Opinion

The two-state solution is a cruel delusion, and an idol in Washington

In a couple of weeks J Street will have its conference in Washington, featuring a lot of Democratic presidential hopefuls, and it will say that the two-state solution is alive, the dream will never die! Then in November, another liberal Zionist group, the Israel Policy Forum is holding an annual event in New York that will argue that we need to “preserve conditions for a future two-state solution.” 

The Democratic presidential candidates all recite the mantra, they support the two-state solution: a Palestinian state and Israel side by side. Some day, somehow.

The news is that this claim is becoming more anachronistic and conservative by the minute. Yesterday on the Senate floor, Chris Murphy of Connecticut admitted that it’s never going to happen:

“Under Trump’s watch, the two state solution in Israel, a longtime bipartisan lynchpin of American policy in the Middle East has effectively fallen apart. Trump has allowed Israel to take steps that make a future Palestinian state almost impossible.”

Chris Murphy on the Senate floor talking about the two-state solution, Oct. 16, 2019. Screenshot from CSPan, cropped.

Yousef Munayyer has a piece out at Foreign Affairs making the point that Everyone knows it’s a delusion.

“[R]eality has set in. The two-state solution is dead. And good riddance: it never offered a realistic path forward. The time has come for all interested parties to instead consider the only alternative with any chance of delivering lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state.”

Ian Lustick, the Penn scholar, just published a book called Paradigm Lost making this same argument. “For five decades I have wrestled with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, struggling to find paths to peace and justice via a two-state solution,” he says. “This book is my attempt to understand why that goal became unattainable.  From that analysis I have gained new hope for a genuinely democratic future.  The one-state reality is ugly and brutal, but it is also dynamic.”

The reasons the two-state solution is dead are clear to anyone who pays attention. There are 650,000 Israeli “settlers” living on territory that was supposed to be part of the Palestinian state, including East Jerusalem, and Israel has no desire/intention/will to yield that land, and btw, those settlers are heavily-armed and can vote in Israeli elections and their Palestinian neighbors can’t. Only marginal politicians in Israel run on the two-state solution; occupied Palestine is just another part of Israel in their discourse. The United States has of course completely refused to put any pressure on Israel for decades as it built settlements, and even Palestinian public opinion appears to be shifting away from the goal of sovereignty (if not for overwhelming endorsement of a single state).

We can all speculate about why Washington is so stubborn about the two-state solution. My answer is that Zionists have political sway in the Democratic Party and admitting there’s just one state means abandoning the Zionist dream of Jewish sovereignty, a dream that became a “miracle” and a historical exigency too in the wake of the Holocaust. Great ideologies die hard.

Whatever the reason, Democrats and liberal Zionists are flat-earthers: they deny the one-state reality. The Republicans and evangelicals are actually more realistic, inasmuch as they’re happy with apartheid. Though even “liberal” Zionists warn about the “demographic… threat” posed by Palestinians.

So the question is, What pressure is there inside the Democratic Party and liberal Zionist organizations to acknowledge the one-state reality and at least praise the movement for equal rights in Israel/Palestine?

That seems to me the responsibility of a great number of progressives, from Palestinian solidarity organizations to Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to news sites like ours to Jewish advocacy groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. I think IfNotNow is afraid to say the two state solution is dead because that would mean abandoning the dream of a Jewish democracy, which some in its community surely still believe in. But even John Kerry said three years ago the two-state solution was almost dead, and how progressive was he?

Throwing out the two-state solution means abandoning not just an article of faith in Washington but an international consensus. That was always Norman Finkelstein’s rationale, isn’t it better to end this conflict than to hold out for an ideal of justice that is a recipe for bloodshed?

The answer is that Palestinians have experienced nothing but violence, disenfranchisement and diminution of their possessions throughout the two-state era. So they are the rightful leaders of this discussion. Their movement of nonviolent resistance has been inspiring internationally, in much the way that the civil rights and South African struggles once were, and the two-state consensus in Europe is beginning to fragment.

Today the goal of all American activists ought to be simple, to amplify Palestinian voices in the American discourse, so as to counter the Zionist ones with the truth about what a Jewish democracy has meant for its non-Jewish subjects.

