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Who's Against a Two-State Solution?

(Middle East Forum) Efraim Karsh - After the Six-Day War in 1967, nobody envisaged a two-state solution. In UN Security Council Resolution 242, Palestinian nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the Western democracies, the Soviet Union, and the Arab world itself (as late as 1974, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad openly referred to Palestine as "a basic part of southern Syria"). Instead, under Resolution 242, it was assumed that any territories evacuated by Israel would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers: Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The ascendance of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), coupled with Jordan's renunciation of its claim to the West Bank, led to a reinterpretation of Resolution 242 as in fact implying a two-state solution. Conveniently ignored was that the PLO rejected any such solution. In June 1974, the organization adopted a "phased strategy" - it would seize whatever territory Israel was prepared or compelled to cede and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving the "complete liberation of Palestine." After Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, he depicted the accords as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment and made constant allusion to the "phased strategy." At the same time he discredited the idea of "two states living side by side in peace and security" by launching a sustained campaign of hatred and incitement that indoctrinated Palestinians in the illegitimacy of the State of Israel and the lack of any Jewish connection to the land. Is there in fact a fundamental distinction between Hamas and Fatah when it comes to a two-state solution? Neither formally accepts Israel's right to exist; both are formally committed to its eventual destruction. The writer, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London.
2010-07-21 08:50:21
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