It’s amazing how long bad ideas take to die. That’s certainly the case with one of the least successful ideas in the world. The idea of the two-state solution in the Middle East.
How do we know it is unsuccessful? Because it has been tried for decades and never works.
Generations of US Presidents have wasted energy on the idea. All based on a falsehood.
Which is the idea that a two-state solution would “unlock the problems” of the Middle East.
In this song — sung by Republicans and Democrats alike — if the Palestinian people had another state then all the other problems of the Middle East would be solved.
The economy of Yemen would suddenly boom. The Ayatollahs in Iran would suddenly grant equal rights to women. There’d be gay pride in Saudi Arabia.
It is a fairytale, of course. None of the rest of the Arab world gives a damn about the Palestinians.
Most actively hate them — seeing them as bringing terror wherever they go (as the Palestinians did when they went to Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon — to name just a few).
Besides which, the Palestinians doggedly refused a state every time they were offered one. They refused in 1948 and every other time right up to 2000.
Blinken recently boasted that he was in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas “to reiterate US support for reforming the PA and establishing an independent Palestinian state.”
But such a policy is an embarrassment.
As Israeli politicians of left, right and center have told me in recent months, even if you believe that the Palestinians should be given another state, now is not the time to discuss it.
To push for a two-state solution now is to say to the Palestinians “You carried out a horrific terror attack on October 7th, and as a reward you will be given another state.”
I wonder how many more terror attacks will come about by incentivizing terror in this way?