The Democratic establishment is resisting that process by all means. That’s what the AIPAC group inside the Democratic Party is doing when it denounces Bernie Sanders’s braintrust as people who “hate Israel.” That’s what Bari Weiss and Batya-Ungar-Sargon are doing when they say that 97 percent of Jews are Zionists, and anti-Zionists are anti-Semitic. They are trying to bind the Democrats to a traditional constituency, Israel supporters, and maintain that orthodoxy among liberal Zionists and Democratic candidates, too.

So Zionism destroyed the two-state solution, but Zionists don’t want anyone to say it’s dead.

The progressive base of the party, including many Jews, is too well informed to crumble. They understand that the choice is apartheid or democracy. This is a long struggle, and the facts are on our side.

Thanks to Peter Voskamp and Scott Roth and Jonathan Ofir. 

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While probably correct on the left wing democrat party dilemma, there is no “cruel” two stars delusion with Palestinians or their voices. Either they are in the camp with hamas which is a whole different delusion, in the camp of the kleptocratic and otherwise not interested in their peoples progress or well being or the are in the camp with non Jewish Arab Israeli citizens, as in, they will continue to wait for whatever bomb goes off first. Demographic, foreign instigators (with no common culture or borders or even religion to fuel their hatred) with terrorist proxy non governmental militias as their vanguard or economic meltdown, the Arabs, like always will persist until either something gives, something breaks or some people decide, collectively, they can’t continue to fight.
I dont see who this supposed delusion of a 2ss is so cruel to except bleeding hearts that don’t live in the region and are always looking to be outraged at the ‘others’ predicament rather then their own back yard.
Case in point…. MW commenters undoubtedly like the tyrant Erdogans strong anti Israel rhetoric and occasional actions but are suddenly SHOCKED that he would act to stop an actual physical rebellion not in Syria but in Turkey itself where most Turks who don’t support Erdogan are not at all happy with the kurds and their rebellion. But the left (and right) are crying bloody murder simply because the American msm is to lazy to report that kurds are not monolithic and there is a big difference between the Kurdish autonomous state in iraq and the YPK in Syria/turkey.
That said, I’m totally for a Kurdish national homeland. But anti zionist folks will have to reckon with how close Israeli and Kurdish ties are (and also figure out exactly which kurds) before they continue to scream about trump.

They also will have to reckon with long standing alliances between the US and nato member turkey as much as Israel has had to reckon with keeping its Turkish channels open despite its flourishing alliance with Greece. When Erdogan is overthrown by the millions of Turks that are sick of his blatent corruption and despotism the world will be dealing with a different turkey, once again.

Maybe the far left so-called progressive democrat in the US is having a difficult time dealing with the true ‘cruelty’. That hyper-focusing on Israel will never solve the byzantine complexities of the middle east and that the picture is SO much larger then it was, even just a decade ago, that the Palestinian cause is still hyped but in reality is being left behind by much of the emerging economies of the present

Murphy wants to show his Democratic colleagues that he’s on the Trash Trump team, but the bogus “two-state solution” was dead long before this president.

Actually, the two-state solution started to die not long after Oslo, well over 20 years ago, by the time there were hundreds of thousands of West Bank settlers requiring relocation to create this mythical state. It’s just taken a very long time for reality to set in for those who, for cultural, religious or even political reasons, could not face the alternatives.

Their movement of nonviolent resistance has been inspiring internationally…
This part is laughable.

That said, a 2SS has almost nothing to do with the US, Europe or anyone other than the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. If there is an agreement of any type, there will be peace. If both sides (current status quo) believe they can win by waiting, then peace will wait as well.

So the 2SS remains as viable as any of the various One State options, and those who are intent to take it off the table (Phil) appear more motivated by the demise of Israel than the prospect of peace.

“Actually, the two-state solution started to die not long after Oslo…”

When was it ever alive, then?
“Two-state solution” is the name for an excuse for Western colonialist governments to fully support the theft of Palestine and the genocide of its owners. It’s always been that. Anyone who suggests there has ever been an intention of creating a second state in Palestine should point to any evidence in facts, not official speech.