A two-state solution would be horrific for the Palestinians. Here's why.
The international community is trapped in binary thinking that equates a two-state solution with supporting the Palestinians and opposing it as being against them. This is senseless.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.
The widespread belief that a two-state solution will resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fiction.
It might be a heresy to say it, but it is not even what is best for the Palestinians. The international community needs to wake up to this. A narrative change is required.
Those advocating and agitating for two states must know even less about Palestinian politics than they do about Israeli politics, which is an extraordinary achievement. They have little understanding of what would genuinely help Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel giving its land away to its enemies is stupid. What is less talked about, or rarely acknowledged, is that a two-state solution would be disastrous for Palestinians.
It would not stop terror against Israel. The new state would descend into civil war. Tt would have its own terror problem, and be a corrupt fiefdom. How this is meant to make Palestinian lives better is unclear.
Any peace proposal with a chance of working must address Israel’s security concerns, and creating a Palestinian state will not do that. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad are united in their hatred of Jews and their desire to destroy Israel. Annihilating Israel will remain their goal regardless if there is or isn’t a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas brainwash their children from the womb to hate Jews and to aspire to Islamic martyrdom. The notorious, quasi-refugee agency known as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and Western governments’ funding of this child abuse is obscene.
Any proposal that does not save these children from Islamists should be deemed a non-starter. This indoctrination ensures terror against Israel will continue, as will Israel’s military response to it. Two states will not bring peace, and thus will not help Israelis or Palestinians.
The various tribally minded Palestinian factions agree on nothing beyond loathing Israel. Civil war would plague a Palestinian state almost immediately — since the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad will fight to control it. When Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005, it took only six months for Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to be at war, which Hamas won.
The Palestinian Authority-Hamas civil war in Gaza was not a big war. Some 600 people were killed, with dozens murdered in later repercussions and reprisals. However, it illustrated all sides’ barbarism. It was the kind of violence that keeps you up at night. Both sides targeted civilians; opponents were executed in public; prisoners were thrown off high-rise buildings, and bodies were tied to the backs of trucks and dragged through the streets.
Given this is how they treat each other, it was unsurprising that the October 7th attacks were so savage when they targeted Jews. That is what Palestinian political discourse looks like. It is hardly the stuff of successful statehood.
This happened in the Gaza Strip, which is smaller and strategically less important than Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank). A Palestinian civil war there would be more complex and bloodier. The civil war would likely involve more than just the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, since there are numerous other Jihadist factions, too.
There would be no clear winner, either. Whoever loses will embark on a terror campaign against whoever does govern. So, in addition to continued Palestinian terror against Israel, a Palestinian state itself would have a terror problem. Nefarious actors, such as Iran and Qatar, would fuel this, making it a near-inevitable outcome.
The agreement that Fatah (which runs the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas just signed in Beijing to resolve their differences is meaningless. Both are pathological liars. It is a stretch to say that creating a Palestinian state that would impose a heinous civil war on Palestinians is in their interests.
Whichever faction ended up ruling a Palestinian state would be a brutal dictatorship. The only difference would be how ISIS-like the state would be. If this sounds glib, recall that we have two case studies of what a Palestinian state would be like. We have Judea and Samaria under Palestinian Authority rule, and we have Gaza under almost 20 years of Hamas rule.
The Palestinian Authority is led by the octogenarian 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, a classic Arab dictator who is 19 years into a four-year term. He is worth about $100 million. His sons are each thought to be worth many times that amount, since Abbas has granted them exclusive import rights for tobacco and lucrative government contracts in construction, real estate, and cellular communications. He has a private jet in Amman, Jordan.
His patronage extends to supporters in his unusually large 23-member cabinet and to Palestinian security forces, which at one point had more generals than the United States army. The Palestinian Authority never established an independent or credible judiciary, properly functioning ministries, or any other necessary organs of state.
The United States’ calls for a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority are just the latest attempt to reform the organization. It will fail for all the same reasons. The system of patronage is too entrenched, and too many senior Palestinian Authority officials have too much to lose.
Consider former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who oversaw considerable reforms during his 2007 to 2013 rule. His Palestinian Authority peers pushed him out because his reforms got in the way of them amassing their fortunes.
