Intractability and the Chimera of the "two-state solution"

http://tinyurl.com/p4tzgs
Middle East mirage By Tony Blankley 5/20/09
...all shrewd diplomats and observers of diplomacy look beneath the surface language and actions of diplomacy to the underlying realities that will shape negotiations, because, as professor Angelo Codevilla explains, effective diplomacy is, at its core, a "verbal representation of a persuasive reality. Indubitable reality itself convinces — sometimes even without verbal expression, or through nonverbal expression."...new round of U.S.-Israeli-Arab negotiations, one needs to keep firmly in mind the political realities that will either undergird or undermine the talks.
...the constantly repeated background theme has been that now is the vital moment to actually bring into being an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. As I discussed in this space last week, President Obama is being put under extraordinary pressure — both by Arab leaders and commentators and by his own White House staff — to be personally responsible for the success or failure of these talks....Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming under even greater pressure to comply with the United States' proposed path to a "peace accord," the foundation of which is a two-state solution, that is to say, two sovereign nations side by side: Israel and a Palestinian state.
The Arab states never have been more united in preparing the diplomatic groundwork for these talks. In advance of this week's Washington talks, the Arab states have let it be known that they will "reward" Israel with "confidence-building measures" — as Nader Dahabi, Jordan's prime minister, said last weekend at a World Economic Forum in Jordan — should Israel cooperate in the negotiations. But the premise of Arab cooperation includes adherence to the key provisions of the Saudi-sponsored plan: giving Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel and having the Israeli borders return to how they were before the 1967 war....shrewd old Talleyrand also once said, "I know where there is more wisdom... — in public opinion." So consider this dismal data from the authoritative polling of the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project. The report tabulated the response to this key question: "Which statement comes closest to your opinion? 1) A way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people are taken care of OR, 2) the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists?"
...the key results being, by 77 to 16 percent, Palestinians don't believe they can live side by side with Israel, while, by 61 to 31 percent, Israelis do believe they can live side by side with a Palestinian state. Note that all the Arab states are very negative and all the Western states (plus Israel) are quite positive for a two-state solution.
• United States: 1) 67 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• France: 1) 82 percent, 2) 16 percent.
• Germany: 1) 80 percent, 2) 11 percent.
• Sweden: 1) 65 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• Britain: 1) 60 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• Israel: 1) 61 percent, 2) 31 percent.
• Morocco: 1) 23 percent, 2) 47 percent.
• Kuwait: 1) 21 percent, 2) 73 percent.
• Egypt: 1) 18 percent, 2) 80 percent.
• Jordan: 1) 17 percent, 2) 78 percent.
• Palestinian territories: 1) 16 percent, 2) 77 percent.
Keep in mind, also, that after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a Sinai peace treaty with Israel, in October 1981 he was assassinated...A fatwa authorizing the assassination had been issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman...It would take an unusually courageous leader to sign a peace treaty and his own death warrant in one document. And lest there be any doubt as to the acceptability of a peace treaty that doesn't include refugees' being given the right to return (which would turn Israel into a Muslim-majority, rather than Jewish-majority, state), consider the writing this week in the Los Angeles Times of Mustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Parliament, a candidate for president in 2005, and currently secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative: "Palestinians in the occupied territories have no standing to sign away the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to get Israel to the negotiating table. To tell the truth, we don't believe that Israel can be a true democracy and an exclusivist Jewish state at the same time."****So, there is no agreement with the international goal since the Mandate and League of Naions of "two lands for two peoples." **** As long as fewer than 2 in 10 Arabs, both Palestinian and all others, believe in Israel's right to exist as a nation with a Jewish majority, there can be no successful peace based on a two-state solution. That is the reality that no diplomacy can change.
History shows no change over many times of trying the same thing: http://tinyurl.com/okurh2
A two-state peace isn't the Arab goal By Jeff Jacoby 5/20/09 Who favors a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? President Obama does,...So does former President George W. Bush, who began advocating Palestinian statehood in 2002 and continued until his final days in office. The Democratic Party's national platform endorses a two-state solution; the Republican platform does, too. The UN Security Council unanimously reaffirmed its support a few days ago. The European Union is strongly in favor as well — so strongly that the EU's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, has been warning Israel that its relations with Europe "will be very, very different" if it drops the two-state ball.Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian state...aligning himself ...with the editorial boards of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. And, for that matter, with most Israelis. A new poll shows 58 percent of the Israeli public backing a two-state solution; prominent supporters include Netanyahu's three predecessors — former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak — as well as president Shimon Peres.The consensus, it would seem, is overwhelming. ...a senior adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy,..."Everyone wants peace. The whole world wants a Palestinian state."
It isn't going to happen.International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.
The Peel Commission's proposed two-state solution (1937). The Arabs said no.
In 1936, ...Palestine was still under British rule, ...Lord Peel was sent to investigate the steadily worsening Arab violence....It recommended a two-state solution — a partition of the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. "Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace," the commission reported. "No other plan does."But the Arab leaders, more intent on preventing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine than in achieving a state for themselves, rejected the Peel plan out of hand. The foremost Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively supported the Nazi regime in Germany. In return, Husseini wrote in his memoirs, Hitler promised him "a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."
In 1947, the Palestinians were again presented with a two-state proposal. Again they spurned it....On Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly debated — and by a vote of 33-13 adopted — Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine on the basis of population. Had the Arabs accepted the UN decision, the Palestinian state that "the whole world wants" would today be 61 years old. Instead, the Arab League vowed to block Jewish sovereignty by waging "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre." Over and over this pattern has been repeated. Following its stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. From their summit in Khartoum came the Arabs' notorious response: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel." At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians virtually everything they claimed to be seeking — a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and launched the bloodiest wave of terrorism in Israel's history.
To this day, the charters of Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, call for Israel's liquidation. "The whole world" may want peace and a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want something very different. Until that changes, there is no two-state solution.