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Heavy arial bombing has been conducted on Gaza City. (Photo by BELAL AL SABBAGH/AFP via Getty Images)
When the guns eventually fall silent in Gaza, Israelis and Palestinians will confront a decades-old reality that cannot be overcome by violence and political half-measures. Both Jews and Palestinians will continue to assert privileged ownership of Palestine, citing centuries of history, the merits of which will never be settled conclusively by historians, let alone by the two principals. The question, therefore, is not whether Jews and Palestinians will continue living cheek by jowl, but how. Will they do so amid endless spasms of bloodletting or a coexistence created by a negotiated settlement that reconciles Israel’s need for security with Palestinians’ desire for statehood?
Israeli leaders have long claimed that they cannot negotiate with Hamas, which regards the Jewish state as the culmination of a colonial-settler project produced by Zionism. Yet this insurmountable barrier to a political settlement does not exist in the West Bank — or, more precisely, has not since the Palestinian Liberation Organisation forsook terrorism in 1988, recognised Israel’s right to live in peace, and agreed to negotiate with Israel to create a Palestinian state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO’s historic decision paved the way for its leadership’s return, first to Gaza and later to the West Bank, the formation of a governing body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the quest for a political settlement that would yield a Palestinian state.
Negotiations that started in 1991 led to two agreements, Oslo I (1993) and Oslo II (1995), with the United States acting as a mediator. The latter accord provided for a tripartite division of the West Bank that gave the PA (qualified) governing rights in Areas A and B and Israel exclusive control over Area C, which made up 61% of the territory. Even now, the PA exercises unshared civil and military authority solely in Area A (18 % of the West Bank). Plus, in both of its zones, the PA’s rights are defined narrowly: Israel controls the West Bank’s airspace, border crossings, telecommunications, water resources and other natural resources.
Moreover, in Areas A and B, the Palestinian population is scattered across “165 disconnected islands”, in contrast to Area C, a sprawling continuous expanse that contains all the Jewish settlements, as well as 200,000 or more Palestinians. Hagai El-Ad, an Israeli and former executive director of the human rights organisation B’Tselem, aptly likens the West Bank’s political geography to Swiss cheese. Israel has never been willing to make the hard choices required to change this patchwork into a territorially continuous sovereign Palestinian state — not even in 2000 at Camp David, despite the mythology that Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat, the PA’s leader at the time, a state covering almost all of the West Bank, only to be spurned. In reality, Israel did not present documents or maps, let alone agree to a fully sovereign Palestinian state with a unified territory.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan, proposed in September 2008 following a series of meetings with PA president Mahmoud Abbas, went much further; but by then, Olmert was on his last legs politically, and Abbas refused to accept in haste a plan whose future was uncertain. Since then, the two-state concept has withered on the vine, and that has revived the idea of a single state that would provide equal rights to Jews and Palestinians alike.
The resulting frustration revived the idea of a single state that would guarantee equal rights to Jews and Palestinians alike, proposed in Zionism’s early decades by Jewish intellectuals, including Gershom Scholem, Judah Magnes, Martin Buber. Its more recent Israeli proponents have included Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem’s former deputy mayor, and Oxford historian Avi Shlaim. Among Palestinians, this formula has been advocated by the late Columbia University literary scholar Edward Said, Sari Nusseibeh, a philosophy professor and former president of Al-Quds University (1995-2014) in Jerusalem, and Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi. Their conceptions of a single and inclusive state’s architecture, while not necessarily identical, rested on the premise that the proliferation of Jewish settlements had made the creation of two separate national states infeasible.
By definition, this solution contradicted the animating principle of the Zionist movement articulated by Theodor Herzl, and later picked up by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and David Ben Gurion: the essentiality of a nation in which Jews have special rights. The vision of one state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights appeals, particularly to people on the political Left but is fated to remain on the drawing board. It will never be accepted by the religious parties of the far-Right, represented in the current Israeli coalition government by Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Otzma Yehudit party and Minister of National Security since 2022, and Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party and Finance Minister, also since 2022; or the secular Right-wing parties, such as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud or Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.
Nor does the one-state model have much public support. A December 2022 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Tel Aviv University’s International Program for Conflict Resolution and Mediation found that only 20% of the wider Israeli population approved of a single democratic state. It didn’t fare much better among Palestinians: 23% favoured it. The Rightward trajectory of Israel’s politics during the past several years and the deep mistrust produced by Hamas’s October 7 attacks will, if anything, reduce its appeal in both communities.
