The new gospel of pro-“Palestine” promotion has been a shift in gears. While the messaging to Israel from Europe is still a two-state solution, voices from below have altered that demand. As the London-based Jewish Chronicle recently noted: “Spain, Ireland and Norway … recognised Palestine … French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea … [and] Labour MPs, including foreign affairs committee chair Emily Thornberry, urged the UK to follow suit.”
Nevertheless, louder and louder, we are hearing the roar of “Dismantle Israel. Eradicate Zionism” in the streets and on campuses in halls of culture—and not only from Arabs and from Iran.
We hear it from Hollywood celebrities to university faculty, and from them on down to the masses, together with intellectually disabled Jewish anti-Zionists. Bild journalist Iman Sefati, who covers anti-Israel demonstrations in Berlin, was threatened in 2024 by protesters wielding a knife. Asked about what he experiences, he replied: “ … what I have experienced in the last year and a half is different. This anger, this hatred—that is no longer political criticism. This is sheer antisemitism … psychological terror. And sometimes it turns into physical violence.”
Should we be shocked? Or should we admit from the outset that two states—a Jewish one and an Arab one—was never really an option?
In 1922, the first partition of the territory considered “Palestine,” although historically and administratively never defined and, of course, never existing as a recognized geopolitical entity, took place.
Following the March 1921 Cairo Conference, and a meeting between Secretary for the Colonies Winston Churchill with the Emir Abdullah in Jerusalem at the end of that month, the idea was that the territory east of the Jordan River would become an Arab state. The League of Nations codified that in Article 25 of its 1922 Mandate for Palestine decision.
The article read: “In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions.”
Whereas all the territory east of the Jordan eventually became the Kingdom of Jordan, what was left—all that was west of the Jordan River—should have become the area of the future State of Israel. There is no reason for the region of Palestine to become three states, two of which are Arab with no Jews, while the Jewish state would contain a sizeable Arab population.
The early history of attempting to solve a future conflict reveals constant yielding by Zionists or by those who were supposed to guarantee the national territorial rights of the Jews. From 1915 to 1919, meetings took place between Emir Feisal (of the Arab Revolt, a British ally), the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, king of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz; his father, King Hussein; British officials; and Chaim Weizmann, president of the Zionist Organization and the first president of Israel.
The director of Britain’s Arab Bureau in Cairo went to Jeddah in January 1918 and informed the then-Saudi monarch of British policy: that “no obstacle should be put in the way” of the return of the Jews to Palestine. In March 1918, the king accepted the two-state solution and that Palestine was “a sacred and beloved homeland” for “its original sons,” and the “return of these exiles (jaliya) to their homeland” would be beneficial to the region.
Weizmann trekked out to Transjordan via Suez and Aqaba in January 1919, met with Faisal, and in a letter to his wife, relayed that Faisal was indeed interested in “Damascus and the whole of northern Syria” but “not interested in Palestine.”
On July 11, 1922, in a public parliamentary debate, Churchill declared that “no pledges were made to the Palestine Arabs in 1915” and recalled a conversation on Jan. 20, 1921 with Faisal when the emir claimed that he was “prepared to accept the statement that it had been the intention of His Majesty’s Government to exclude Palestine from the area to become the Great Arab state.” Churchill was adamant that it was the full “intention of His Majesty’s Government to exclude Palestine from the area of Arab independence.”
The immediate result of the removal of Transjordan from the area of the Jewish national home was the prohibition of Jews purchasing land in Transjordan or immigrating to the area. A British proposal in 1924 of a Legislative Council in Mandatory Palestine that would have effectively stymied any future Jewish development in the country was boycotted by the Arabs.
In 1937, the Peel Commission suggested the partition of the remaining western region of historic Palestine, an offer rejected by Arab leadership. The U.N. 1947 partition plan was likewise rejected. Following the Six-Day War in June 1967 and the major loss of territory by Jordan, United Nations resolution 242, while declaring “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” defined the operative “principles for peace” as “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area.”
As Palestine was not a state, the resolution glossed over the matter of the two-state solution. While mentioning “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” neither Palestine nor a so-called Palestinian people were noted. Obviously, a “Free Palestine” was not considered part of a peace settlement at the time, as also in 1949, when the Armistice Agreements were concluded with Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
In fact, it was specifically noted that no provision of the agreement “shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question.” Israel’s demands and its rights received recognition for a future round of negotiations. Even the 1978 Camp David Accords limited the local Arabs to a “self-governing authority in the West Bank and Gaza.”
In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu, with conditions, accepted the principle of an Arab Palestinian state, but Abbas eventually walked away from any deal, even with Ehud Olmert’s largesse.
In spite of all this rejectionism, some hold out hope. On May 6, Amos Schocken, publisher/owner of Haaretz, wrote in his newspaper: “A Palestinian state based on agreements with Israel would bring security and prosperity to Israel and the Palestinians.” Is that a perceptive view?
As Aviram Bellaisha outlines, a second state in this area, an Arab Palestinian state, bears destructive consequences for Israel’s security, regional stability and the future of the Palestinians themselves. The budgets of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are based mainly on external aid. There is no effective taxation, an independent central bank or an orderly economic policy. Such a state, if established, would be a completely dependent entity, not an independent, sovereign one. It most likely would become a plaything of external or internal forces.
A two-state solution was consistently rejected by the Arabs after first accepting it, as it contradicts the intention of the League of Nations and makes no sense in the geopolitical reality.
{Reposted from JNS}
