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Are Two States Really a Solution?

(JNS) Tirza Shorr - In his new book Two States for Two Peoples: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, International Law and European Union Policy, Prof. Andrew Tucker, director of Thinc., the Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, examines the EU assumption that the much-invoked two-state solution will provide relief for the ills of the Middle East by establishing a fully sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 Green Line. Tucker and co-authors Profs. Wolfgang Bock and Gregory Rose assert that the Europeans propose a "utopian" solution disconnected from international legal norms, history, and the region's political realities. "Despite decades of strenuous EU efforts, expending tens of billions of euros, the reality is that we are still light years away from either a negotiated settlement of the conflict or an independent, democratic and peaceful Palestinian state," Tucker told the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on May 14. Tucker said that Europeans feel they have invested a great deal of effort and money in a resolution of the conflict, while enjoying very little transparency regarding the funds they funnel to blatantly anti-Israel Palestinian NGOs. The book raises the question of whether a Palestinian state is required by international law, whether such a state is practically achievable, and what can be done to solve the conflict. Former Israel Foreign Ministry legal adviser Amb. Alan Baker emphasized that the very concept of "occupied Palestinian territory" is a legal fiction, as are "1967 borders." "No binding document has agreed upon" the two-state solution, and though the Quartet's 2003 recommendations called for negotiations, they did not require a two-state solution. Tucker pointed out that the EU has ignored the fundamentally religious and cultural nature of the Arab rejection of the Jewish state - which began decades before Israel's establishment - and the continued rejection of peace and land-sharing by the Palestinians over the past century. The writer is a senior researcher and program coordinator at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2023-05-18 00:00:00
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