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The Cause of the Death of the Two-State Solution

(Tablet) Benny Morris - The initial and compelling cause of the death of the two-state solution was Palestinian Arab rejectionism. The Palestinians have displayed remarkable consistency in rejecting the two-state solution. They said "no" to the Peel Commission partition proposal in 1937 (which awarded the Arabs 70% of Palestine); they said "no" to the UN General Assembly's partition resolution of November 1947 (which proposed Palestinian statehood on 45% of the land); PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat said "no" to the partition proposals of the year 2000 (the "Clinton Parameters") that awarded the Palestinians a state on 21%-22% of Palestine; and current Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas failed to respond (i.e., said "no") to Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert's partition proposals, which were akin to Clinton's, in 2007-08. The fundamentalist wing of the Palestinian national movement, Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and is still the most popular Palestinian party, rejects out of hand any talk of partition. It aims, so says its charter, clearly, to eradicate Israel and replace it with a Sharia-ruled state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. And while the Palestinian Authority, dominated by the Fatah party, occasionally pays lip service to the two-state idea, it, too, covets all of Palestine (why else insist on the refugees' "right of return," which, if realized, would create an Arab majority?). Partition is not on the Palestinian agenda today, if it ever really was. The writer is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University.
2023-10-02 00:00:00
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