Palestine/Israel: 2-state solution vs. 1 binational state?

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For decades the U.S. has pushed a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East but not formally recognized an independent Palestinian state. That may be about to change.

The Biden administration is drawing up options to enact the policy after Israel’s current war in Gaza, a senior administration official told NBC News, a move that could offer political, legal and symbolic power for Palestinians and add to international pressure on Israel to engage in meaningful talks for a long-term peace.

Offering that recognition before any final comprehensive deal between the two parties would mark an apparent shift in Washington’s position, as it navigates an issue of extraordinary sensitivity at home and abroad.

News of the internal deliberations was met with expected pushback from some on the Israeli right and their supporters internationally, as the country still reels from Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which 1,200 people were killed and another 240 kidnapped. But the White House plans, first reported by Axios, have also been met with skepticism — and outright anger — from many Palestinians themselves.

Recognition is a long-held goal for Palestinians and their supporters, bestowing political and international legitimacy as well as symbolic clout in this most intractable of conflicts. But with the death toll still rising in Gaza, many veteran activists say this push is meaningless while the U.S. continues to fund and arm Israel, while shielding it from international censure over its military campaign, in which more than 27,000 people have been killed.

“We’ve been calling for recognition of a Palestinian state for a long time,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament, where he leads the Palestinian National Initiative party.

“But the American declaration does not mean anything unless it is associated with three things,” the veteran politician said in a telephone interview.

He listed an end to Israel’s occupation, removal of its settlements in the occupied West Bank, and an agreement of what the Palestinian state’s borders would look like. In reality, he says, the U.S. “has been doing everything to encourage Israel in their aggression.”

Opinion in Israel itself is divided.

A new poll released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Tel Aviv think tank, found 59% of Jewish Israelis opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a deal to end the war. Among Arab Israelis, 69% support the proposal.

Some, particularly on the right, are concerned that a Palestinian state might act as a launching pad for future attacks by those militants and their supporters who openly want to eradicate Israel itself.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has flatly rejected the idea, saying that a neighboring Palestinian state conflicts with Israel’s need for security — and putting him at direct loggerheads with Biden.

“The state of Israel must have security control over the entire territory,” Netanyahu said last month.

One of his security cabinet members, fellow Likud lawmaker Gideon Sa’ar, wrote Friday on X that “recognizing a Palestinian State is short-termism at its worst,” adding that such a state would “undoubtedly continue the armed struggle against Israel.”

Negative reaction among pro-Israel voices in the U.S. has been no less staunch.

“This ‘recognition’ would be even more devastating to Israel than the attacks of October 7!!” David Friedman, the hard-line U.S. ambassador to Israel under former President Donald Trump, wrote on X. Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s former Middle East envoy, wrote that recognizing a Palestinian state would “embolden Hamas and other terrorists to continue their bloody rampage.”

But those Israelis who do favor a two-state solution have been buoyed by Biden’s rekindling of a concept long since considered moribund in geopolitical conversation. “The fact that we have the leader of the free world mentioning at least twice a day the two-state solution” means the idea it’s dead is “nonsense,” Yossi Beilin, a veteran Israeli politician and peace negotiator, said in an interview last month.

And the idea has some supporters at home.

“These are important deliberations. This moment calls for bold action,” J Street, a Washington-based advocacy group that describes itself as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans,” said last week.

In a reported column in The New York Times laying out what he describes as an emerging “Biden Doctrine,” Thomas Friedman wrote that recognition at the start rather than end of a peace process “could promote Palestinian statehood on terms consistent with Israeli security” while helping to deter Iran and shore up Biden’s support with key voting demographics ahead of his re-election campaign.

Saudi talks
There are many unanswered questions: How long will it take for the war to end so any of this can happen? How to overcome Netanyahu’s opposition? And to what extent would this depend on other moving parts in the region? On this front, the Palestinians are wary of becoming a pawn in a wider game.

“Our worry is that this whole thing could become just lip service to the interest of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Barghouti said, referring to a deal the White House had been pursuing prior to the Hamas attack, and which may still form part of any agreement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday, and they discussed achieving "an enduring end to the crisis in Gaza that provides lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike," according to the State Department. Blinken then headed to Egypt and Qatar before visiting Israel for his latest round of Middle East diplomacy.

