Juan Cole
Informed Comment / July 23, 2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration, and all its predecessors, have attempted to deflect questions about the concerted Israeli land theft from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 by underlining Washington’s commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The last time, however, that a US president put himself on the line in a serious way to attain any such thing was the 1993 Oslo Accords, which required Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian West Bank by 1997. When the Israeli Right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, sabotaged Oslo and refused to withdraw, and on the contrary doubled the number of Israeli squatters 1993-2003, the Clinton and Bush administrations rolled over and played dead, letting the far right Likud Party get away with murder.
At least in those days the US spokesmen occasionally politely demurred from Israeli war crimes. As time went on, and we got to Trump and Biden, the US began actively supporting the war crimes and avoided criticizing the Israeli government almost entirely.
Whenever reporters press spokesmen like John Kirby (NSC) or Matthew Miller (State Department) about continued Israeli lawlessness, their mantra is that the US seeks a two state solution. It was never a logical response, since the Israeli government’s planting of hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters throughout the West Bank and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem was always intended to forestall a Palestinian state.
Now, the Israeli parliament has let the scales fall from the world’s eyes by formally rejecting, now and forever, any establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reported that the Knesset or Israeli national legislature voted last Thursday to reject any establishment of a Palestinian state on the grounds that it would actually prolong the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the Middle East.
The resolution came in the wake of a Knesset decision last February rejecting the “unilateral” recognition of a Palestinian state by other countries.
As recently as May, Spain, Ireland and Norway recognized Palestine, followed by Slovakia.
The Israeli parliament announced that “The Knesset strongly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan,” saying that it considers “the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will constitute an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, and will lead to the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.”
The Palestinian West Bank is not in the heart of the Land of Israel. It wasn’t even awarded to Israel by the grossly unfair and insufferably pro-Zionist 1947 UN General Assembly partition proposal.
The Israeli parliamentarians expressed a conviction that a Palestinian state would quickly be taken over by Hamas and would become a terrorist base coordinating with Iran. This assertion ignores that the secular-minded Palestine Liberation Organization runs the West Bank, and that it has poor relations with Iran. It is also a vote of lack of confidence in the Israeli government, which says that it is destroying Hamas.
VIDEO : Israeli Parliament Rejects any Palestinian State, Exposing US Gaslighting (juancole.com)
The resolution was supported by all the member parties of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Gideon Moshe Serchensky Sa’ar, a longtime Likud figure now of the “New Hope” party, said of the vote: “It aims to express the comprehensive opposition that exists among the Israeli people to the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel’s security and future.” He said it was aimed at the international community, to convey that “pressures aimed at imposing a Palestinian state on Israel will not work.”
The US has also long held that a Palestinian state can only be established with Israel’s acquiescence. But that principle rings hollow if Israel has ruled such a state out of the question a priori.
Arab 48 also reports that the Knesset vote shooting down a Palestinian state provoked consternation in Washington. The Biden administration had hoped that the “day after” the Israeli campaign against Gaza, such a state could be established, resulting in Saudi Arabia’s recognition of it and of Israel.
John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, dismissed the vote as a “difficulty” that Washington hopes to “overcome.” In other words, the American daydream will continue, unaffected by political reality on the ground.
The Stat Department admitted to being “displeased” by the vote, which is as close as it gets to condemning anything Israel does.
The same State Department continues to deny that there is any genocide happening in Gaza despite the killing of over 39,000 persons, the majority of them women and children.
I don’t know who Washington thinks it is fooling with this “two-state solution” mantra, which is simply a non-starter and a form of gaslighting.
The problem is that if there isn’t a two-state solution, there aren’t many alternatives. You could have ongoing Apartheid. Or you could see the Palestinian expelled en masse from Gaza and the West Bank in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Or you could see a one-state solution, whereby Israel grants Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians.
I’d rank the likelihood right now as 1) ethnic cleansing, 2) long-term Apartheid, and 3) a one-state solution.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the author of, among others, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
