There is only one solution?

It's time for fresh thinking on Israel

Yasser Arafat shakes hands with Shimon Peres in Davos in 2001

Shortly after October 7, I wrote a column for the Telegraph describing the two-state solution as a “luxury belief”. It provoked a great deal of criticism. One commentator was so appalled that he devoted a column of his own to a response. His opening line read: “Still, in the face of the blood tide, we moderates sing the same old song of the two states.” This, I think, confirmed my argument rather than his.

I’m not one of those who opposes the two-state solution in principle. I respect the desire for self-determination in the hearts of my Palestinian friends, as well as the intractability of the demography/democracy problem posed by the current status quo. At the same time, insisting “there is only one solution” when for 40 years it has led to nothing other than blood and tears is the very definition of insanity.

Whereas support for the two-state solution in Israel can dip as low as 25 per cent, it runs sky-high in the West, where people garner moral recognition from such a stance while losing nothing if it ends up once again in catastrophe. That’s what I meant by “luxury belief”.

The history speaks for itself. As I pointed out last week in the New York Post, the Oslo Accords dissolved in that carnival of murder known as the Second Intifada. Then there was Camp David, a full 25 years ago, when the Palestinians were offered a state with a capital in East Jerusalem, plus 96 per cent of the West Bank. This was followed by the 2008 plan put forward by Ehud Olmert, which offered a Palestinian state on 94 per cent of the West Bank with 6 per cent of Israeli territory to make up the difference, together with East Jerusalem, an internationally administered Old City, a tunnel connecting the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel agreeing to accept a thousand Palestinian refugees annually for five years, with financial compensation for the rest.

These offers were turned down in favour of violence. And not by the Israeli side. As Bill Clinton recently lamented: “I tell [young people] what Arafat walked away from, and they, like, can’t believe it.” He added: “You can’t complain 25 years later when the doors weren’t all still open and all the possibilities weren’t still there.”

The hard truth at the kernel of the problem is that the Palestinian leadership has never wanted a state alongside Israel. It wants a state instead of Israel. This is tragic, of course. But wishing it away is even less of a solution.