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SubscribeEurope loves Arabs. Israel has lots of Arabs. Why not give your Arabs to Europe?
Payback for how Europe treats Jews.
Europe doesn’t have enough money to pay Turkey to keep them all out.
The exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs is not yet complete.
The exchange can be completed in an orderly manner, or else not.
You misunderstand. The author is writing about Palestine, Palestinians and nazi terrorists in Palestine.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000
You make far too many excuses for the enemy’s wicked behavior and you judge Israelis too harshly, Menon.
If the solutions were as simple as you say, they would have been achieved long ago.
Yea, right? If only the Israelis would stop their centuries long campaign of violence, daily rocket attacks and claims to wipe their enemy off the map, peace would prevail and the peace loving Palestinians would start to sing Kumbaya.
I thought Israel has existed in its present form since 1948 (76 years). So how could they have a, “centuries long campaign of violence?”
Unlike Israel, what has really only existed from around that time is the artificial, murderously intolerant state of Pakistan.
Unlike Israel, Pakistan was never attacked by Hindu majority India with an aim to exterminate it’s existence (and despite repeated aggressive attacks or terror programs by Pakistanis).
And unlike Israel, the Pakistanis genocided millions of non muslims – Lahore, Karachi and Sialkot had large Hindu and Sikh populations.
Did you ever hear any demonstrations against those?
Or, for instance the Turkish Armenians?
It was sarcasm, reversing the behaviors of the two conflicting parties.
Sarcasm? Just spitballing…
His comment was clearly sarcastic.
You apparently missed the sarcasm.
I missed the bit where he proposed a solution, let alone a simple one.
The article misses several critical points.
1. Hamas is a jiadist organization that considers it a religious duty to continue fighting Israel to last drop of blood.
2. The PLO never stopped the “armed struggle”. On paper it recognises Israel but in reality still has a military wing that carries out attacks against Israel and the PA pays stipends to convicted or killed terrorists and their families with a flexible scale dependong how many Jews they killed.
3. Hamas has 80+% support in both the West Bank and Gaza.
4. The PA is a corrupt organization headed by an octagenarian autocrat with no clear successor. The only reason it still exists is because Israel props it up to help fight the common enemies Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad, which is also why the PA is so despised by Palestinians.
5. And of course Iran, which like the USSR in the 1970s will never stop stirring, financing and arming the Palestinian military groups intil Israel crumbles and is obliterated.
The country that was illegally partitioned in 1948 was PALESTINE, ERGO IT’S STILL PALESTINE BECAUSE THE PARTITION WAS ILLEGAL. End of story
There was no country called Palestine in 1948. There has never been a sovereign nation of Palestine. You can all-caps to the end of time and it will not change this simple fact.
The country of Trans-Jordan was “partitioned.” So were Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, each larger than the region’s only Jewish state yet it’s the Jewish state that is targeted for elimination.
Yes, it is quite pathetic how all the antisemites are so preoccupied with Israel.
What about demonstrating for creation of Kurds state?
Freedom for Catalonia or Basque country?
Freedom of all Caucasus states from Russian occupation?
True in part BUT – did the Assyrians, Pompey Magnus, Saladin, the Crusaders then Ottomans et all do the same thing the Brits did in 1948? Yes, and it would be a wiser man than i or Ms Shepherd that could decide which were “legal” and which were not.
If partition was illegal in Palestine why was it OK in India? Most Indians were opposed to partition. It only happened because the Muslims threatened war if they didn’t get partition. In Palestine, the Muslims were opposed to partition so once again they threatened war. That’s what Muslims always do when they don’t get their own way.
If only I’d realised ot was so simple-Doh!!!!
Actually thst’s not even the beginning of the story…
Nope. Palestine has never been a nation. The Holy Land is just as much the ancestral home of Jewish people as it is the Muslim nomads who inhabited it.
Israel built a prosperous, democratic nation out of desert wasteland that so-called Palestinians had failed to do in two millennia.
History may eventually conclude that the Palestinian leadership twice failed to take historic opportunities for a two-state solution and a third never arose. They had their chance and blew it.
