There is a lot of talk about a ‘two-state” solution. Talk of dividing what today is Israel into an Arab (“palestinian”) state and the remainder remaining Israel. There are two reasons (maybe more) that this will never happen:
- The Arabs (“palestinians”) don’t want it. They have been offered this time and time again, and time and time again they have rejected it wholesale. The last time it was kind of forced on them. In 2005, Israel completely withdrew all twenty-five settlements, IDF installations, from Gaza. 9,000 Jews, some of whom had lived there since before 1900, were evicted. Israel ethnically cleansed itself from Gaza, and Gaza became a sovereign Arab (“palestinian”) state. Then they elected the terrorist group Hamas to govern them, and Hamas proceeded to militarize the entire region, destroying greenhouses that had been left for them by the Israelis, ripping up the water system to make rockets out of the pipes, installed 100s of KM of tunnels (to infiltrate into Israel), and installed a military presence, and weapon caches in private home, mosques, schools and hospitals. They also destroyed every Christian Church left, some of which were over 2,000 years old. Then they began practically daily launching rockets into Southern Israel, which resulted in, well, they have, for all intents and purposes, been waging a war with the IDF ever since.
A similar situation exists in Samaria/Judea (AKA, “The West Bank”) where the region has been divided between various Jewish and “palestinian” governed areas. Terrorists are active there as well, but nearly as bad as in Gaza. Israel erected a “security wall” with military check points throughout to try to enforce peace between “palestinians” and Israelis.
Prior to all this, (1) a separate state proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 was offered to the Arabs (“palestinians”). They rejected it. (2) In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted this, the Arabs rejected it (and then seven Arab countries invaded, kicking off the first Arab / Israeli War). (3) On 2000 it was proposed at Camp David, and again (4) by the Taba Summit in 2001. (5) The Arab Peace Initiative proposed it in 2006-2008, and lastly (6) there was the 2013-2014 Peace talks.
A separate Arab (“palestinian”) has thus been offered a total of 7 times (including a real one, forced on the Arabs – Gaza).
Q: Why has this been rejected by the Arab (“palestinian”) leadership every single time, with a war or “intifada” ending the talk?
A: Each time an Israel was left to exist after the “partition.” A Jewish state adjacent to an Arab state is not acceptable. The Arabs want is all or they want nothing. This position is even stated in the founding documents of Hamas, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.
2. The other reason the two state solution will never happen is:
THE TWO STATE SOLUTION ALREADY EXISTS. Yes, that is correct. Not only does it already exist, but it has existed since 1946.
TIME FOR A HISTORY LESSON:
We begin with the British Mandate for Palestine. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, after World War I, the League of Nations instituted the Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948). Also referenced as Mandatory Palestine it gave the UK the “mandate” to govern the region. The entire Mandate for Palestine consisted of what is today the State of Israel and what is today Jordan (AKA, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, originally the Emirate of Transjordan). The whole region had been promised to the Jewish people as a homeland by the Balfour Declaration (1917), so the UK had an obligation to the Jewish people to give them Palestine for that very purpose. But, the UK also had made promises to the Arabs, to reward them for their participation in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. So they took care of their obligation to the Arabs first, in 1921, and hived off two-thirds of Palestine to create the Emirate of Transjordan.
And then everyone forgot about this.
When it comes to Israel, people have a habit of forgetting important facts.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel Switzerland. It’s purpose was to purchase land, and secure deeds to land in the Levant. The JNF successfully fulfilled its mission, securing almost 80% of the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. The land was owned mostly by absentee Arab landowners, who were only too happy to sell their “worthless, barren, infertile, desert land” to the fool-hardy Jews (and at exorbitant prices). 95% of the area between Jerusalem and the Jordan river (AKA Samaria / Judea; aka “The West Bank”) had been purchased by the JNF between 1919 and 1947. Along side Arab Christian towns such as Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Ramallah; numerous moshav and kibbutzim were established LINK.
Everyone forgot about the Jewish National Fund, and their mission, after the Arab / Israel War of May 1948. They forgot that the JNF spent a lot of money to secure land for Jews to live in.
Well, not completely. To many people on the Left, land ownership and the buying and selling of land is just wrong. No one should own land. “The Earth belongs to all of us and we should all share it in peace, love and harmony.” Therefore, anyone who pays anyone for the purpose of acquiring land is in the wrong. Worse, if you purchase land from an absentee land owner who happens to be renting that land out to someone else, and then you evict the renter so that you can use the land. Well, that’s outright theft! The “true owners” of the property are the renters. You have no right to displace them. What’s funny is that sometimes these sentiments only apply to land that Jews have purchased.
If you “Google” “Jewish National Fund” you’ll find a whole lot of propaganda and false accusations, depending on how close to Hamas the web producer aligns themselves. The JNL is accused of using fraudulent tactics to secure sales. The actual number of dunams of land acquired by the JNL is deflated to almost nill. And of course, in the cases where Arab renters had been living on given parcels, the JNL is accused of “stealing” that land.
In Samaria /Judea (“the west bank”) after June 1967 when the IDF recaptured the land, the accusation was that Israel was illegally occupying the land. Because, after all, when land is purchased by Jews, but then captured by Jordan, subsequently ethnically purged of all it’s Jewishness; then settled by the Arabs. When subsequently that same land is recaptured and restored to it’s prior owners, that land is “stolen” and “illegally occupied.”
<SIGH>
It’s time for the United Nations to intervene, admit that Jordan is palestine, and encourage those Arabs who don’t want to live in a palestine run by the Jews, to relocate to Jordan and leave Israel.
Jordan IS palestine. Palestinians should live in Jordan.
