wanting peace. Rabin was wrong. Israel paid gravely for Rabin’s error in judgment.

Caroline Glick..
Carolineglick.com..
117 March '17..

There are iron rules of warfare. One of the most basic rules is that you have to know your enemy. If you do not know your enemy, or worse, if you refuse to act on your knowledge of him, you will lose your war against him.

This basic truth appears to have eluded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week we have been beset by the bizarre and sudden appearance of Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s negotiations chief.

Greenblatt’s mission is apparently to reinstate the mordant peace process between Israel and the PLO.

The peace process that Greenblatt is here to reincarnate died 17 years ago.

In 2000, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat killed the peace process when he initiated a massive terrorist war against Israel, right after he rejected peace and Palestinian statehood at the Camp David peace conference.

In rejecting peace, the architect of modern terrorism made clear that his claim seven years earlier that he was willing to reach a compromise with Israel, based on partition of the Land of Israel between a Jewish and an Arab state, was a lie.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Evidently, inaccurate portrayal of Palestinian leadership is not a ‘significant issue’ at the BBC

...As we see, the BBC does not think that leading audiences to believe that there is one, united Palestinian leadership which regards the two-state solution as its “goal” (while airbrushing from view a proscribed terror organisation that aims to wipe Israel off the map) is a “significant issue” which is liable to hamper understanding of this particular ‘international issue‘.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
15 March '17..





Last month we noted that an insert titled “What is the two-state solution?” had appeared in a number of BBC News website articles published since late December 2016. The same insert continues to appear in BBC content – most recently just last week.

BBC Watch submitted a complaint on the grounds that the insert is inaccurate and misleading to audiences because:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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