Internationally it may suit Israel that the debate about a two-state solution rumbles on for another decade or more whilst the Palestinians remain kettled in Gaza and in ever decreasing W Bank locations. Is not the more existential threat a complete change tack by Palestinians to a one state equal rights resolution? The Afrikaners in S Africa were only able to resist equal rights for so long. The potential economic consequences would likely be greater as a failure to allow equal rights would build opprobrium worldwide. It doesn’t feel about to happen soon but if not two-state one state is just a matter of time.
No state has ever been created in such a manner, by a people “accepting an offer.”
Please name one.
States are born in violence, and die in violence. It will be the same this time.
I think you’ll find that the black people in South Africa are the indigenous ones and the Afrikaners are not – Israelis are the indigenous ones to Israel and the term Palestinian arrived in the late 1960’s – not quite analogous, is it?
deleted repeat comment.
Hamas would be happy to be allowed to rule over rubble because that won’t stop them firing their rockets and planning a new attack on the Jewish community in the Middle East.
As far as their people go, they don’t care one way or another, but will certainly take their votes in large numbers again. And that is also guaranteed.
Israel should annex Gaza and rule it as a colony.
Look imbecile that is illegal,immoral and it is also what they have been doing illegally for 76 years, do you think the Palestinians are just arbitrarily fighting jews? Seriously do some reading.
I do think they arbitrarily started fighting Jews in 1948, 1967, and 1973 for starters. Maybe it is you who should do some reading.
Do you even know which river and sea you are referring to when you chant?
I suspect your self-righteous personal attacks tells us more about yourself than you know.
Something tells me you know nothing about Islam….
This would work, for a while. But the US-led Western system of “universalism,” which posits the “equality” of all people (to include their political “equality”) cannot countenance it.
Indeed – or at least retain administrative responsibility for this place.
A totally biased account, exemplified by this:
“A recent example was the rampage by settlers through the town of Huwara to avenge the shooting of two Jewish brothers by a Palestinian”.
A long disquisition on the latter, which I don’t defend, but nothing at all on the murder which led to the “rampage”. Palestinians endlessly excused, Jews always condemned.
Most of the other accusations are pure Hamas propaganda. Israel and Israelis are far from perfect and no doubt do sometimes use inappropriate force
– although many of those people would murder them as soon as look at them. However they have the rule of law, military codes of conduct and have never promoted violence as a matter of state policy. The PLO on the other hand resorted to terrorism very early on including hijacking aircraft, killing random Israeli citizens in outlying parts of the country, and most egregiously abducting and murdering completely innocent athletes at the Munich 1972 Olympics).
Obviously Hamas have adopted this violent policy to an even greater extent. They could have sat in Gaza and attempted to run something like a reasonable state and society, getting the economy going and improving civilian infrastructure and welfare. They could have done this while not recognising Israel – but Israel would not have attacked them.
(By the way the fact that Israel as a matter of divide and rule has at times provided support to Hamas has little morally to do with the issue – the British and Americans allied with a brutal totalitarian state in World War Two in order to fight what they then considered to be the greater evil).
Instead Hamas has used the billions of dollars provided for them by its funders to build up military capacity, with the sole intention of constantly attacking and eventually destroying Israel, along with its main Iranian ally. They have done this through rocket and suicide attacks, eventually requiring the construction of a security war and a hugely expensive Iron Dome defense system. (The fact that more Israelis have not died has nothing to do with any moral worth of Hamas but entirely the Israeli defensive measures).
What the world community is now hypocritically demanding is the Israel should unilaterally stop reacting and defending itself against Hamas – although no other state in the world would do the same.
What would a “proportionate response” have been to the October 7th outrages? Perhaps the IDF going into a college to rape, abduct, torture and kill young people at random? Despite all the dishonest propaganda about this, we all know clearly the difference between civilians dying inevitably in the course of a hard fought war- and deliberately targeting civilians at random for abduction torture rape and murder. We might remember that rather a lot of German citizens died in World War Two. If those deaths had been avoided at all costs, the war would at the very least have taken much longer to win – and quite possibly it could not have been.
The problem with is long form nonsense is that it is nonsense, Israel has been murdering Palestinians for 76 years without anyone stopping them, when the Palestinians fight back they are not terrorists, it’s their legal right under the ‘Geneva conventions as Israel illegally occupy Palestine. No one was raped on 7 October, the IDF did almost all the killing and that has been published in detail in Israeli media since Maariv reported on 10 October that they turned tanks and hell fire missiles on Be’eri, the video of this is on Utube, they reported by 17 October that helicopters shot up the rave with 28 helicopters to prevent anyone being taken into Gaza., and its been reported since October that Israel could have had all but the POW’s on 10 October and have refused ever since.