The lack of Palestinian statehood is, for many observers, a central reason why this conflict has remained unresolved for decades. It leaves the Palestinians on an unequal footing to much of the world, not just when it comes to international institutions such as the U.N. but also in the global psyche, where the Palestinian territories are often not afforded the rights and respect of established nations.

In fact, what counts as a country and what doesn’t is contested. Most definitions start with the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which says that countries must have a permanent population, a defined territory and government, and must be able to enter relations with other states.

The extent to which the Palestinians fulfill this criteria is debated by scholars. But most countries do already recognize it — 139 of the 193 of U.N. member states, including most of Asia, Africa and South America. Crucially, however, the geopolitical powerhouses of the U.S., Canada and most of Europe do not. And Washington has blocked previous resolutions that would recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. Security Council, saying it is a matter to be negotiated with Israel directly.

Although recognition and equality are prized by Palestinians, what really motivates their desire for statehood is that it would formalize and highlight their status as a country — rather than just a territory — under occupation, said Barghouti, the Palestinian politician.

“What we need is an end to occupation,” Barghouti said. “We need a democratic state because we want to be free.”

U.S President Joe Biden and his administration could announce a long-term peace plan with steps to establishing a Palestinian state, along with support from a “small group of Middle East partners,” according to the Washington Post

The plan was reportedly being rushed in order to be directly tied to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal led by Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators, which planners “hope” can be reached before Ramadan.

preliminarily approved framework of at least six weeks cessation of hostilities and the release of hostages kidnapped during the Hamas-led October 7 attacks was being discussed in Cairo by mediators, with participation of representatives from Israel and Palestinian factions, and pressure mounts to reach a breakthrough before the Muslim holiday consisting of fasting begins.

“The key is the hostage deal,” one U.S. official told WP, among several American and Arab diplomats cited anonymously in the report.

Once a ceasefire was in place with a hostage deal, the WP reported that the discussed peace plan would have the “time” to go public coupled with steps toward forming an interim Palestinian government, as well as being able to recruit additional support alongside other initial steps toward the plan’s implementation.

“We don’t want to lose the momentum of this moment by doing this in pieces and in parts,” another U.S. official was quoted as saying, who added that it’s wanted to know “what this looks like from day one.”

As such, WP described actions being considered as even an early U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state before further details are fleshed out, like security guarantees and political reform, nor the normalization talks with Arab countries in the area, notably Saudi Arabia.

Described as establishing a government of technocrats rather than politicians in order to focus on economy and security, which Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly agreed in principle, but the question remained if Hamas would be part of the talks or future governing.

In response to reports on Thursday of a U.S. plan to recognize a Palestinian state as part of a proposed peace deal, Israeli government ministers are expressing strong opposition and defiance, emphasizing that no Palestinian state will be established while they are in power.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, representing the far-right perspective, dismissed the notion of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as "delusional."

The intention of the U.S., together with the Arab states, to establish a terror state alongside the State of Israel is delusional and part of the misguided conception that there is a partner for peace on the other side,” Ben Gvir said.

Likud party member and Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli expressed skepticism regarding the reported U.S. plan, asserting that Israel should resist such proposals.

He suggested countering with unilateral actions, such as terminating the Oslo Accords, in response to perceived pressure to recognize a Palestinian state.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vehemently rejected the reported U.S. plan, denouncing it as a reward for Palestinian violence.

“We will never agree, under any circumstances to this plan that basically says the Palestinians deserve a prize for the terrible massacre they carried out against us: A Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem,” Smotrich posted on X.

“The message is that it pays to slaughter citizens of Israel,” the minister said.

Israel will not be pressured into accepting a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, following a Washington Post report that Israel's main ally the United States was moving plans to establish a Palestinian state.

"Israel categorically rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians," said Netanyahu, in a statement published following a call with U.S. President Joe Biden. "Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state."
Netanyahu said statehood would be a "huge reward" in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which triggered the latest war in Gaza. He said such an arrangement can only be reached in direct negotiations between the two sides, though no talks have been held since 2014.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Friday Netanyahu was invoking negotiations only to have the process fail again. "The Palestinian state is not a gift or a favour from Netanyahu, but a right imposed by international law and legitimate international resolutions," it said in a statement.