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UN's Push for Palestinian Statehood Ignores Israel's Security Concerns

(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon - In a world reshaped by the trauma of Oct. 7, some international diplomats seem determined to act as if nothing has changed. On Tuesday, the UN convened yet another confab aimed at revitalizing the decades-old push for a two-state solution. To Israeli ears, those words now sound tone-deaf. Nearly 22 months after Hamas launched an invasion of Israel designed to trigger the beginning of the end of the Jewish state, the international community is dusting off the same talking points that dominated the diplomatic discourse before Oct. 7. But the ground has shifted and the assumptions that underpinned the two-state idea have been swept away by the blood and horror of Oct. 7 and the 20 years of Gaza-based terrorism that preceded it. It's one thing to promote Palestinian statehood in theory. It's another to advocate for the creation of such a state within spitting distance of Tel Aviv, as memories of rockets fired toward Tel Aviv from Gaza are agonizingly fresh in Israeli minds. Israel has already lived through a version of this experiment, and it did not go well. Twenty years ago Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza. It uprooted 21 thriving Jewish communities, removed 9,000 citizens from their homes, and handed the territory over to the Palestinians without preconditions. The hope was that Gaza would become a pilot for Palestinian self-rule. Instead, it became a base for Iranian proxies who want to destroy the Jewish state. On Oct. 7 they tried to do just that. So when Israelis now hear foreign diplomats once again call for a Palestinian state, their first question is: On what evidence that this time will be any different? The two-state solution was partially implemented in Gaza and produced precisely the kind of nightmare it was supposed to avert. Creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank today would mean replicating the Gaza model on a much larger, more dangerous scale, leading to rockets within range of Ben-Gurion Airport. The reality on the ground includes the absence of Palestinian political leadership capable of delivering peace, the enduring appeal of Hamas-style violence in large parts of Palestinian society, and the simple, tragic, enduring fact that what many Palestinians want is not a state next to Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, but one instead of it. An Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) poll in March found that Israeli support for a two-state solution had declined to 24% (including only 15% of Jewish Israelis). Ten years ago it was 60%. For Israelis, Palestinian statehood is not a path to peace but a dangerous delusion - one they've already lived through and have no interest in going through again.
2025-07-31 00:00:00
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