https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-imaginary-two-state-solution/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second
A fine line distinguishes admirable consistency from blinkered thick-headedness. The Biden administration’s indefatigable commitment to advocating in support of a “two-state solution” in the Middle East long ago ceased to be the former and now verges on the latter.
Within weeks of the October 7 massacre, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recommitted to lobbying for the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian state as the only true pathway to “durable peace and stability.” Even as reality in the region shifts beneath his feet, Blinken hasn’t changed his tune. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden, you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” Blinken told a World Economic Forum audience at their embarrassing annual spectacle in Davos.
At a certain point, a rational observer must withdraw charitable assumptions about the fallacies that have motivated Blinken to cling to this unimaginative approach to statecraft. His advocacy likely contributed to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unequivocal rejection of a two-state process — a rejection that was framed in the international press as a recklessly provocative act of defiance. But Netanyahu didn’t incept this international row into existence — he responded to it. The Israeli prime minister articulated the consensus view in Israel on the viability of a two-state process amid an ongoing existential war against a terrorist outfit in Gaza. Even if Netanyahu’s remarks were intended for a domestic audience, the Biden administration’s lobbying provided the platform for this politicking.
But as to the international media’s account of this controversy, you could be forgiven for thinking that Washington and Jerusalem were the only parties to it. The competing and, oftentimes, conflicting Palestinian factions seem just as eager to reject Blinken’s terms.
It shouldn’t need to be said given its empirically observable bloodlust, but Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution if Israel is one of those two states.