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Arab recognition of a jewish state

Israel-Palestine: The Myth of a Two-State Solution



The world and his brother perceive a "two-state solution" for Israel and Palestine as the key to achieving Middle East peace. President Obama and the US House (both sides) buy it. So too do Western leaders in Brussels. And with US leftist Jews and ex-diplomats and even 58 percent of Israelis 'on board', one wonders why Israel's PM Netanyahu did not simply turn up at the recent White House talks pen poised to sign up too.

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At the talks Binyaman Netanyahu was unequivocal. He too wanted Palestinian self-governance, but not necessarily in statehood form. At least, not until a commitment to recognising Israel's own statehood could be wrung from the Palestinian negotiators. Splitting hairs? Far from it. Statehood carries with it all kinds of international rights. For instance, a fledgling Palestinian state might feel inclined to cut a deal with Palestinian Hamas sponsors, Iran. A deal that would see Iran's Revolutionary Guards massing on Israel's border -- and barely needing a missile delivery system. But Netanyahu got through to the US president on one count. "If we resume negotiations," said Barack Obama, "then I think the Palestinians will have to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself." But right there, on the twin-issues of Arab 'recognition' and, more specifically, recognition as a Jewish State, is the reason why the two-state solution will never happen. Many Palestinians, in concert with some Western liberal commentators, would prefer a 'multicultural' or 'one-state solution' where Palestinians and Israelis can 'live in harmony'. Not surprising with the size of the Israeli Palestinian community fast-approaching parity with that of the Israeli-Jewish population. Given the track record for 'multiculturalism' in the Arab-Muslim states however, it is a solution with the prospective mileage of the average electric car. Add to that the propensity of the Israeli-Palestinian community to hold a formal remembrance of the Nakba, the 'catastrophe' of the creation of Israel, and you get the drift. Which only leaves the two-state solution or that of the Islamist zealots: obliterating the state of Israel. While the armchair liberals in the West look, complaining two-states could be formed if only Israel would do this or that, the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel's status remains unyielding. As commentator David Harris points out, "three successive Israeli governments have sought peace based on a two-state settlement with the Palestinians -- and failed." At Camp David in 2001, hosted by Bill Clinton, Israeli PM Ehud Barak acceded to every request of Yasser Arafat bar agreeing to cede east Jerusalem as the new Palestinian capital. Palestine would have achieved statehood way back then, with all the international rights that go with it. Instead, perversely, Yasser Arafat walked away. A few years later allegedly hard-line Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, defying his own party, unilaterally pulled thousands of Israeli settlers out of Gaza. Clearly, Israeli settlements would not be allowed to be an impediment to peace for Israel. Instead of Gazans seizing the opportunity to create, as Harris puts it, "an unstoppable momentum for a second phase of withdrawal from the West Bank", Gaza was turned into a poverty-stricken terrorist enclave. Next PM Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians just about all of the West Bank and, for the first time, was even prepared to "talk Jerusalem", the only major stumbling block previously for Palestinians. Amazingly, not only did the Palestinians refuse the offer, they did not even bother to make a counter offer and walked away again. While Israel has shown it has been prepared to talk and move on just about every issue except that of its own right to exist, Palestinian intransigence has been resolute. Something which only makes sense when one realizes that the Palestinian/Arab cause is not interested in any solution, save that of 'regaining the land'. With Hamas and Hezbollah gaining broad-based democratic support in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon, the reality is that the Islamic Jihadists wield unprecedented national influence in the region. As much as Western leaders persist in denial, the goals of the Jihadists for Palestine and beyond are, for the large part, supported by the people. What this means in practice is, as the Hamas Charter proclaims, that peace can only be attained "under the wing of Islam". The founding documents of both Hamas and Hezbollah are in total agreement that a Palestinian state is meaningless unless it first achieves the destruction of Israel. The Hamas Charter further demands the reclamation of "every inch of Palestine" as part of a greater struggle which sees (Article 9) Islamic "homelands be retrieved" at the heart of a new Caliphate. As the Charter goes on, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours." Osama Bin Laden himself summed it up thus: "What use is it to create a Palestinian state? If you create a state, it will be like many other states. You should try to mobilize the umma, the Muslim community, for your cause, but not for creating a Palestinian state." This critical theme is picked up by Hezbollah's Manifesto in a section entitled "The Necessity for the Destruction of Israel". Written in 1985, and today given the legitimacy of broad democratic support, it states that Hezbollah looks not to national leadership (in Lebanon) at all, but to leadership from Iran. "We are the sons of the umma...the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran." Palestine's Hamas has a similar understanding. The objective for both is a new Islamic Caliphate -- a state of Islam -- under Iranian leadership. Both Hamas and Hezbollah, of course, have already been engaged in fighting Iran's proxy war with Israel for some years. Western leaders will no doubt persist in convincing themselves that the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is not iconic for a far greater ideological clash of civilizations. They will no doubt continue to scratch their heads and blame Israel for the West's failure to achieve the unachievable. It's far easier to make Israel jump through, ultimately pointless, hoops than accept the fact that Palestinian negotiators have all along been applying vastly different rules of engagement. In 2007 a Pew Global Attitudes Project reported that 77% of Palestinians claimed they could not live side-by-side with Israel. In May 2009, a new poll declares that most Palestinians (58 percent) want a unity government. But, as the result of the 2006 election made only too clear, majority grassroots Palestinian opinion -- the will of the people -- supports the Hamas' Islamist agenda that demands the destruction of the state of Israel. Obama and other democratic Western leaders can cover their ears and continue in denial all they want, but, as Mark Twain once said, "The people have spoken -- the bastards."


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Peter C. Glover -- Bio and Archives

Peter C. Glover is an English writer & freelance journalist specializing in political, media and energy analysis (and is currently European Associate Editor for the US magazine Energy Tribune. He has been published extensively and is also the author of a number of books including The Politics of Faith: Essays on the Morality of Key Current Affairs which set out the moral case for the invasion of Iraq and a Judeo-Christian defence of the death penalty.


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