Why the Two State Solution Won't work

I have friends (yes, even I). Many, probably most of these friends believe that the best way to resolve the Mid-East conflict is with a two state solution, Israel and Palestine (consisting of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab Jerusalem).

Let us examine this possibility. There are three problems with it—West Bank access to Israel proper; connecting the West Bank to Gaza; and the grandmother-of-the-mother-of-difficulties, Jerusalem.

The two state solution assumes that Israel will have defensible borders even without natural frontiers other than the unnatural security fence separating the West Bank from Israel to prevent dissatisfied jihadists or other fanatics from crossing it and blowing up (insert here the name of a civilian meeting place—a bus, a sidewalk café, a synagogue) after making a touching farewell tape. This is a normally one-way street. Yes we hang our heads in shame when we remember Baruch Goldstein, but his slaughter of the innocents was by a lone murderer. People who cross the Green Line and blow up pizzerias are mentored, trained, equipped and filmed before they go. They become heroes (and occasionally heroines). If there is a Hell I have no doubt that our Goldstein is trying to strangle their Ahmed as the remnants of Ahmed (don’t forget, he’s been blown to smithereens on a cross-walk in Jerusalem) tries to stab the bad doctor. Poor Goldstein, alone in Hell with 500 Ahmeds. Well, it serves him right.

Gaza as part of this proposed Palestinian state, separated by Israel from the West Bank by about 25 miles, means that Palestine would surround Israel with potentially hostile and (I imagine) frequently actual, enemy action by those who believe in a one Arab state solution. That’s the bad news for Israel. From the Arab side, the West Bank presumably would be Palestine central, Gaza the proverbial step-child.

When it achieved its independence, India was divided into Hindu and Muslim areas—but the Muslims were in the Northwest and the Northeast so Pakistan became a country separated by India, its enemy; the area that became Bangladesh was untenable. It declared its independence and is untenable still. Look to Poland which, following the Great War, separated the bulk of Germany in the west from East Prussia to the east. When war came again it was attacked on both fronts, the pincers having been put in place by the diplomats of Versailles in their attempt at fairness. Either way, bifurcated Palestine will not survive and surrounded Israel never rest easy. A solution to the problem (for the Arabs) would be a raised highway across 50 kilometers of Israel. Arab traffic above would flow east to west, Israeli traffic below from north to south. Who would pay for construction, maintenance and police remains to be seen. It’s not going to happen, and it shouldn’t. Gaza would be the new Bangladesh. Israel would be the new 1939 Poland. The plan presupposes men of good will on both sides. Who amongst you trusts Hamas or Hezbollah not to try for a one-state Arab solution? Seeing no hands, we’ll proceed. The only historical model I can think of where a country divided by another has survived is us. Canada separates the lower 48 from Alaska, but we’ve been friendly with Canada ever since “Fifty-four forty or fight” morphed into “OK, the 49th parallel is good enough.” I’m not picturing a squadron of blood-thirsty Royal Canadian Mounted Police invading Alaska for its oil, or the United States launching a two pronged invasion to conquer British Columbia. There is good faith and cooperation on both sides.

As to Jerusalem, well, on the one hand it’s just a city which has road and sewer and lighting and school issues to resolve like any other municipality. The problem is that this particular city is JERUSALEM, FOR GOD’S SAKES! When the United Nations partitioned Palestine Jerusalem was designated an international city. When the British withdrew the Jordanians tried to grab it; the Jews fought to keep the road to it open, and the city was divided. The Jordanians got the holy places until Israel conquered it in 1967. In the 2000 near-peace agreement brokered by President Clinton, Ehud Barak offered Palestinians control over East Jerusalem, including most of the Old City and “Religious Sovereignty” over the Temple Mount, and the West Bank and Gaza. The offer was rejected. The Second Intifada irrupted.

A hopeless situation? Well, maybe, but I have a solution that might work. Read about it in my next column.

The crocodile and the scorpion

There’s an old joke. It’s not very funny, but it is hoary with age, and so has become a cliché. A scorpion asks a crocodile to let him ride on his back across the Nile. “But if I carry you, mid-way across you’ll bite me and I’ll die,” responded the worried Crocodylus niloticus. “Not to fear, if I bite you mid-way across, we both die, so I won’t.” This appears to be a convincing argument. But mid-way across the scorpion stings the crock in the back. The dying lizard turns to the venomous betrayer and says, “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die,” to which the scorpion replies just before it drowns, “well, that’s Africa.”

Because of an early deadline I don’t know how the current Israeli offensive against Hamas will turn out. But this I do know—its hatred for Jews is a cancer that can neither be contained nor eliminated, which in fact metastasizes proportionately to the efforts of Israel to excise it (or, to switch my metaphor yet again, it’s hydra-like—whenever Israel cuts off one head, two grow in its place). But what else can Israel do? It pulled out of Gaza and instead of peace it got Hamas.

Some pro-Israeli doves argue that Israel ought to moderate its counter-attack. For example: Diane Balser, executive director of Brit Tzedek intones, “We can already anticipate that this incursion will be yet another failed attempt to resolve this fundamentally political conflict by military means. It is high time to break with this cycle; only through serious and sustained international diplomacy can the problems with Hamas and Gaza be resolved.”

Such organizations are to be commended for their consistency, but none recognize the nature of the beast with which it is trying to reconcile. Hamas does not recognize the despised State of Israel and sees no option other than to continue its struggle to the death by any means possible. If that requires putting its headquarters in the middle of a civilian population of innocent Arabs so be it. The more televised martyrs the better. If it means attacking Israel indiscriminately and waiting for the inevitable retaliation so that it can cry “foul!” and have its world-wide community of sycophants take to the streets, hurling stones and vituperation, urging vendetta, bring it on! The pictures we see on television of civilian suffering are perfect for Hamas. “Look what the Jews do to us, we must get revenge,” is the war-cry taken up around the world. An intifada is to be expected; indeed, it’s been prophesized by Hamas.

Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni also misses the point when in an interview with al-Jazeera she urges Arab governments to stop Hamas’ attacks because they are injurious to the Palestinians of Gaza; she ignores the volatility of the Arab Street.

Negotiation with Hamas is like the crocodile’s discussion with the scorpion. The scorpion knows only one thing and it does it even if it loses its own life. Negotiations with Egypt were possible because Anwar Sadat had achieved a victory of sorts in the Sinai in October 1973. Hamas achieved a victory of sorts when Israel pulled out of Gaza in August 2005. The one came to pray in Jerusalem and made peace, the other fires rockets onto Sderot.

But, I fear, the air assault (followed by a ground incursion?) will fail as well. Like Lebanon two summers ago, Hamas may be lulling Israel into its rope-a-dope strategy. We hit and hit and hit harder, exhausting ourselves; and they claim victory by not surrendering. Their intifada, when it comes, will provoke greater responses in an escalating progression of civilian deaths.

Israel has other choices beyond shock and awe. It might take the French suggestion of a two-day cease fire to see if Hamas will stop its assaults or it should return to targeted assassinations of Hamas leadership (and Hezbollah’s for that matter). We should abandon precision bombing because the bombing is never precise enough and because its collateral damage—both human and structural—is a provocative outrage.

An army uses the weapons it has, so Hamas uses rockets and will be using human bombs in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and it doesn’t care about the blow-back. We have planes, but we do care. We also have courage and intelligence. We have Mossad. (Gabriel Allon, where are you when we need you most?) Just as in that other old story, sometimes slow and steady wins the race. But trust the scorpion? Only if we have a death-wish.