Two-state solution

Meetings between the Taoiseach and outgoing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, New York Governor Cathy Hochul and Mayor Zoran Mamdani have been scheduled.

Micheál Martin is also expected to attend events focused on the Middle East, including the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution and another one hosted by the leaders of France, Canada and the UK to mark nearly a year since the Gaza Peace Plan was announced.

Jackie Fox, RT News, New York.

The White House has launched an online TV channel named Trump TV.

They failed on their promise to prioritize the hostages taken by Hamas and the Palestinian fighters.

And they failed at their promise to use this policy to promote a two-state solution.

And I know we'll talk more about two-state solution and all that kind of stuff, but I see it as a policy failure step-by-step and a record that's really important for any future policymaker to learn from.

Yeah, no, that's that all sounds right to me.

And I mean, I'm so curious to get into this from a sort of structural level, political level, but also just the psychology of some of what we saw during that time with Biden and others.

Wow.

Did the Biden administration, I mean, they were not all that active on Israel-Palestine and I guess in their defense, Obama sort of gave up on it after a while too.

Like, are they, before October 7th, let's say, and after, are they still talking about a two-state solution? Like, how are they thinking about this? Have they just punted it to the next administration or what? Prior

As the Israeli election comes closer, is there any hope left whatever for a Palestinian state in the Middle East?

Both in terms of what's happening on the ground and in terms of rhetoric from some of the Israeli politicians who are seen as more moderate, a two-state solution is a non-starter.

And most apocalyptic of all, is artificial intelligence going to wipe us all out?

At the moment, there are people, very intelligent people, who are saying there is a 10% chance this might happen in the next 10 years.

And whichever party wins the Israeli elections, whatever coalition is formed, nobody is going to go back to a two-nation solution, are they?

No, that rhetoric has really dropped from Israeli political discourse, both in terms of what's happening on the ground and the way that Israeli settlements have really expanded into parts of the West Bank, and in terms of rhetoric from some of the Israeli politicians who are seen as more moderate.

A two-state solution is a non-starter.

BBC Monitoring Middle East expert Shana Oppenheimer speaking to me from Jerusalem.

I mean, it's, it's, it's h- it's very hard for them.

I know it's very hard for them considering that Hillary was the first person, I think it was in '98 or '99, and it was radical when she did it, talking about a two-state solution.

People are like, "Oh, no, you can't talk about a two-state sol- what are you doing?" But she was way out in front of everybody else.

And then the deal that they struck in 2000 with Arafat, I mean, giving, giving so much power and control to the Palestinians, creating a Palestinian state that made East Jerusalem the capital, giving them 97% of the West Bank, saying, "Okay, the other 3% you just pick.

Well, first, I worked for Secretary Clinton when she was Secretary of State, and the last time that an Israeli prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, were in the same room negotiating with one another was when Hillary Clinton convened them in three sessions in Washington and Egypt and in Israel, and it's, that was back in 2010.

Mm.

So it has been a long time since we've actually gotten serious traction on diplomacy towards a two-state solution.

But it's the only solution that is possible.

Welcome to this episode of the Benjamin Antony Show, a product of the Miriam Institute.

You see, as Israel still struggles with what the day after this war might look like overseas, and with an uncanny degree of reflexive simplicity at best, many voices continue to demand that Israel enters into a two-state solution with the Palestinian Arabs forthwith.

Now, it's important to remember that these Palestinian Arabs are the same people whose Gazan flank massacred and kidnapped our innocents on October 7th, 2023, and proceeded to torture and execute those captives thereafter, and whose Judea and Samaria flank was frequently murdering innocent Israelis.

Jewish and non-Jewish alike, by way of a sustained wave of indiscriminate homicide bombings during the Second Intifada, which was a reign of terror that only really ended once Israel finally fenced itself in and away from those Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria by way of a physical security barrier.

An aged man who, and I kid you not when I say this, is now in the 21st year of his four-year term.

But anyway, I digress.

In any event, rather than allowing foreign proponents of the idea of the two-state solution to continue their untrammeled trot toward the fantastical, I'd prefer that they first answer some very simple questions, such as question number one.

Is your two-state plan even remotely practicable? How exactly do you plan to create a contiguous state for the Palestinian Arabs incorporating parts of Judea and Samaria and the entirety of the Gaza Strip, as such a plan would call for, without bifurcating north from south Israel? Two, can you provide any proof or precedent whatsoever to support the notion that ceding yet more territory to the Palestinian Arabs will result in increased security for Israel? Or does all of the evidence actually point to the very opposite outcome? You'll recall, after all, that the October 7th massacre was a direct result of the land for peace formula espoused by those who suffer from the two-state obsession.

So the negotiations crashed in time.

The possibility in people's eyes of a two-state solution also crashed, and people slowly, uh, or quickly if you like, uh, withdrew from the, from those, uh, from those fronts, from the fronts where people were actually beginning to talk to one another.

And to refer back to, uh, the wall, the separation wall barrier that was built, uh, which you mentioned and which you rightly also pointed out, was in fact, uh, something that the people from the Hebrew University students, professors came and stood by us, uh, to sort of oppose the building of this wall.

Uh, it was a time which was opening up between the two sides.

but that intellectuals, uh, public opinion leaders, if you like, on both sides, whether on the Israeli or on the Palestinian side, are no longer speaking, uh, to their constituencies in, uh, peaceful or in, um, in, in, in positive terms because even they have lost hope in the future.

And so it's, it's really now much harder than before, but as I said earlier, because it's much harder, it's much more necessary to sort of try and bring that back to life.

Well, I remember, you know, in 2011, I think maybe '12, uh, you were also very skeptical about the possibility of, uh, materializing the idea of the two-state solution.

Uh, and y- you said that, you know, it's, uh, maybe not longer even possible, uh, anymore.