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Israeli-Palestinian Peace Must Reflect Reality

(1945) Lawrence Haas - In pressuring Jerusalem to scale back its military plans and pursue the two-state solution at this moment, its critics ignore an ugly reality on the Palestinian side - that among its leaders and people, there is no constituency for "two states living side-by-side in peace." Pressing for the two-state solution now, while Israel is at war and Palestinians largely oppose co-existence, surely will prove fruitless, setting back prospects of ever achieving peace. Any hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace rests on Hamas' destruction, which Israel is pursuing, not on a naive "reasonable expectation" that it and such like-minded allies as Palestinian Islamic Jihad will lay down their arms. True peace must also reside in the hearts of the population. But just 17% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank supported a two-state solution in a November poll, while 75% supported a "Palestinian state from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea" - replacing what is now Israel. In a December poll, 72% of Palestinians supported the Hamas attack. Rather than part company with reality, U.S. officials and opinion leaders should embrace it. Long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace requires, among other things, a destroyed Hamas, an overhauled Palestinian Authority, and a spirit of co-existence that's nurtured among the Palestinian people. The writer is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.
2024-03-24 00:00:00
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