Really who started the Arab Israeli war, the 6 days war, the Yom Kippur war? I don’t remember the Israelis being the aggressors at any point.
If Palestinians are continuing to be slaughtered en masse then it seems like that is a skill issue by the Arabs more than anything.
Ultimately this truth remains there are plenty of Arab Muslims that are citizens of Israeli that live and work and play in Israel. There are no Jews that live in Palestine. To put an example your identity politics brain could understand this is like the KKK and black people, except in this scenario Palestine is the one that has views similar to the KKK.
Wow, what utter drivel this post is. Incredible that some people are so stup[id that they believe this rubbish,
you need to stop watching RogerWwaters you tubE posts.
I’m not Jewish, but I’m getting increasingly tired of historically inaccurate hit pieces on Israel – both the outrageous, Al-Jazeera kind, as well as the seemingly moderate, ‘balanced’ kind, as in here. Aside from being anti-factual, they have real world consequences: they keep both sides locked in the very conflict writers like RM are ostensibly bemoaning.
‘Both Jews and Palestinians will continue to assert privileged ownership of Palestine’.
This is a cynical sleight-of-hand with which to open. What does RM mean by ‘Palestine’ exactly &/or ‘Palestinians’? Does he mean Palestinian-Arabs? Until 5 minutes ago, the term ‘Palestinian’ included Israeli Jews.
‘centuries of history, the merits of which will never be settled conclusively by historians’…
This is because the discipline of history has become a propaganda machine, less concerned with facts, more about decolonising reality to suit the claims of minorities – a scandal also experienced by native Brits for the past couple of decades. Cf the renaming, by UNESCO, of a whole series of ancient Israeli archaeological sites and its acceptance of ‘Palestine’ as a member state in 2011: a more historically illiterate move for an organisation based on the preservation of history would be hard to imagine.
Contrast this with the former head of the PLO bureau of military operations, Zuhair Mohsen‘s statement in 1977:
‘The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians and Lebanese; we are all members of the same nation. Solely for political reasons are we careful to stress our identity as Palestinians. Since a separate State of Palestine would be an extra weapon in Arab hands to fight Zionism with. Yes, we do call for the creation of a Palestinian state for tactical reasons. Such a state would be a new means of continuing the battle against Zionism, and for Arab unity.’
The final inaccuracy, in paragraph 1 alone, is the reference to ‘Palestinians’ desire for statehood’. It is a documented point of historical fact that, time and time again, the Palestinian-Arabs have been offered a state of their own, which they have rejected if it meant living next to an Israeli state. Is no one listening to the protest chants: ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’? (In Arabic: ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be Arab”) and ‘We don’t want no two state, we want all of it’. They’re saying it loud and proud.
Palestinian-Arabs have been committing atrocities on Jews since well before the creation of the modern state of Israel. The Salafist Muslim Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Father of Palestinian Liberation, began a campaign to ‘reassert’ Muslim rights over the
Jews’ holiest of sites in Jerusalem – places which predate both the Arab conquest of the region and the creation of Islam. He also incited the 1929 massacre of Jews at Hebron.
Husseini was paid by the Third Reich throughout WW2 to translate and spread anti-Jewish propaganda throughout the Middle East. He met with Hitler on 28 November 1941 to ask for help opposing the establishment of a Jewish national home at the height of the Holocaust. Apparently Hitler told him that, after Germany had ‘solved its Jewish problem’ with Europe, ‘Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power’. Browning, Christopher R. (2007). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942.
There are photos of al-Husseini touring the concentration camps. Despite this, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the so-called moderate PA, wrote a PhD in holocaust denial.
And someone should inform the PLO that it ‘forsook terrorism in 1988’ and, ‘recognised Israel’s right to live in peace.’ The whole of the second Intifada against Israeli citizens in late 2000 could have been avoided and many lives spared.
