Biden admin continues push for two-state solution as critics warn: ‘efforts repeatedly fail’
Fox News
JERUSALEM – The Biden administration’s insistence on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians after the terrorist movement Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 people, including over 30 Americans, is facing renewed criticism.
“I do not think a two-state solution is possible, and, even if possible, it is not advisable. For more than 50 years, hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘peacemakers,’ led by the United States, have attempted to coerce Israel and the Palestinians into a two-state solution,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Fox News Digital.
Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador under former President Trump said, “The efforts repeatedly fail regardless of who’s in charge and the reasons are profound and immutable: 1) the Palestinians are not willing to accept a Jewish State; 2) the likelihood of a Palestinian state becoming a terror state is extremely high, presenting an existential threat to Israel; and 3) the West Bank (referred to by Biblical adherents as Judea and Samaria) is biblical Israel and, absent Israeli control, hundreds of Jewish and Christian holy sites will be destroyed.”
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President Biden penned a November 2023 opinion article in the Washington Post, where he called for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. “The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas,” Biden wrote.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been on a weeklong tour of the region, meeting with Arab and Israeli leaders and repeatedly made the case for a two-state solution.
“As I told the prime minister, every partner that I met on this trip said that they’re ready to support a lasting solution that ends the long-running cycle of violence and ensures Israel’s security. But they underscored that this can only come through a regional approach that includes a pathway to a Palestinian state,” Blinken said at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
For Israelis, who have experienced multiple wars and waves of Palestinian terrorism since the Arabs rejected a two-state solution in 1947 following the re-birth of the Jewish state, there is less appetite for a peace process with entities who foment terrorism.
In 1937, the British government’s Peel Commission recommended that the Holy Land be divided between Jews and Arabs; in short, a two-state solution. The Arabs dismissed the proposed partition plan.
In 1947, the Arabs, under the leadership of the pro-Nazi Hajj Amin Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, rejected the U.N. partition plan that outlined two states, one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs.
Twenty years after the Arab world rejected the U.N. partition for a two-state solution, the Arab League met in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1967, where it delivered its “Three No’s”—no to peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with Israel.
After movement in 1994 with the Oslo peace process agreement between Israel and the Palestinians under the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader, Yasser Arafat, a setback unfolded in 2000.
Arafat flatly rejected a generous peace deal from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to establish a Palestinian state at the start of the new century.
Following Arafat’s opposition to Barak’s offer, the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a second terrorist campaign, known as the Intifada, against Israel, resulting in the murders of 1,184 Israelis.
Eight years later, in 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed to Arafat’s successor, PLO Chairman and PA President Mahmoud Abbas, a wide-ranging deal to recognize a Palestinian state. Abbas dismissed the offer.
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The Biden administration sees the PA and its Fatah Party as the peace partner for Israel, with a view toward bringing about a unified Palestinian state covering the West Bank and Gaza.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the Palestinian Authority, which oversees parts of the West Bank, and its ruling Fatah Party “have yet to condemn the Hamas [for the] October 7, 2023 mega-terror attack in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and about 240 were kidnapped.”
MEMRI located damning statements from senior Fatah officials who aligned themselves with Hamas, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization.
Jibril Rajoub, secretary of Fatah’s Central Committee and chairman of the Palestinian Soccer Federation, said “Hamas is and will remain part of the [Palestinian] national fabric, part of the [Palestinian] struggle and the Palestinian political fabric. This campaign [i.e., the Gaza war] will be a springboard for attaining Palestinian national unity, with one people, one leadership and one goal: the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with complete sovereignty over all the Palestinian territories.”
Rajoub wrote on his Facebook page, according to MEMRI, “…What happened on October 7 was not terror but a natural reaction to the Israeli occupation.”
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Benny Begin, the veteran Israeli lawmaker, told Fox News Digital that “The so-called ‘Two-State Solution’ (TSS) is a political slogan that carries no weight in real life. The jacket lapel of moderate Chairman Mahmoud Abbas tells it all: he carries a miniature key, symbolizing the ‘right’ of seven million (his number) descendants of Arab refugees of the 1948 war of Israel’s birth to return to their original homes within Israel. No Israeli government of whatever makeup can accept it.”
He continued, “On the other hand, the peace agreement must include the vital article stating that the agreement marks ‘the end of all mutual claims.’ No Palestinian Arab leader will be able to sign it without full realization of ‘the right to return’ and hope to stay alive. This is beyond them even if they wanted to, and they don’t.”
Begin concluded that, “There are other valid arguments that nullify the political applicability of the TSS clickbait, but the above argument should suffice. It was the real reason for the failure of previous attempts by Israeli leaders to reach a TSS agreement, and trying it again is yet another costly exercise in futility.”
Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served in the Obama administration, told Fox News Digital, that, “The need for a peaceful accommodation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been clearer. Hamas is an enemy of peace and started this brutal war. But what will end it is not just the elimination of Hamas’s military capacity and ability to threaten Israeli civilians, but also a political settlement between Israelis and Palestinians that provides hope for the Palestinian people.”
Rubin, who also served under former President George W. Bush, added that “It’s this hope that will deter, along with effective security pressure from Israel, a resurgence of Hamas among the Palestinian people after Israel deems its military mission in Gaza complete.”
A Fox News Digital press query to a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Authority was not immediately returned.