two-state solution

Oriel Eisner 5-26-2021
A black and white photo of a family in Palestine.

Illustration by Mark Harris

JONATHAN KUTTAB’S Is the Two-State Solution Obsolete? is an important, clear-eyed contribution to the conversation about the future of Israel-Palestine. Kuttab directly and with a forgiving spirit addresses what is at stake, making clear why thinking beyond the two-state solution paradigm is necessary for anyone who seeks a just and equitable path forward in the region.

As he writes, the “facts on the ground” are such that the geography of the two-state solution is untenable. He primarily discusses the emotional and social toll of uprooting the settlement enterprise, which is made up of more than 700,000 Jewish settlers living scattered across the West Bank. Israel has been building the infrastructure of a one-state reality for decades now, infrastructure that advances de facto annexation, suburbanizing settlements in the Jewish imagination, and fragmenting huge swaths of Palestinian territory. Jewish Jerusalem and its settlements, roadways, and municipal systems sprawl into the boundaries of Ramallah, Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley, and Palestinian East Jerusalem.

Currently, Israel is working on highway, housing, and water projects that are literally destroying and tunneling through mountains—and communities—in the landscape around Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank. This is not to mention the unending settler encroachment—in the past month alone, there have been four new settler outpost projects just in the South Hebron Hills. These steps are not easily undone, and with each construction project, Israel’s pseudo “two-state commitment” becomes more and more deeply embedded in an oppressive and unequal one-state reality.

Jonathan Kuttab 5-26-2021

THE ISRAELI VICTORY in the 1967 war created a new reality in the region. Gradually, the outlines of a possible Grand Compromise began to take shape: Israel would return the land it captured in that war and in return the Palestinians and the Arab world would acknowledge Israel’s sovereignty over the 78 percent of Palestine that constituted the state of Israel on the eve of that war. This Grand Compromise, often referred to as “Land for Peace,” was enshrined in U.N. Resolution 242, and it gradually obtained the support of solid majorities among Palestinians and Arabs as well as Israelis and their supporters abroad. The two-state solution became the acknowledged goal for all well-meaning people as the ideal formula for a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those who rejected it from either side were viewed as maximalist hardliners and enemies to peace.

But as soon as the guns were silent in 1967, the issue of Jewish settlements in the newly occupied territories became a central and defining feature of the conflict between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. International law allowed neither annexation nor the demographic shifts required to fulfill the Zionist ideal in terms of ejecting the non-Jewish population and moving Jews into the newly occupied territories. All such Zionist activity, therefore, needed to be carefully camouflaged and justified in secular, non-Zionist terms. It had to be justified either as a security measure, a temporary arrangement, or the creation of bargaining chips for the peace negotiations that were to come.

Palestinians who happened to be out of the area at the end of the war, or who left because of the war, were promptly blocked from returning. Israel started taking property all over the West Bank and Gaza under a variety of excuses and legal machinations and making that land available for Jewish settlers. Jewish settlers started moving in and creating exclusive Jewish enclaves that gave every indication of permanence. It is noteworthy that these settlements were not Israeli per se (Israeli Arab citizens were barred from them) but specifically and exclusively Jewish.

Jim Rice 5-25-2021
An illustration of poet Marianne Chan with her eyes closed and flowers behind her head

Poet Marianne Chan, author of All Heathens / Illustration by Noelle Averett

ONE OF THE most misleading words in the recent explosion of violence between Israel and Hamas is “conflict.” There is no symmetry or equivalence between desperate rocket attacks, deplorable as they are, from Hamas and the massive, disproportionate blitzkrieg by the region’s dominant military power. And, as usual, the casualties in such attacks were disproportionate as well: More than 20 times as many Palestinians, including many children, were killed, most of them predictable deaths from Israeli air force strikes on population centers in the Gaza Strip.