After the Israelis withdraw from Gaza in 2005 and the abomination of 7/10 last year – slaughtering, r*ping and burning alive the very peaceniks that wanted to see the Arab-Palestinians have a state of their own – is anyone sane still in any doubt that this is about land or statehood rather than the eradication of Jews from the region? And how can we even blame the Gazan killers who were brought up on a diet of education that teaches Maths according to how many Jews you can kill and Science based on the trajectory of rockets fired into Israel. https://youtube.com/shorts/EQ9NUUFo2VA?si=AXFSh5dSTc_bUqLw
For 18 years they’ve been watching cartoons like this: https://youtu.be/6wrhzDBvhEc?si=sLgLAXuPn0aBIepc (at 13:00)
and received parenting like this:
https://youtu.be/g-xfCH3PQT0?si=u7fggthsGVlWDI4g
In Europe we’ve only recently started to get a taste of the fanaticism that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews and Christians have long endured.
I’m afraid Golda Meir put it perfectly when she said:
‘Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.’
An astute and well informed comment, EC. Kudos.
Thanks IS
“The question, therefore, is not whether Jews and Palestinians will continue living cheek by jowl, but how. Will they do so amid endless spasms of bloodletting or a coexistence created by a negotiated settlement that reconciles Israel’s need for security with Palestinians’ desire for statehood?”
Already the initial paragraph constructs a fictional narrative in order to replace the reality of the conflict with a complete fantasy palatable to outside observers. It is now clear to any but the most Pollyannaish that the Palestinians (no, not every single one, but the broad majority, particularly as expressed through the quasi-political structures which have emerged among them) have no such “desire for statehood”, except as a means to achieve what they really do desire, namely the destruction of Israel and the new Jewish genocide which would be the inevitable concomitant of that destruction.
A fictional and intentionally deceptive narrative that avoids mention of the Palestinian’s refusal to renounce their (and the UN’s) doctrine of the Right of Return by which the 5.9 million (and growing) perpetual refugees from 1948 would flood the State of Israel.
Typical propaganda approach that refuses to understand – or masquerades the real issue of Arabs unwilling to accept the existence of the Jewish state. The philosophical points, referencing intellectuals, scholars – all to obfuscate the author’s inability to state the obvious – the Arabs refusal to acknowledge their fault and change course. The moderate states understood that and partook in the Abraham Accord to unite the Middle East. Until more states arrive at the same juncture, there will be no progress.
“Both Jews and Palestinians will continue to assert privileged ownership of Palestine, citing centuries of history, the merits of which will never be settled conclusively by historians, let alone by the two principals.”
This was an interesting article. But, you really didn’t need to read past this sentence to understand what will happen there in the future. Me? I’m hoping the Amalekites return just to make things even more interesting! I’m sure they will claim ownership of the ‘holy land’ based on their religious beliefs and sacred texts, etc. This is never going to end.
Have at it guys, you ‘Followers of The Book’.
Sure, all we need for world peace is to revert to a world ruled by barbarism. Great solution.
Barbarism? That’s what we have now.
World peace? I have no illusions regarding the possibility of that – especially as long as people keep praying to the God of Abraham/Abram and laying claim to a spit of desert land they claim is theirs because of their ‘holy book’.
You can’t be serious.
Didn’t bother to read anything passed, “Will they do so amid endless spasms of bloodletting or a coexistence created by a negotiated settlement that reconciles Israel’s need for security with Palestinians’ desire for statehood?” The Palestinians have zero desire for statehood. They’ve rejected a state time and time and time again. They just want genocide. It is sad but true and the sooner everyone acknowledges this fact, the better. All Palestinian orgs are bent on the slaughter of Jews, just look at any “educational” material from UNRAW. You have millions of people who have been systematically radicalized for generations, constantly start wars and applaud murder and never feel any consequences. It doesn’t matter if all the territories and turned to rubble because idiots and jihadists will just rebuild it and call it an open air prison. The only solution I can see is Isrsel annealing completely Gaza and the West Bank and expelling all Palestinians with terrorist sympathies (so 90%+) and the rest of the world not lifting a finger for the expelled. These are the most coddled people on the planet and we delusional expect them to be introspective and peace loving when they have been given no negative incentives to stop being completely insane. They don’t want a state and they don’t want peace. The Israelis have time again offered land for peace and it has never worked out! This entire situation is an exercise in futility unless the situation is drastically changed and we all look at reality instead of fantasy and we actually start the real and difficult process of completely defunding every jihadist org on the planet. This means the UN, this means most if not all Islamic orgs in America, this means shutting down all Soros’ orgs and probably much more. For more info on Muslim Brotherhood infiltration and exploitation in the US please tread The Scroll on Substack and Asra Noomani’s Woke Army. I’m sure there are more sources but these are the ones I know have dug deep into this cancer in our societies.
