Daoud Kuttab
It has been known for 30 years, but Western leaders only believed it when the top Israeli leader admitted it: Israel has no plans and no interest in allowing Palestinians to live in freedom on their land. The talk is not about Hamas or Gaza, the talk is about Palestinian areas occupied in 1967. At that time, the preamble of UN Security Council Resolution 242 noted that it is “inadmissible” to take land by war.
Palestinians have always known that Israeli claims of peace were fake because they saw first-hand what it was doing; namely, creating facts on the ground that would make the creation of an independent Palestinian state impossible. Strategic locations were carefully sought and exclusive settlements for Jews were built there precisely to blunt any serious effort by Palestinians to fulfill their inalienable right to self-determination.
Sure, the Israelis give plenty of public support for peace – regularly blaming Palestinians for not being responsive enough, for inciting violence and for refusing to accept the concept of a “Jewish state.” But in reality, these were smokescreens aimed at fooling the international community.
World powers did oppose the settlements, sometimes calling them an obstacle to peace and, at other times, like in the last days of the Obama administration, clearly stated in a binding UNSC resolution that they were Illegal. But there were never any consequences for Israel or any real deterrent for ignoring the international will. The Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent “take no prisoners” style of revenge that has shocked the world’s consciousness have reinvigorated world opinion. Naturally, political forces have returned to the drawing board and insisted – this time a little more seriously – that, after the end of the war on Gaza, a political solution that will satisfy Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations must be found.
This forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to admit that, for 30 years, he has been opposed to a Palestinian state and that it would never see the light while he was in power.
Again, the global community condemned these words, but it failed to translate these condemnations into pressure and create an irreversible process toward this goal. Western countries have the political weapons to create such a process. They can follow their own people’s desires (as often made in parliamentary resolutions) and recognize the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders. Such a move would change the paradigm.
The gradual approach of the Oslo process did not work. Israel used this to relieve itself from guarding populated cities while flexing its settlement enterprise. The number of settlers in the West Bank has more than quadrupled in the 30 years since the famous White House lawn handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.
The public Israeli rejection of an independent Palestinian state has escalated calls for a different form of solution. If Israel refuses to share the land between the river and the sea with Palestinians, the only other realistic alternative is for Israel to agree to share power with Palestinians in the same historic Palestinian territory.
Marwan Muasher, the former Jordanian deputy prime minister and current vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last month made this quite clear at the UNSC. The world will not accept Israel controlling the entire area and applying the war crime of apartheid, he argued, adding that therefore what is needed is a process that allows for equality between Israelis and Palestinians.
The war on Gaza has been a human tragedy of the worst kind and the repercussions will last for decades. But the one issue that the war has revealed is the false Israeli peace claims and its justifications for refusing to end its military occupation of Palestinian lands. The latest pronouncements have vindicated Palestinians and brought to light the statements of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict did not start on Oct. 7, 2023. The world community has a clear challenge now. If it is serious about the two-state solution, it must recognize Palestine and encourage the legitimate representatives of Israel and Palestine to negotiate the modalities as two UN member states. Short of that, all efforts must be placed on forcing Israel to grant equal political rights to all the people under its control. Put simply, Israel needs to decide to either share the land or share the power in historic Palestine – there is no third choice.
