Countering Hasbara #2: Lies About the Two-State Solution
"No Partner for Peace"
In our last post in the series, we discussed some of the lies around 1948. This article looks at one of the longest-running lies: the viability of the “two-state solution.”
“Israel Has No Partner for Peace and Palestine has refused multiple offers for its own state”
Let’s start with two facts:
Israel has never offered a state to the Palestinians. If such an offer existed, Israel would provide written evidence of it to hold it over the head of the Palestinians in front of the entire world. The person who perhaps went furthest with the Palestinians, Yitzhak Rabin, referred to creating “less than a state” when defending his dealings with the Palestinians…before he was himself assassinated by a Jewish terrorist.
Israel takes pains to assassinate any Palestinian of note, ensuring that there will never be a partner for peace. Examples include Ghassan Kanafani, Razan Al-Najjar, and Ismail Haniyeh.
It’s helpful to note that it was only through international pressure that the Israelis even recognized that there were such a people as the “Palestinians” and that the Palestinian Liberation Organization, later the Palestinian Authority, had the exclusive right to represent those people. If actions speak louder than words, then Israel has shown by its actions that they believe there is only one sovereign people in Palestine, and all other peoples are simply guests or interlopers.
UN Partition Plan of 1947
The UN had no moral or legal authority to partition Palestine and it was morally and legally unacceptable to Palestinians (and to Arabs in general) to accept that a minority of the population (and a micro-minority of the landowners) in Palestine were to be given the majority of the land. The plan was a nonstarter, and the process was dominated by Zionist threats and US diplomatic pressure. It does not matter if the entire world supported a Jewish state in Palestine: no one had the moral or legal right to carve up a land against the wishes of its inhabitants.
Learn more: Britain and the League of Nations : Was There Ever a Mandate for Palestine? by John Quigley (my commentary) and Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the US Was Used to Create Israel by Alison Weir.
1948: Israel Declares Independence
Israel takes all the land drawn up for it by the UN and takes even more beyond that. The Israeli Cabinet decides definitively against the Right of Return, a right that is absolutely necessary for a just and lasting peace.
Learn more: 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris
1948-1967: Interlude
The new state of Israel made no attempts to regularize the situation as they (and the Arab countries) simply prepared for more wars. The PLO is formed in 1964.
Learn more: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
1967: Israeli Victory
After a resounding victory, Israel starts allowing settlers into all its newly conquered territory. This process has never ended.
1967 Khartoum Resolution: The Three Nos
The Arab League, after the astounding Israeli victory in 1967, adopted a platform that stated there was to be no:
peace with Israel
recognition of Israel
negotiations with Israel
Arafat is elected chairman of the PLO in 1969.
In 1974 both the Arab League and the UN recognize the PLO as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people.”
1978: Egypt and Sadat
Egypt, the greatest threat to Israel militarily, violates the Khartoum Resolution and is suspended from the Arab League until 1989. They create a trend in which Arab countries seek their own interests separate from solidarity with Palestinian interests. Anwar Sadat, who had pursued this treaty with Israel, is assassinated in 1981 in large part because of this betrayal of the Palestinians.
Learn more: The Sabra and Shatila Massacres: Eyewitness Reports by Leila Shahid
1987: The First Intifada
The Palestinians begin to demonstrate that they will not be indefinitely militarily occupied in front of the entire world. Israel is also woken up to the fact that they are going to have to get even more brutal in order to control their open air prisons.
In 1988 Arafat renounces terrorism and accepts principles that could lead to a two-state solution.
Learn more: Drinking the Sea at Gaza by Amira Hass
1991 Madrid, 1993 Oslo
Israel continues to populate conquered areas, making the reality of a “two-state solution” impossible in the practical order. Oslo is now seen for what it is: the largest betrayal of the Palestinian people by the world community since the 1947 so-called Partition Plan.
Learn more: Palestine in Israeli School Books by Nurit Peled-Elhanan
2000 and the Second Intifada
Clinton tries to save his legacy with some last-minute negotiations while he and Ehud Barak have no political capital, then blame Arafat when everything falls apart. Among other problems, there was no concession of the Right of Return except for a small symbolic number. Despite growing international consensus for the so-called “two-state solution” Israel takes no actions to reasonably demonstrate that it has ever accepted even the possibility of such a resolution.
Learn more: Israel’s Forever War: The Long History of Managing — Rather Than Solving — The Conflict by Tom Segev
2006
The first democratic election in the Arab world is held in Gaza and the Palestinians make the “wrong” democratic choice (by Israeli and US and EU standards, who only believe in “democracy” if the “correct” choice is made) in electing Hamas. Gaza is placed under siege to the present day without interruption.
Learn more: Gaza in Crisis and On Palestine, featuring Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe
We could go on from 2000 to the present but there has been no real progress, and indeed, in the final analysis, it is silly for us to even use the phrase, “Palestine was offered a state.” Palestine is a state; it is currently illegally and immorally occupied by a criminal entity known as Israel, and it is ridiculous to say that the person whose land has been stolen and his ancestors and descendants brutally murdered should simply “accept what he is given.” The two-state solution is dead primarily because Israel has never accepted it.
The only true and lasting solution, with its own many challenges and difficulties, is a single state from the river to the sea, with the Right of Return, with no apartheid or racial supremacy.
#EndTheOccupation