As a result of its belligerence and intransigence, Israel is now almost completely ostracised by the international community and faces serious economic and military threats as the regional war widens.
Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would deeply threaten Israel's national security. In fact, it is precisely the absence of a two-state solution that threatens Israel. Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, its continued apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians and the extreme violence in defence of that rule threaten the survival of Israel, which faces dire threats from global diplomatic isolation and ongoing war, including the enormous economic, social and financial costs of war.
There are three basic reasons for Israeli opposition to the two-state solution, reflecting different ideologies and interests in Israeli society.
The first and most common is Israel's claim that the Palestinians and the Arab world cannot live side by side and only want to destroy it. The second is the belief of Israel's rapidly growing religious-nationalist population that God promised the Jews the entire land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, including all of Palestine. We recently wrote about this ideology and pointed out that it is some 2600 years out of touch with today's reality. The third reason is direct material gain. Through continued occupation, Israel stands to benefit from control of the region's freshwater resources, coastal zones, offshore gas deposits, tourist destinations and land for settlements.
These different motives are blended together in Israel's continued intransigence. However, taken individually or as a whole, they cannot justify Israeli resistance to a two-state solution, certainly not in terms of international law and justice, but neither in terms of Israel's own security or narrow economic interests.
Consider Israel's claim of national security, recently repeated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN on 27 September. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging 'a continuous diplomatic war against Israel's right to exist and against Israel's right to defend itself'.
After Netanyahu's speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan's foreign minister, standing alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, responded to Netanyahu at a press conference:
All of us here in the Arab world want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, is accepted, is normalised with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Minister Safadi spoke on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, all of whom are willing to "guarantee Israel's security" in the context of a two-state solution. Together with the Palestinian prime minister, Minister Safadi articulated a peace proposal for the region that is an alternative to Netanyahu's endless wars.
Earlier this year, in the Bahrain Declaration of the 33rd Ordinary Session of the Arab League Council in May 2024, on behalf of the 22 member states, he reiterated:
All of us in the Arab world want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, is accepted and normalised with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory and allowing the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Minister Safadi spoke on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, all of whom are willing to "guarantee Israel's security" in the context of a two-state solution. Together with the Palestinian prime minister, Minister Safadi articulated a peace proposal for the region that is an alternative to Netanyahu's endless wars.
Earlier this year, in the Bahrain Declaration of the 33rd Ordinary Session of the Arab League Council in May 2024, he reiterated on behalf of the 22 member states:
We call on the international community to take responsibility for continuing efforts to advance the peace process in order to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution that embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the June 4, 1967 lines, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy and established legacies, including the Arab Peace Initiative.
Many Arab and Islamic declarations for peace, including that of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), of which Iran is a repeated signatory, date back to the 2002 Beirut Arab Peace Initiative - where Arab countries first proposed the region's readiness to engage with Israel in the context of a two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace was based on Israel's withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese occupied territories.
Israel claims that although the Arab states and Iran want peace, Hamas does not and therefore threatens Israel. There are two key points here. First, Hamas accepted the two-state solution seven years ago in its 2017 charter. "Hamas considers the formula for national consensus to be the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, on the model of June 4, 1967, with the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes from which they were expelled." Again this year, Hamas has proposed disarmament in exchange for Palestinian statehood within the 1967 borders. In return, Israel assassinated Hamas political chief and ceasefire negotiator Ismail Haniyeh.
Secondly, Hamas is very far from being an independent actor. Hamas is dependent on funding and weapons from outside, especially from Iran. The implementation of a two-state solution under the auspices of the UN Security Council would involve the disarmament of non-state actors and mutual security arrangements for Israel and Palestine in accordance with international law and the recent decision of the International Court of Justice, for which Iran voted in the UN General Assembly.
That Hamas is the pretext, not the deep cause, of Israel's intransigence is revealed by the fact that Netanyahu has tactically, if quietly, supported Hamas over the years as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Netanyahu's subterfuge was to prevent the unity of the various Palestinian political factions in order to prevent the Palestinian Authority from developing a national plan to create a Palestinian state. The purpose of Netanyahu's policy for decades has been to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state using whatever argument was at hand.
Israel and its supporters often claim that the failure at Camp David in 2000 proves that the Palestinians reject a two-state solution. This claim is not correct either. As documented by many, including Clayton E. Swisher in his meticulous account in The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, the 2000 Camp David negotiations collapsed because of Bill Clinton's approach to last-minute deal-making combined with the political cowardice of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's failure to honor Israel's commitments under the Oslo Accords.
When time ran out at Camp David, Clinton was a dishonest broker, as were the blatantly pro-Israel American negotiators who refused to recognize Palestine's legal claim to the June 4, 1967 borders and prevaricated about Palestine's right to its capital in East Jerusalem. The "final offer" that the Israelis and their American backers suddenly foisted on the Palestinians failed to secure basic Palestinian rights, and the Palestinians were not given time to consider alternative proposals. The Americans and Israelis then falsely blamed the Palestinians for the failure of the negotiations.
Israel insists on its intransigence because it believes it has the unqualified support of the United States. Thanks to decades of large campaign contributions and relentless lobbying, the Israel lobby in the United States not only controls the votes in Congress, but also puts arch-Zionists in the top jobs in every administration. But because of Israeli brutality in Palestine and Lebanon, the Israel lobby has lost its ability to control the narrative and the vote across the majority of American society.
Trump, Biden and Netanyahu believed Israel could "have it all" - a greater Israel and peace with Arab states - while blocking a Palestinian state through a US-brokered normalization process. The model for normalizing relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was supposed to be the Abraham Accords (which established Israel's diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the UAE). This approach was always cynical (as it was intended to block the creation of a Palestinian state), but it is certainly illusory now. The Saudi foreign minister made it abundantly clear in his article in the Financial Times on 2 October that the only path to peace and normalisation is a two-state solution.
The two-state solution is not a mere ideal; it is the only viable way to ensure the long-term security of Palestine, Israel and the region. Uncontrolled escalation cycles are the cornerstone of a wider war. We are witnessing this first-hand in Lebanon. Peace cannot be built on a foundation of occupation and resentment; real security for Israel will come from recognising the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
Israel's continued implacable opposition to the two-state solution, recently reaffirmed by a vote in the Knesset, has become the greatest danger to Israel's own security. Israel is now almost completely ostracised by the international community and, with the expanding regional war, also faces serious economic and military threats. One of the indicators of the emerging economic disruption is the fact that Israel's credit rating is already plummeting and Israel is likely to lose its investment grade rating very soon, which will have dire economic consequences in the long term.
Violently advancing an extremist vision of Israel does not serve U.S. security or interests, and the American people oppose Israeli extremism. The Israel lobby is likely to lose its power. The American public and the American deep state will very likely withdraw their uncritical and unconditional support for Israel.
The practical elements of peace are at hand, as we have recently detailed. The U.S. can save the region from an impending conflagration and the world from a possible global superpower war. The U.S. should drop its veto of Palestine's UN membership and support the implementation of a two-state solution under the auspices of the UN Security Council, promoting mutual security for Israel and Palestine based on justice and international law.
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares
jeffsachs.org / photo: RF Government Press Service / gnews.cz-jav
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