The key to peace: Selling the two-state solution in Palestine
If the world wants this conflict to end it has to think much harder about what options exist that could deliver a solid and durable majority of Palestinians not only to accept a two-state solution, but who will also crack down on the inevitable minority that will reject that solution and want to continue an armed struggle against Israel. We have to think about deal sweetening for the Palestinians if we are serious about peace.
There is no guarantee that this approach will work, and it will almost certainly not work quickly. There are substantive religious and theological objections among many Palestinians about ceding territory to non-Muslims. At a time when Islamic identification and militancy is rising across the region, it may not be possible for Palestinian moderates to deliver a lasting peace even though they sincerely want it. Secular, nationalist Palestinian opposition is also strong and deeply rooted in emotional and ideological concepts not easily compromised or forgotten.
It may be that for these reasons, real peace is out of reach for now. In that case, the rational course might be to go for a lasting truce in which neither side gives up ultimate claims but accepts a pragmatic, medium term ‘cease fire in place.’ If carefully designed, that kind of practical arrangement could buy time while the search for a conclusive peace treaty continued. Such an arrangement would not be unique. Russia and Japan, for example, have not yet signed a treaty ending World War Two, and while their territorial dispute is a real one, the two countries manage to cooperate and they aren’t shooting at one another. In the dispute between Taiwan and mainland China, the United States has promoted pragmatic arrangements while postponing the final status talks. A long term truce of this kind would enable Palestinians and Israelis to go about their lives in security and reduce tensions in a region that has plenty of other issues to worry about.
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Riiiiiiiiiiight.
3 1/2 years it’d last.
Logus on January 6, 2013 at 8:44 PM
“Palestine” is a liberal fantasyland – it does not exist in the real world. Israel holds the “the key to peace”, which is removing, once and for all, the “palestinian” squatters from their land.
Pork-Chop on January 6, 2013 at 8:50 PM
Translation: The Palestinians need time to rebuild their rocket stocks.
OldEnglish on January 6, 2013 at 8:51 PM
The palis don’t want peace. They have said so repeatedly. Why don’t people understand this?
Blake on January 6, 2013 at 8:53 PM
The Palestinian mission at the UN has a map of “Palestine.” It borders Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
The name “Israel” is not on it.
Wethal on January 6, 2013 at 9:03 PM
When Jordan surrenders the land set up in the original British mandate, there might be peace.
nobar on January 6, 2013 at 9:14 PM
Want to test the Palestinians to see if they seriously want peace? Ask them for a Sulha peace, a lasting peace. Reconciliation. Salaam peace is temporary. Hudabiyah.
Thus, even if some sort of peace accord is ever drawn up – and I believe one eventually will – it will never truly last. I’d give it 3 1/2 years, though the treaty will say 7 with a re-eval period towards the end.
Logus on January 6, 2013 at 9:14 PM
Sounds great but there is only one problem.
The Palestinians do not want peace.
NeoKong on January 6, 2013 at 9:33 PM
Yikes, the essentially empty b.s.-ing never ends with these Beltway pundits (Beltway is a state of mind, not just a geographic description). There is already a de facto truce, naturally violated by one side nearly non-stop, with the other side constrained by a hostile mob of a world community and its own weakest and least responsible elements from effecting more than temporary fixes.
The barrier was an obvious key move that was (to this day, inexcusably and inexplicably) delayed. The other key security element – exclusion of non-Israeli Palestinians from Green Line Israel – has never been implemented. Those two moves, along with the inevitable ongoing strikes at Palestinian power-projection assets in Gaza or elsewhere, would be a fairly impressive de facto sitzkrieg for the long-term.
The settlers’ situation is a bit more complicated, but that is inevitable, as they represent a sort of expeditionary force or at best a skirmish/picket line (and no the underlying historical merits or arguments are not being considered here, and aren’t of any consequence anyway). It’ll always be messy and somewhat bloody on the West Bank. But an essentially quiet and secure Israel is reasonably achievable.
The Palestinians will remain as they have been – losers whose plight they themselves make much worse through their own actions, including succumbing to the poison of hate. Their cause was unjust, they’ve been defeated at every turn, and for the most part they’ve followed a path of degradation, allowing themselves to be “led” by the worst among them (many of the best having long decamped for successful lives elsewhere). If they weren’t part of the larger sad tableau of the under-achieving and in many cases abhorrently dysfunctional Arab world, they might have long ago been propelled by their cultural strengths and tremendous abilities to redeem themselves through self-development. Look at the many wrenching stories of the talented returning diaspora Palestinians during the brief post-Oslo “thaw” for the whole sad story in a nutshell.
IceCold on January 6, 2013 at 11:17 PM
Mead is usually not living in fantasyland, but in this case, yeah. That’s where the peace will occur. Fantasyland.
Meryl Yourish on January 6, 2013 at 11:20 PM
I want a two state American solution. One Red, one Blue. Let the blue states live in their socialist “utopia” with a Constitution altered to suit them, if we in the Red states are free to live unencumbered by them under the actual Constitution.
That will never happen of course, because the Blue States will never survive without us to leech from.
wildcat72 on January 6, 2013 at 11:21 PM
What an idiot. He knows nothing about negotiating and less than nothing about arab culture. Typical of the dangerous, deluded, demented morons in the West who seem to have no sense of history, at all.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on January 7, 2013 at 12:27 AM