Three state solution. Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
That would be ideal, but neither Jordan nor Egypt wants a large group of aggrieved, violent miscreants.
Yes to both of you.
Unfortunately, Jordan’s Palestinian experience in 1970 put paid to a 3-state solution. They then moved on to Lebanon, and devastated that country, too. No wonder Egypt wants nothing to do with them.
When you start genocidal wars of extermination, as the Arabs did five times, what can you expect? Israel owes the Arabs nothing. Start stupid wars, get stupid prizes.
Oct 7th revealed the true nature of Gazans and their supporters. They must be cast into the dust bin of history. No negotiation, appeasement or capitulation. The Gazans must leave. Where they go is their problem.
After five wars of extermination started by Arabs, the Israelis owe the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria and adjacent parts of Egypt nothing.
The truth about Palestine is like the truth about America. It is a truth that liberalism (meaning, Universalism) cannot stomach and for which it has no answer.
The truth is that there will be no peace in Palestine until one or the other race is exterminated or expelled entirely.
This is also true in other places, such as South Africa. Those who disbelieve this prediction are not thinking on a long enough timeline.
By “race” is not meant merely “skin color,” but the genetic-cultural identity that binds people together into what is sometimes called a “nation.” Liberalism denies this principle and this prediction, but history validates it.
The further truth is that only one side talks about exterminating or expelling the other. Perhaps both do now, but that was not previously the case.
Israel will be overwhelmed by the explosive Muslim birth rate eventually
“there will be no peace in Palestine until one or the other race is exterminated or expelled entirely.”
That is the half truth, because it implies that the Jews share responsibility.
Israel has about 15% muslims. Just like India has 15% muslim.
However, there are virtually none left of the following: Hindu / Sikhs in Pakistan, Jews in Iraq, Christians in Egypt, Parsis in Iran, Armenians in Turkey…..
And right now the Beeb, Deutsche World, NYT, Al Jazeera are not only concealing the murders, gang rapes, tortures etc daily of innocent Hindus in Bangladesh..but beating a certain Mr G of the 1930s at his own game by calling it a Right wing ” fantasy”…
Bangladeshi Hindus are being slaughtered with all choosing to ignore.
Sorry, but…
After October 7th how could the Israelis be expected to trust the Palestinians, regardless of Party, with either a one state or a two state situation? What Hamas did has sentenced the Palestinians to many more decades of life in their “open-air prison”. Come back in 2070 or 80 and maybe there will be something to talk about.
What a shoddy, disgracefully one-sided, ‘article’ replete with what I assume the author believes is well-worded/acceptable versions of Hamas propaganda.
A one-State solution where half the population openly states they want peace (appreciate the minority of Jews who don’t) and half the population wants to literally kill the other side – did you figure out which was which yet, Menon?
I openly laughed at the way you attempted to change the truth as to when/how the Palestinians turned down the offers of land and the fact that the Security Barrier is a barrier to the West Bank being dismantled – ermmm yes, do you know why it is there? Because the Palestinians kept sending suicide bombers to kill Israeli civilians year after year.
I assume this is dire propaganda is too technical for TikTok so it appears here but that’s also displaced with your one-sided bollocks.
Bizarre you don’t mention the tens of thousands of rockets that have been sent consistently to kill civilians for many decades, I wonder why?
Let’s put this in the simplest terms possible: which side has repeatedly called for the other’s extermination? Be honest in answering that question before wading into choppier waters.
“the Palestinian Liberation Organization forsook terrorism in 1988. if this is true, then they changed their mind around 2001-2002.
“In reality, Israel did not present documents or maps, let alone agree to a fully sovereign Palestinian state.” More importantly Arafat never asked for documents or maps. Rather he just walked away from the talks without making a counter offer. Arafat never wanted peace, he just wanted the money and prestige that came from pretending to want peace. What he really wanted was to destroy Israel, and like just like Hamas and Iran, he thought time and demographics were on his side.
The entire world better get used to the reality that the so-called “occupied territories”, technically disputed, are within the boundaries of the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; ergo not subject to negotiations…especially given the God of Abraham/Sinai, Yeshua and 1776, yes 1776, has empirically evidenced existence with the convergence Matrix.
Per the Matrix, matrices actually, there are but 684 days until the end of human history as it is understood and a new beginning with Yeshua as Moshiach in 2026 Jerusalem. As is the way of a just God the Ishmaelites have been provided with an exit from the field i.e. a viable two state solution.
