At his press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump uttered words that will live in Middle East infamy: “I’m looking at two-states and one-state. I like the one that both parties like.”
On the surface, those words appear innocuous — let the parties decide their future.
But in truth, they represent a diplomatic earthquake. No Western leader has ever had the guts to challenge the conventional wisdom that the two-state solution is the only desirable outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, this two-state idea, which really means the establishment of a Palestinian state, has been the shiny object worshipped by diplomats around the world and repeated like a mindless mantra at one failed peace conference after another.
By disrespecting this shiny object, the US President introduced the idea that the object may, in fact, not be worth all the worship. His ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, tried to soften Trump’s stance when she expressed US support for the two-state solution, but she pointedly added, “We are thinking out of the box as well.”
Thinking out of the box is what Trump did when he refused to bow down to the two-state idol. What may have looked so beautiful 20 years ago — two states for two peoples living next to each other in perfect harmony — has become, in reality, a potential disaster for all sides. For one thing, the high likelihood that Hamas and Islamic State would swoop in and turn the West Bank into another terrorist state is disastrous not just for Israel, but for the Palestinians and the US. This is the kind of mud on the idol of a Palestinian state we rarely hear about.
One reason we rarely hear about it is that the notion of a Palestinian state is still as shiny as ever. On the Israeli side, it would mean separating from two million Palestinians and securing its future as a Jewish democracy. And on the Palestinian side it would mean securing their national aspirations.
Those ideals are still in play, but only in the abstract. In reality, even moderate commentators such as Aaron David Miller, who has been an adviser to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, have called the two-state solution “dead”.
It doesn’t matter who you blame for this death. The fact is, the more the world has pursued the two-state solution, the more distant it has become. No conflict in modern history has generated more frequent flier miles, fancy hotel rooms and media coverage than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Former secretary of state John Kerry made more than 20 trips to the region to try to jump-start talks. He could barely manage to arrange “talks about talks”.
A fresh observer such as Trump, with his business background, probably looked at this dead corpse and figured he had little to lose by shaking things up. Since the obsession with the two-state solution seems to have killed the two-state solution itself, maybe he figured: Let’s see what happens if we lose that obsession. A good deal-maker, after all, never shows desperation and keeps his options open.
Read the full article by David Suissa at The Australian (subscription required).