Kerry, Negotiations and the 'Two-State Solution'

“Let’s take a quick look at the phrase that is now so widespread: ‘a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.’ This phrase, which expresses a clear diplomatic position, has, over the years, turned into a symbol of fraud, hypocrisy and naïveté.” – Uzi Baram, one of the leaders of the Israeli Labor Party.

In one of his recent, rare statements, after the resumption of negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing extremist, appeared as if he were the leader of the so-called “Israeli left,” which has adopted more of his positions than the right. In his replies to newspaper questions, he justified his consent to the return to negotiations by his desire that “a bi-national state” not become “Israel’s option” for solving the conflict with the Palestinians!

The American fantasy of solving the Palestinian issue ended after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which proposed “two states for two peoples,” with the two opposing parties accepting this solution. But nothing happened on the ground, and there is nothing in the issued statements or positions of the decision-makers in the Zionist entity referring to what the two parties gain by talking about one understanding of the solution or one goal of the negotiations. Rather, they contradict each other in their definitions of a “two-state solution” and their interpretation of the goal of the negotiations. When only one possible solution develops from those facts, statements and attitudes, it becomes the proposed solution, and the negotiations are assumed to revolve around and serve to realize it. But that solution is one that is entirely impossible. That is what makes these negotiations a lie.

So the “Palestinian state,” for example, supposes that it is a desired solution. Stated in the idea of Palestinian power is an independent state possessing sovereignty in the 1967 borders and with Eastern Jerusalem as its capital. It assumes the necessity of evacuating the settlements, even if we accept the idea of minor land exchanges. But that “Palestinian state” is, in the stated “Israeli” concept, a demilitarized state, without power over its land, air, borders or water, whose security is subject to Israeli control. Clearly, this “Palestinian state,” in the Israeli understanding, is a group of cantons or isolated islands, without Eastern Jerusalem, missing 85 percent of its land, which is covered in major settlement blocs and with minimal borders, as was recently stated by the American Secretary of State John Kerry. A banner was placed over it saying that it is a “state.” As for the American conception of this “state,” it is a lie about a viable state. We do not know, and it seems that it does not matter, if this vulnerability stems from itself or from the apparatus that provides it with life. It is like a death being announced by the apparatus that lives because of that death.

Kerry has delineated a nine-month period to arrive at a “final status agreement,” but on what basis nobody knows. So, it is clear that Netanyahu’s strategy is undertaken on the basis of gaining time to get what he wants; however, the blame for negotiations failing would go to him. And if he does not get what he wants, they will fail. The newspaper Haaretz seemed certain of that. It said in its editorial, a commentary on the decision by the civil administration: “The government will do anything it can to sabotage the talks with the Palestinians … The government will also forge ahead with creating facts on the ground, just in case the talks get underway.” As John Whitbeck, adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, said recently in his essay published as “The World According to Whitbeck,” failure is always what forms success: It permits Israel to continue confiscating Palestinian land, to expand the settlements in the West Bank and to make the occupation of Palestine bigger and more stable.

Netanyahu has not hidden the strategy he is following and of which he is availing himself. Rather, he discussed it to the United Nations secretary general’s face without detours or evasions. So, when he was received after a negotiating session held Aug. 14, 2013, he said of it, “Israel intends to annex the settlement neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the major settlement blocks in which most Israelis live — their numbers reach 360,000 in the West Bank — under any peace with the Palestinians.” He added, “It doesn’t have to do with the settlements … this is not the reason that we have a continual conflict. … The real issue is how to get a demilitarized Palestinian state to finally recognize and accept the one and only Jewish State.” Thus the Palestinians themselves became the cause of the continuation of the conflict, cripplers of the agreement and enemies of peace.

Then came Netanyahu’s statement to the secretary general of the United Nations, after hours of meetings had taken place between the former [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, where the secretary general stated that the settlements “will ultimately render a two-state solution impossible.”

The discussion about “two states” has been recurring and disingenuous since the first moments in the history of the Palestine issue. It is not only now. Successive Israeli governments have refused the idea of an independent Palestinian state, from Ben Gurion to Netanyahu. When the United Nations approved the 1947 partition resolution — putting aside the injustice involved in it — the Palestinian state was established in 46 percent of Palestine. But the war that the Zionist bands waged in the world itself exceeded those borders, and they occupied areas within the limits of the presumed “Palestinian state.” Then the Israelis obstructed every effort to implement the international resolution. After the June War in 1967, the imposition of “new realities” started, and the idea of two states completely vanished, which the Americans greatly preferred.

Today this discussion has returned. The negotiations have returned. And the process of deception continues.