Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – French President Macron is taking the lead in a doomed bid to keep a two-state solution alive. On September 12, the UN General Assembly passed the “New York Declaration” by a vote of 142 for, 10 against, with 12 abstentions. Sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, it outlines a timeline and incremental steps for meeting this lofty goal. Notably, it calls for the freeing of all Israeli hostages, and for Hamas to relinquish its rule in Gaza to the PA, and all its weapons. The vote came one day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed bombing Gaza and approved expanded settlement plans that would definitively forestall any future Palestinian state
Just as it seemed to be gaining some momentum in Israel and in the halls of state, the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has been killed off and buried by Netanyahu’s orchestrated genocide in Gaza, and Finance Minister Belezel Smotrich’s campaign of terror in the West Bank, undermining diplomacy and accelerating the tragedy.
Time is running short with the urgency of preventing more massive loss of life in Gaza, and the intransigence of the Likud Party with its Israeli Proud Boys coalition ministers. Netanyahu shares Trump’s ambition to be known as a “war president,” and has prolonged the Gaza war as a distraction from his criminal legal proceedings. To augment his war on Gaza and the West Bank, Netanyahu has violated the sovereignty of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia and Qatar in separate military campaigns, which have missed some intended targets, and killed civilians.
Meanwhile, it’s now official that Trump had designs on Gaza beachfront property all along. Netanyahu hosted the official groundbreaking for a Trump Resort in Gaza, on behalf of “Israel’s best friend ever.” ‘Scuse me, but I thought Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were Israel’s best friends ever for checking Israel and Bibi’s worst instincts for political-economic suicide. Bibi has officially reserved the naming rights on the Gaza coastline for Trump, though Donald Trump is clearly not good for the Jews or Israel.
US Foreign Policy under Trump has become a labyrinth of confusion. Now, he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio aren’t even on the same page about Gaza. Trump departed from supporting Netanyahu’s genocide claim in Gaza in July, and demanded last week that Israel not attack Qatar again. But Rubio, visiting Israel, is in full swoon under Netanyahu’s spell, now supporting his position that no diplomatic solution is possible, Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize, but also to be known as a “war president.” And Rubio now parrots Netanyahu’s refusal to consider a Palestinian state, and chickened out on calling out the Israeli PM on the Qatar air strikes.
Positive US-Israeli relations took a huge hit in Trump’s first term when he appointed David Friedman as ambassador, and Jared Kushner as a special Middle East Envoy, culminating with the disastrous Abraham Accords. That became a blueprint for the Trump family’s grand designs on the Gaza beachfront as a resort, to which Netanyahu has given exclusive license. Appointing Mike Huckabee as ambassador for the second term has exacerbated this disaster.
A sad irony of this spoiler policy is that many see a two-state solution as being “good for Israel.” Jews are big on “what’s good for the Jews,” and “what’s good for Israel.” That intersection on the Venn diagram is smaller than ever, as Jews on the far right are slow to catch on. So, too, are many so-called progressive Jews, conflicted about divorcing their Judaism from Zionism. Those sticking their heads in the sand include prominent Democratic elected officials, who can’t divorce themselves from AIPAC’s payroll. Being beholden to this lobby leaves them between the rock of unconditionally supporting Israel and the hard place of standing against genocide.
President Bill Clinton brokered the agreement between Yasser Arafat and Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, centered on mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine, with the establishment of the Palestine Authority as a step toward a Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords were a high point of hope, the subsequent “Balkanization” of Palestinian territories notwithstanding. Oslo provided for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, a five-year transitional period as part of the “roadmap to peace,” and an agreement to resolve outstanding border disputes. It also addressed Israeli settlements, the future of Palestinian refugees disenfranchised since the 1947 Nakba, and the status of Jerusalem’s Holy Sites. The PLO agreed to the principles of Oslo as a “roadmap”. The subsequent Balkanization of the West Bank has facilitated the Israeli usurpation of Palestinian land, as illustrated in the Oscar winning film, No Other Land .
That arrangement was blown up when Netanyahu undermined the Palestinian Authority and refused to withdraw on schedule from the West Bank. At the same time, Israeli intelligence gave some aid to Hamas in a bid to split the Palestinians between it and the secular-minded PLO. No Likud government in Israel has ever entertained any notion of accepting a Palestinian state. Author Rich Forer noted, “The Oslo Accords was a high point of delusional thinking and false hope. It was designed by Israel to always have an excuse not to fulfill its terms. That’s why so many Palestinians, including Edward Said, disliked it. Rabin never had any intention of seeing a Palestinian state and he made it clear that no settler would be displaced.”
The late Israeli PM Abba Eban often averred that he did not intend the 1967 occupation to be permanent, but rather to use those lands as bargaining chips to assure peace. He also famously said, “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That remark referred to what he perceived as the corruption and bad judgment at the time of the Palestine Liberation Authority (PLO). Now it is Israel under Netanyahu that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The belligerent prime minister is choosing the annihilation of Gaza over a UN-brokered peace plan. Many observers have come to a sad recognition that the manipulations of Netanyahu, have made a two-state virtually impossible, because of a series of incremental outrages and disappointments. Hussein Agra and Robert Malley, architects of the Democratic Party’s Middle East policy, argue in their book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday that, “The era of the peace process aimed at a two-state solution has vanished.”
To Likud followers in Israel, the recent UN vote is “a political circus detached from reality.” But in the spirit of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, they fail to recognize that “only territorial compromise can guarantee security and self-determination to both of them.” In contrast, the emerging global consensus is that Israel is the guilty party. This failure of Tel Aviv may become Israel’s ultimate fatal flaw, driven by Netanyahu’s endless well of hubris.
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