The two-state solution is dead; long live the two-state solution.
It all started in 1917 when the Perfidious Albion, the name by which the French called England, issued the infamous Balfour Declaration, promising the Jews a homeland in Palestine, but only social and cultural rights to the original inhabitants of the land, deliberately denying them political rights. The Jews for their part even refused to recognise that there were other people living there. Their slogan was ‘a land without people for a people without land’.
The original blunder was committed in 1947 when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, partitioning the territory of Palestine into two entities, Arab and Jewish, instead of keeping it unified in a single state, as was advocated by a small group of nation-states, including India. The Arabs are still being blamed for the tragedy involving the Palestinians since they refused to accept the partition plan. When someone occupies or seeks to occupy your home, but ‘generously’ offers you three rooms out of eight, how do they expect you to agree to it?
The fight is about land. To have a state, people must have land. While the Jews have their homeland on practically the entire territory, legally or illegally, the Palestinians have only a small strip in a part of the West Bank. The partition plan of 1947, bad as it was, had envisaged an Arab state with 42% of the territory and a Jewish state with about 57%. Already, there was injustice there. States have defined territories, but Israel consciously kept the boundary undefined, leaving the door open for adding more territory to what the UN had given it.
And, of course, there is the Gaza Strip. It was always meant to be a part of the Palestinian state. Various proposals were presented by various people as to how the two parts of the Palestinian state were to be linked — overland bridge, tunnels and so on: impractical, all of them.
The standard formula, or mantra, is that there would be two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, harmony and good neighbourliness. Can anyone imagine Jews and Palestinians living in peace and harmony on an extremely small piece of land after what has transpired in the past two years? It is not just a question of only Jews’ rejection of any notion of a Palestinian state, particularly after what Hamas did on October 7, 2023. It is equally unlikely that the Arabs, whether or not members of Hamas, would wish to have the Jews as their neighbours in view of the mayhem the settlers have been indulging in on a daily basis during the past two years in the occupied West Bank with the full support of the Israeli government.
In the Gaza Strip, the “horror show”, to quote the UN secretary-general, of the Benjamin Netanyahu government goes on unabated. The civilian population of Gaza is being decimated, with thousands killed and many more injured, maimed women and children among them. The declared objective of some of Netanyahu’s cabinet is to purge the Strip of all its inhabitants, send them away to other countries that might be tempted to accept some of them because of financial rewards, and repopulate the territory with Israeli-Jewish settlements: in other words, carry out ethnic cleansing. Non-Hamas Gazans may hate Hamas, but how can anyone expect them to love the Israelis? The hatred between the two communities is beyond repair. ‘Living side by side in harmony and good neighbourliness’ is thus a cruel joke.
To come back to the question of land. As early as 1985, the then Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, had told Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Cairo: where is the land? Israel is creating ‘facts on the ground’, that is building settlements in such huge numbers that hardly any land will be left for the Palestinians. This was in 1985. Much water has flown down the Jordan river since. Just a few days ago, the Israeli government sanctioned the construction of thousands of new housing units in the West Bank. There are already 700,000 settlers living in the West Bank. Their number will soon reach a million. The Palestinians must navigate their travels in the occupied land through hundreds of checkpoints, with the settlers always ready with their guns.
While talking about the two-state solution, no one is talking about the Gaza Strip which was supposed to be a part of the Palestinian state. The Strip will soon be occupied by Israel. Can anyone believe that it will become a part of a future Palestinian state?
Netanyahu has been open about his position. He had declared his opposition to any Palestinian state as far back as 1994 when he had voted against the Oslo Accords. More recently, he has said, almost in so many words, “Palestinian state over my dead body.” And, because of what Hamas did on October 7, 2023, and its refusal to release the hostages, most Israelis today share their prime minister’s hostility to the idea of a Palestinian state.
A large number of countries have condemned the horrors Israel has been committing in Gaza with impunity. The Global South, of which India claims leadership, has unanimously condemned Israel for it. India’s deafening silence is most regrettable. How to explain India’s failure to condemn Israel’s atrocities in Gaza? India’s stand cannot be explained only in terms of national interest. The only really special relationship today is that between Mr Modi and Mr Netanyahu based, it seems, on ideological affinity.
It ought to be obvious to anyone willing to look at the objective reality of the situation on the ground that the two-state solution is dead. Some might advise not to be so pessimistic, but to deny the probability of the two-state idea is simply being realistic.
Palestine and Kashmir are the two oldest and most intractable items on the agenda of the UN Security Council. At least as far as Kashmir is concerned, a solution is possible if the two parties have the required political will and courage. But as for Palestine, there is no hope for an equitable solution. It is futile to look to the UN Security Council for help. It is not a court of justice. It is a political body where the veto-wielding powers call the shots. (The non-permanent members are also careful not to annoy the big powers; they have their own national interests to protect.) As long as Israel has the unqualified support of what Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, called the “indispensable country” — and this will be forever — the Palestinians will continue to be denied their right of self-determination.
Governments around the world realise that the two-state solution is dead, but will nevertheless continue to repeat the mantra of two states. They are being hypocritical. They find it convenient to repeat the formula because not one of them has the courage to admit, publicly, that the idea is no longer implementable, if it ever was implementable. This is understandable to an extent, because the next question will be: if not two states, what else? To that, there is no palatable answer. As someone said: ‘I can predict everything except the future.’ One can safely say that the future is bleak for the Palestinians and not so secure for the Israelis.
However, in the Middle East, one must always expect the unexpected.
C.R. Gharekhan was India's permanent representative to the UN and India's special envoy for West Asia in 2005-09