WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: International howling for a “Two-State Solution” is back in vogue, Arlene warns this week. Ted Belman reiterates his Palestine Mandate-based alternative version. Compare the two “two-state solutions,” and ask yourself which is equitable both to Palestine’s Arabs and its Jews.
This Week: There Already IS an Equitable Two-State Solution; the New Version Isn’t
Pop Quiz, Girls & Boys (at least those of you who continue to believe there are girls & boys). Question #1, 100 points:
Who said this this week: “I don’t’ believe that Israel should give up any land” to a western Palestine two-state solution:
[a] me
[b] Bibi
[c] a major party Muslim candidate for the U.S. Senate?
The answer, girls & boys, is [c], winner Dr. Mehmet Oz of the Republican Party primary election for endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. See Jonathan Tobin, JNS, this week, 8/19/22, Could a Muslim Senator be an Ardent Supporter of Israel? Tobin’s answer is “Yes.” Tobin: “Instead of endorsing a two-state solution, as far as Oz is concerned, Israeli territorial concessions are a bad idea.”
By me, chalk one up for the Wisdom of Oz. Here’s how I put it in our #1125 last week, encouraging you to delve into my pick of books on the Six Day War and before that the Aliyah Bet, capturing the depth and intensity of those chapters’ participants’ courageous commitment to fulfilling the Dream of Generations for our Jewish homeland’s sovereign redemption:
“Stare at a map of the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan. An ‘anti-Zionist’ seeking to do the most irrevocable damage and harm to the Jewish State would rip from it its most meaningful place, historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all), and most defensible high ground, its Judea-Samaria hill country heartland. To do this irrevocable damage, one does not even have to be ‘anti-Zionist,’ just a well-meaning non-Israeli caught up in the international howling for ‘Middle East Peace’ based on a western Palestine ‘Two-State Solution.’ E.g., Jerusalem Post, 7/15/22, Biden: I Support Two States, Based on Pre-1967 Lines. In ‘Land For Peace,’ Land, of all concessions, is what’s irrevocable.”
The good doctor and I were not alone this past week in saying not-nice-things about “The Two-State Solution.” Israeli commentator Arlene Kushner joined us on Thursday. In her posting From Israel: Making Sense of Nonsense!!, Arlene wrote in frustration:
“What I am referring to is the embrace of the ‘two-state solution,’ which is once again in vogue, internationally and on the left here in Israel. Just when I start to think people understand, the notion emerges with new vigor, and the ‘entitlement’ of Palestinian Arabs to a state within the borders of the Mandate for Palestine, (which was established in international law as a Jewish homeland), is promoted with moral certitude.”
But is whacking up western Palestine, the Land of Israel, into two states, one Jewish one Arab, an avenue to achieving homeland equity in Palestine for Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs [who, btw, aren’t “THE Palestinians”]? The answer is emphatically No, and Jews of all people who promote “The Two-State Solution” with moral certitude need to grasp that ripping from our homeland historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria [what it was called for three thousand years including by the UN itself in 1947 before invader Jordan coined “West Bank” in 1950] is existentially unfair to our people.
The “Palestinian narrative,” “crafted by the KGB in consultations with Arafat in the sixties” (see Belman, Israpudit, Tuesday this week, 8/16/22, Trump’s Deal of the Century, a.k.a., The Jordan Option) , is a classic “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is partitionable” ploy. The “Palestine” that Jews and Arabs fight over was defined in the League of Nations’ 1922 Palestine Mandate, which divided it between Arabs and Jews along the Jordan River, 78%/22% favoring Arabs.
Today’s Two-Staters conveniently suppress Israel’s international treaty legal claim to Palestine west of the River, along with our Jewish people’s three-millennia historical presence claim to the land, not least now thrice Jewish state capital Jerusalem with its renewed Jewish majority since 1800’s non-Arab Ottoman empire rule. Stand on that historical and legal Jewish homeland case.
But what about Palestinian Arabs living west of the River? Belman addresses this in that Israpundit posting this week. His much airily-dismissed “Jordan Option” makes them citizens of Jordan, which already has a Palestinian Arab majority population, and non-citizen residents of Israel. The border remains the River. Israel does not expel any Arabs, but Jordan, with international backing, incentivizes their moving there, along with descendants of Arabs who left Palestine in 1948 to other Arab lands. This is far more equitable to Arabs than what Arabs in the wake of the 1948 war did to Arab land Jews. More Mizrahi, indigenously Middle Eastern, Jews, absorbed by Israel, were displaced from vast Arab lands and Iran than Arabs left tiny Israel.
As Arlene noted this week, a western Palestine “two-state solution” is back. So contemplate these two “two-state solutions” – [a] Israel-and-Jordan, already existing Jewish and Arab states on the land comprising the Palestine Mandate with a geographically natural defensible border between them, versus [b], per, e.g., Biden, “two states based on pre-1967 [i.e., 1949] lines,” plus already Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan. The latter’s meandering 1949 ceasefire line leaves Israel 9-miles-wide in the lowland middle, with remaining just-new-Jerusalem [no Old City, no Temple Mount, no Western Wall, no City of David] squeezed at the end of a narrow Arab hill-dominating [e.g., Radar Hill and Latrun] corridor, openly inviting invasion. I cannot imagine any self-respecting Jew supporting this.