By Paul M
For almost as long as the Two State Solution has been the only proposal for solving the Israel/Palestinian conflict, there have been dire warnings that the window of opportunity is closing. The purpose has always been the same: to arm-twist Israel into making impossible concessions. For that reason the threat was always that, without a State of Palestine, Israel would be forced to absorb all the Palestinians, grant them citizenship and so destroy Jewish self-determination. (Of course, this was only a threat because of what everyone understood a Palestinian majority would do to the newly-minority Jews, but no one wanted to say that part out loud.) Yet, somehow, the ever-closing window never actually shut.
Now Donald Trump has shocked the world, it seems, with his proposal to re-home the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip elsewhere and start over. Can he actually do that? Is that really what he wants to do? It’s impossible to know for certain—to me it seems unlikely but he’s one of those politicians against whom it’s risky to bet. (See also: Benjamin Netanyahu.) What matters right now is that he has said something implicitly that friends of Israel, and even anyone who genuinely wishes the best for Palestinians, should now be making absolutely explicit: The window of opportunity for the Two State Solution shut on October 7th 2023. Hamas slammed it under the weight of burned and butchered corpses and the rubble of the border kibbutzim.
And yet, funnily enough, none of the usual suspects is talking about closing windows anymore. They prefer to avoid the subject altogether and act as if it’s still wide open and the Two State Solution must be rushed through it more urgently than ever. The reason, obviously, is that it isn’t Israel and Jews that are paying the price for the loss—it turns out it’s the Palestinians.
So far, there are two replacement proposals on the table: There’s President Trump’s, which would end at least the Gaza part of the conflict and offer the soon-to-be former-Palestinians a chance at a fresh start, at the price of having their recently-minted national identity redissolved into some host nation’s. Or there’s a return to a status quo ante minus: Confined to the Strip with less freedom, less of an economy, less housing, less aid (at least until Trump-Republicanism is out of vogue in the USA), fewer prospects to escape, less chance to hurt a sobered and alert Israel. Less of everything except hate and self-pity, the only things they don’t need to import and would produce in abundance.
Apparently there’s no appetite in most of the world for either of these options but still—the point bears endless repeating—the Two State Solution is dead. It’s not necessary for Israel and its supporters to to attach themselves to either proposal, or to offer any other. In fact they shouldn’t. Their only task is to state the obvious, that no Palestinian state can exist next to Israel unless and until the Palestinians fix themselves. It is up to the Palestinians, with the help of those who claim to be friends, to do that work and/or to come up with new alternatives. If not rehoming among the “brotherly” Arab nations or an unending prospect of life in a wasteland, then what? Do they want to reopen the window to a state of their own? What will they do to lift the weight of all that lost Israeli life piled against it? Not willing to do what it takes? Then think of something else to offer, a plan that doesn’t involve hate & destruction. If ever the ball was in the Palestinians’ court, it’s now. The rest of us can do nothing better or more useful than take advantage of Trump’s opening and keep the spotlight there.
