By Justin Amler
An editorial I read recently lamented the end of the two state solution. Essentially, it said the time had come to recognize that the two state solution is dead.
But I disagree. Because to me, the two state solution is not dead – it was never alive in the first place.
For too long, the whole conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been labelled as Israel’s responsibility. Israel’s fault. Israel the cause. Israel the guilty one. Israel must solve it. Pressure must be placed on Israel.
Well, I maintain a different approach.
There is a conflict, but it’s not between Israel and the Palestinians – it’s between the Arabs and themselves. Because if a new country called Palestine was created today, does any logical and reasonable person seriously expect us to believe that peace will reign across the region? How is it that a 23rd Arab state will be that missing link between peace and war, when 22 Arab states have not been able to achieve that already?
Here’s a newsflash – if Israel ever does disappear, do not expect peace to come to the world – in fact just the opposite. Do not expect world hunger to end. Do not expect people to lay down their weapons and hold hands while dancing around a campfire, chanting songs of love to the moon.
But many in this world don’t seem to get this obvious fact, perhaps governed by the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism, or perhaps under the influence of those petro-fumes, or perhaps powered by a naivety in the same way Neville Chamberlain was back in 1938.
Unfortunately, when world leaders like Obama and his messenger John Kerry (who I’m convinced has inhaled too much hairspray), speak of the Arab world and Israel in equal terms, it does nothing to enhance peace – but rather pushes it further away. Because by absolving the Arab world of any responsibility towards the Middle East, it means they don’t have to be accountable either.
These are lessons no world leader is prepared to deliver to them – out of fear that the black gold we depend on will dry up. So instead the world will pander to them, stroke their egos, and speak of shared values (seriously?) and treat them with more respect than they will the country that actually does have shared values.
And just how is it that a world that call themselves progressive can attack the only country in the region that is? Do you mean to tell me that the values of Europe and the USA are more similar to the Arab world and the Palestinian authority than to Israel? So gay marriage which was legalised in America is more in tune with Iran or the Arab world, than it is with Israel. And freedom of speech is more prevalent in Saudi Arabia than in the State of Israel? And democracy is an old and established system in Qatar, but foreign in Israel?
The two state solution was never alive because the Arab leaders were never prepared to accept the responsibility that goes along with the rewards. But there is responsibility for the conflict, and to make Israel the cause of it is an injustice that continues to this day. If you want to look for responsibility look no further than the leader of the Palestinians, who refuses to lead. Look no further than the education system that preaches hatred, funded by the United Nations. Look no further than the official imams who spew hatred from their mosques.
And yes, look no further than a world which refuses to hold the Arab world to any accountability at all.
The end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians does not lie in giving up miniscule land that will make no difference to the Arab world. It does not lie in dividing Jerusalem, a city that was never desired as a capital for any other people but the Jews. It certainly doesn’t lie in releasing prisoners whose blood soaked hands who will only kill again.
It lies in the Arab world accepting that they can’t have every inch of land in the vast Middle Eastern region. It lies in the Palestinians accepting that the State of Israel is not a colonial force or a foreign entity, but an integral part of that region that is very much a part of it. And it lies in the Arab world accepting their refugees – who are Arabs like them – the way the world has accepted refugees from all over.
No world leader today exists that will deliver that message to them, and until that message is delivered, peace will remain as elusive as it ever was.