Mourning the two-state solution

Throughout its tragic and tumultuous history, spanning nearly a century (beginning roughly with the 1917 Balfour Declaration), the Palestinian national cause has never seen a more surreal and bizarre period as the one it finds itself ensnared in today.

One can describe the plight of the Palestinian people as an ongoing case of brash abandonment by the global powers of the day.

No other nation has been made to suffer for so long, pay the price for historical injustice while enduring the longest episode of occupation in the modern era.

And so it was not unusual that the Paris peace conference, which was held on Sunday with more than 70 world delegates representing nations and international organisations, minus Israel and the Palestinians, underlined the obvious but failed to provide actionable measures to end the state of stalemate that has paralysed bilateral negotiations for so long.

The final communiqué renewed the international community’s endorsement of the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. 

It called for an end to violence and for unilateral actions, including the building of unlawful Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the conference as “rigged” and “futile”, and the US lobbied so that delegates would not seek another UN Security Council resolution that would be seen as anti-Israel.

The UK had sent a low-level delegation and refused to sign on the final statement.

The Palestinians, naturally, supported the conference’s outcome with President Mahmoud Abbas describing it as a last chance for peace and for salvaging the two-state solution.

But the meeting came at a sombre and uncertain moment for the Palestinians.

It would be reasonable to assume that we will not see another international gathering of this nature anytime during the coming four years.

The elephant in the room in Paris was obviously President-elect Donald Trump, whose statements and reactions on the Israel-Palestine issue signal tough days ahead for the Palestinians, and for international law and UN resolutions.

That is why Netanyahu has stuck to his guns and promised brighter days ahead for Israel.

In reality, the Paris conference was not an attempt to revive the two-state solution but to mourn its passing.

So was the gist of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s swan song six- principle speech on December 28 on the prospects of final peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The fact is that the incoming administration, as well as a pro-Israeli US Congress, has an ideologically skewed and one-sided view of a complex conflict.

By promising to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem and holding a favourable view of Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank, the Trump administration will formally negate what previous US governments had committed to for decades, beginning with Oslo and the Washington Accords all the way to Kerry’s recent peace principles and the American abstention at the Security Council last December.

It is shameful that the British government, trying to recover from the Brexit shock, is also veering from decades-old positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an attempt to court the new tenant in the White House.

It is another example of how the just cause of the Palestinians is being sacrificed as a card in a largely cynical political game.

No one really knows how the world will react to Trump’s unilateral actions that will pour directly into the coffers of Israeli extremists inside and outside Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet.

Few realise, and many choose to ignore, that the Israeli society is sharply divided over the future of the two-state solution and on the proposal of annexing substantial chunks of the West Bank, as some key Israeli Cabinet members, like Education Minister Naftali Bennett, are suggesting.

News that about 200 former top officials from Israel’s security services have recently warned that Bennett’s calls would put the country on a course to lose its Jewish and democratic character do not make it to US lawmakers and the White House.

Even American Jews are uncertain on such issues, with some movements, such as J Street, which supports the two-state solution, being lambasted by hard-line Israelis as anti-Zionist.

The problem with the
Trump/Congress pro-Netanyahu approach is that it does not provide a workable alternative to the nearly defunct two-state solution.

With the Arab world terribly divided and in turmoil, and with European Union members going through an existential crisis, the Palestinian voice is slowly being muffled.

Making things worse is the fact that Palestinian factions are disunited and suffering from a gross lack of leadership.

Thus, it is surreal, even absurd, that in the midst of this major challenge to the Palestinian national cause and as major powers lean towards abandoning the Palestinians once again, a Hamas senior official would come out to suggest forging a federation between Gaza and the West Bank.

Bennett has used such statements to argue that a Palestinian state already exists in Gaza.

This is a classic case of how some Palestinian leaders fail to understand reality, proving once more that they are their people’s worst enemy.

The writer is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.