The bloodshed has sparked renewed calls for the “two-state solution”—the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But, as Palestinian-American Jonathan Kuttab and American-Israeli Oriel Eisner explain in this issue, Israeli settlements have made the two-state approach impossible, and thus made clear the need for a shift in our thinking. As Kuttab writes, new thinking “would require each group to sufficiently empathize with and understand the hopes, fears, interests, and aspirations of the other group.” This spring’s violence makes painfully evident why such new thinking is urgently needed.

5-25-2021

Time for a new paradigm in Palestine/Israel? Why settlements have made a two-state solution impossible.

the Web Editors 1-09-2017

Image via meunierd/Shutterstock.com

It wasn’t long ago that Rubio and Cruz criticized the Obama administration for the deaths of four Americans, including Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, in a terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

“Congress and the Executive Branch need to work together to do everything possible to make sure something like this does not happen again,” said Rubio in June 2016.

the Web Editors 5-13-2015
Image via giulio napolitano/shutterstock.com

Image via giulio napolitano/shutterstock.com

The Vatican announced it will recognize the state of Palestine in a treaty concluded May 13.

The treaty is awaiting formal approval and signing, but it is already being recognized as a major statement of support for a Palestian state in the historically contested region. 

The pope has long signaled his support of a state. The language of the treaty, while not yet signed, has alarmed Israelis but invigorated the Palestinian case for statehood, The New York Times reports

For the past year, the Vatican had informally referred to the country as “state of Palestine,” in its yearbook as well as in its program for Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land.

Formal recognition of a Palestinian state by the Vatican, which has deep religious interests in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories that include Christian holy sites, lends a powerful signal of legitimacy to the efforts by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, to achieve statehood despite the long paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Read more from The New York Times here.

Members and supporters of Women of the Wall pray with prayer shawls at the Western Wall. RNS photo by Michele Chabin.

Where once it seemed that uncritical devotion to Israel was the norm for U.S Jews, that Zionism and Judaism were hand-in-glove, new research finds that’s not the case today — if it ever was.

The Pew Research Center’s newly released, comprehensive Portrait of Jewish Americans not only delved into myriad ways people identify as Jews, it also probed their emotional connection and their theological and political ideas about the Jewish state.

Dale Hanson Bourke 1-14-2013
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images

Palestinian activists set up on January 11, 2013 an 'outpost' named Bab al-Shams. AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, while most of Israel was focused on increasingly extreme rhetoric surrounding the upcoming elections and most Americans were listening to angry debates about guns and fiscal responsibility, a remarkable thing happened. A few dozen Palestinians captured the world’s attention quietly and peacefully.

Their methods were simple and witty. Following the example of Israeli settlers, they established “facts on the ground.” The group of Palestinians quietly hiked up a barren hillside in cold, wet weather and pitched tents, declaring themselves part of the new village of Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun, a name taken from the novel by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury. 

Their village was established on private, Palestinian land and the landowner (who publicly displayed his Ottoman era deed) gave them permission to camp there. But that particular piece of land is also known on an Israeli development plan map as “E-1” and came to the attention of the world recently when Prime Minister Netanyahu announced plans to annex the land for Israeli settlements. Many believe that move, which would essentially bifurcate the West Bank, would be the deathblow to the “Two State Solution.”

Munther Isaac 11-28-2012
Photo by Ryan Rodrick Beiler

Protesters supporting Palestinian statehood confront Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja on Sept. 16.

On Nov. 29, Palestinians will bid to become a “non-member observer state” in the United Nations. If approved, this would be a major step toward full statehood for Palestinians. Israel, and perhaps more important, the United States, are against this move, not least for fear of possible war-crime investigations against Israel. Israel’s rationale has always been that a final resolution cannot be achieved unilaterally, but only through direct negotiations. Ironically, Israel achieved its own independence unilaterally and through the United Nations.

Palestinian Christians leaders have sent a strong message of support for this step. A statement signed by 100 community leader says:

We believe the Palestine Liberation Organization’s initiative to enhance Palestine’s status in the United Nations to an Observer State is a positive, collective, and moral step that will get us closer to freedom. This is a step in the right direction for the cause of a just peace in the region. We fully endorse this bid, just as we supported Palestine’s application for full membership of the United Nations a year ago.