The Palestinian Authority has also never convincingly renounced terror. It incentivizes it by paying stipends to those who murder Jews. Members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces regularly engage in terror against Israel, and are habitually arrested in Israeli counter-terrorism operations.
Palestinians rightly have no confidence in Mahmoud Abbas or the Palestinian Authority. They know it would be bad, which is why only 32 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution, according to Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research polling.
Hamas, an Islamist offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, provides the other case study of why a Palestinian state is a bad idea. Gaza remains poor and a human rights backwater despite it having received more foreign aid per capita than Europe did under the Marshall Plan.
The Islamist group did not spend its 18-year rule of Gaza and international goodwill building a viable state to benefit Palestinians in Gaza. They spent it developing a vast terror apparatus of at least 560 kilometers (350 miles) of tunnels, a militia of 30,000 troops, tens of thousands of missiles, plus weapons manufacturing capabilities. Then, on October 7th, they launched war on Israel, prompting Israel to invade, bringing woe upon Gaza.
Like their Fatah enemies, Hamas’ leaders have enriched themselves grotesquely. They are billionaires who live in penthouses in Qatar and have extensive property portfolios. They have stolen vast amounts of foreign aid, taken a cut of all trade in and out of Gaza Strip (both formally and through the tunnel network) and maintained considerable overseas investments.
They even take up to 75 percent of the earnings of those Palestinians fortunate enough to work in Israel for higher salaries.
Hamas seeks to build an ISIS-style Caliphate and run Gaza as such. Women have no rights, gay people are thrown off buildings or shot, and political dissenters are murdered, often publicly and gruesomely. Beyond the political and security implications, it would be a human catastrophe if Hamas governed a Palestinian state.
Given this, how can it be that so much of the international community supports a two-state solution?
Partly, it is ignorance. Few leaders and commentators have even the slightest understanding of the region or the dispute. It is also political expediency. Left-wing leaders are genuinely anti-Israel, but even centrist leaders in many Western countries see the need to gain support from Muslim voters and far-Left loons.
Mostly, it is political cowardice. Supporting a two-state solution requires no new thinking. It is a risk-free position that allows political leaders to pretend they have a policy, feign it as reasonable, and act as if they care about both sides. It is the opposite of leadership.
The reason a two-state solution has never been realized is that the Palestinians have walked away from it every time it has been seriously offered. It is time the world recognized reality and looked at other options, many of which would be better for the Palestinians, whom the world claims to care about so much.
There are all kinds of constitutional arrangements that make more sense than two states. A single state with a Palestinian autonomous zone, a single state with Palestinians granted permanent residence, or a confederation of Israel and “Palestine,” to name but a few.
More work needs to be done about how these other models might work. These ideas also need to be socialized through effective public relations so an informed discussion can be had. The belief that the ugly status quo is the default alternative to two states — or that two states is the only thing that could deliver Israel security and the Palestinians’ self-governance — is wrong. It speaks to a lack of imagination.
Israel and its supporters have laid out an overwhelming strong case against a two-state solution. However, they have not done so well in laying out other viable options.
Without this, it is going to be hard to shift the narrative and the debate.
 | A guest post by
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The lie is there is a "solution." The Jews and the Israelis want there to be an Israel. The Palestinians (and the international community) do not. There is no middle. Many of both the Palestinians and international community parsitically gain wealth and prestige off of the conflict. As parasites, they suck as much blood and treasure as they can without killing the host, yet.
The solution is to expel the "palestinians", Arab nations should be forced to take them in.
Of course, it is obvious that a "palestinian" state will lead to civil war amongst the various terror factions; the PA, fatah, hamas, islamic jihad etc. because they are barbaric 7th century savages with a barbaric, primitive culture. It certainly will not be a "free palestine", it will be an oppressive and brutal violator of human rights under sharia law. The people pushing for 2 states are well aware of this but don't give a shit what happens to the "palestinians" under such a dictatorship because for them the only purpose the "palestinians" have is merely to be exploited and weaponized against Israel. The advocates for "palestine" are just rabid antisemites who are really only about obliterating Israel. The "palestinians" themselves are too stupid, brainwashed and full of Jew-hatred themselves to notice they are being used and that their lives are worthless to these left-wing westerners. Israelis are actually the only people in the world who have helped the palestinians.