The Imaginary ‘Two-State Solution’

By Noah Rothman

Monday, January 22,2024

 

A fine line distinguishes admirable consistency from blinkered thick-headedness. The Biden administration’s indefatigable commitment to advocating in support of a “two-state solution” in the Middle East long ago ceased to be the former and now verges on the latter.

 

Within weeks of the October 7 massacre, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recommitted to lobbying for the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian state as the only true pathway to “durable peace and stability.” Even as reality in the region shifts beneath his feet, Blinken hasn’t changed his tune. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden, you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” Blinken told a World Economic Forum audience at their embarrassing annual spectacle in Davos.

 

At a certain point, a rational observer must withdraw charitable assumptions about the fallacies that have motivated Blinken to cling to this unimaginative approach to statecraft. His advocacy likely contributed to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unequivocal rejection of a two-state process — a rejection that was framed in the international press as a recklessly provocative act of defiance. But Netanyahu didn’t incept this international row into existence — he responded to it. The Israeli prime minister articulated the consensus view in Israel on the viability of a two-state process amid an ongoing existential war against a terrorist outfit in Gaza. Even if Netanyahu’s remarks were intended for a domestic audience, the Biden administration’s lobbying provided the platform for this politicking.

 

But as to the international media’s account of this controversy, you could be forgiven for thinking that Washington and Jerusalem were the only parties to it. The competing and, oftentimes, conflicting Palestinian factions seem just as eager to reject Blinken’s terms.

 

It shouldn’t need to be said given its empirically observable bloodlust, but Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution if Israel is one of those two states.

 

“I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea and from the north to the south has been renewed,” said founding Hamas politburo member Khaled Mashal in a recent interview publicized by the Middle East watchdog group MEMRI.

 

“This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S. and in Western capital cities by the American and Western public,” he added of the encouragement the youthful activist class has recently provided to Hamas. “The Palestinian consensus—or almost a consensus—is that we will not give up on our right to Palestine in its entirety, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba.”

 

Okay, so neither Israel nor the Biden administration has a partner in Hamas. That is to be expected. What about the more responsible Palestinian factions? The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has flatly rejected an offer to assume post-war control of Gaza — an offer no one made them, but which served as an opportunity to articulate its desire to extract material concessions from the West.

 

With whom are Blinken and Netanyahu supposed to negotiate a Palestinian state into existence? How are we even having a conversation about a two-state solution when the Palestinian territories are about as separate as geopolitical entities can be? These are geographically non-contiguous territories with distinct governments, economies, and foreign policies. They have radically divergent relations with their neighbors, up to and including the fact that one of these proto-statelets is at war with Israel and the other is not.

 

Holding fast to the delusion of a “two-state solution” in this environment looks to the neutral observer less like statesmanship and more like superstition. Blinken believes declaring statehood into existence by fiat will somehow remake the governing entities in the Palestinian territories into responsible actors. Rather, it’s the other way around.