Go to Xwitter @ Adler Pfingsten and read the article “A Viable Two State Solution”. Doing so will be well worth your time.
Wise article but sadly not going to wash with the iranis or radical islamists and their supporters – putin, “kamala” harris, starmer et al, and prob not going to wash with the settlers be they nationalist or orthodox. Hopefully they’ll kill each other in such numbers like Europe in WW2 that the fire dies down for want of fuel: then the grown ups can pick up the pieces.
Fair analysis. No wonder Paleys do what they do.
I cam across a statement that the sons of Ismail Haniyeh who were trying to claim his wealth which is held in Turkey were unable to do so. Also that this amounted to $3 billion. Has anyone heard about this? (I have lost the link)
Yes this is true. And can you guess where he got all that money from? Yes, your taxes donated by your gullible governments to the poor Palestinians.
Same as Yasser Arafat’s widow: she has become a billionaire on UNRWA funds and donations.
A well researched article, thank you. I’m not a Grauniad fan but the following article must have been horrendously difficult for the writer. Read it and weep as there is no light at the end of the tunnel (no pun intended).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
The two-state solution based on 1967 borders with mutual recognition is the only moral solution. However difficult.
How can you be sure there isn’t another solution of equal or greater effectivity?
That rather depends on what the problem is.
Might is right. Historical selection. Who’ll hang on longer, will stay. Imagine native Americans being united by religion and culture and numerous comparably to the British colonists. What would be of the Land of Free?
Any article which uses the lazy slur “far-right” swiftly alerts me to the fact that the author is lazy and prone to using slurs. If he also mentions the “far-left” from time to time, I might take him more seriously. But this never happens.
The increasingly desperate and heartless trolling by Israel supporters is one of the strongest reasons to sympathise with Palestine.
Another disingenuous fraud or coward who doesn’t know, can’t or won’t acknowledge the Jew-hatred baked into actual Islam.
Rajon Menon, dir of Grand Strategy programme at Defense Priorities????What is it what does it do advicate ir even mean?
It’s a meaningless word salad- much like his article
Total incompatibility deserves a no fault divorce. Jerusalem is the holiest city for 2 of the 3 great religions. Mecca and Medina are Islam’s and are located elsewhere, in Muslim lands.
Islam came with Mohammed born 600+ years after Christ and Christianity; Judaism giving birth to both and Jews living throughout greater Arabia. The Palestinian protectorate under Britain, following WWII, was left over from all the other post war Arab states that had allied with Nazi Germany and lost the war along with Hitler.
Jews had been massacred, by the millions, then and formerly, in every land, from at least Egypt to Russia, for millennium. The western world and the UN said, Never Again, and formed Israel from the British protectorate as a place where Jews could rule themselves, safe from their murderous foes. A second state for the Arabs that dwelled in that territory was offered at the time of the Israel formation, and was turned down.
Seventy some years later, there’s still no engagement, let alone marriage. The matchmakers have failed; the incompatibility is even more entrenched. Arbitration remains a temporary cease fire only. Implacable irreconcilability is the only thing on the table.
Time for the Arab nations to build a Palestinian home for their own kin, somewhere in their vast Arab lands. Ultimately, they need to shelter their own, within their sacred spaces, where their Islamic foundations were built. Not in others’ backyard holy ground established in millennium and centuries before Islam.
Arab Muslim counties need to step up and stop treating “Palestinians” as undesirable step children. They deserve a home within their ancestral lands, too, with Medina and Mecca, that play a far greater role than a dream in Mohammed’s life.
There are not two sides. When a mugging occurs, and the victim chases the muggers only to be confronted by the mugger and his burly friends ready to beat him into a pulp, you don’t say there are two sides, do you?
The detail by the aithor on the West Bank is an eye-opener. I support Israel’s right to exist wholeheartedly, but like many Westerners, fail to understand Israeli desire to keep on putting new settlements in the West Bank.
I also condemn Hamas and all terrorism wholeheartedly. To capitulate to terrorism is to encourage it – everywhere. All it has achieved is to prolong Israel’s desire, or need, to buttress its defences. Stalemate.
There is a misunderstanding at the heart wat the author is expounding here.
Only the Jews, or more precisely, the zionists assert privileged ownership, not the Palestinians. The Palestinian’s claim, like the English claim on England or the Scottish claim on Scotland, rests on habitual residence in the land for centuries.