Israel Matzav

Why accepting a 'two-state solution' delegitimizes Israel

Martin Sherman has a lengthy JPost article which explains why accepting a 'two-state solution' to the Israeli-Arab dispute delegitimizes the State of Israel. Here are some key passages.

Future historians will be baffled as to why such a manifestly disastrous, unworkable concept came to be embraced by so many prominent, allegedly well-informed pundits, politicians, and policy-makers. They will be particularly perplexed why the two-state solution was so enthusiastically endorsed not only by those who had a vested interest in feigning support for it, but by those who had a vested interest in exposing it as the duplicitous subterfuge it is. They will be mystified why – despite the fact that it proved devastating for both Arabs and Jews – it became the hallmark of enlightenment.

Recent events have brought home dramatically not only how futile it is for Israel and Israel-supporters to adhere to the two-state paradigm, but also how counterproductive it is.

For by pursuing the “vision” (read “fantasy”) of two states, they will not only fail to reap the intended benefits this policy is purported to yield, but will precipitate outcomes highly deleterious to Israel – indeed the very outcomes the two-state policy was supposed to prevent.

The latest round of rocket fire from Gaza underscored just how ill-considered it would be to relinquish more land to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. The recent Harvard one-state conference demonstrated how clinging to an unfeasible formula has merely generated the opportunity to promote even more menacing alternatives.

...

For whatever the final contours of a putative Palestinian state, it would entail a frontier of at least 300 kilometers – approximately six times longer than the Gaza front – much of which would be adjacent to Israel’s most populous urban centers, from the environs of Haifa in the north to Beersheba and beyond in the south. (Significantly, Beersheba is much closer to the pre-1967 border of the “West Bank” than it is to the Gaza Strip).

Moreover, unlike in Gaza, a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would reduce Israel’s width in its most populous areas to a minuscule 11-25 km. – roughly the distance from Beverly Hills to Malibu along Sunset Boulevard.

Even more important than geographic expanse – or the lack thereof – is topographical structure. Unlike the flat Gaza Strip, the limestone hills that comprise the “West Bank” dominate the urbanized Coastal Plain, together with much of Israel’s vital infrastructure, its only international airport, vital centers of civilian government and military command – and 80 percent of its population and commercial activity.

All of this would be in range of the weapons that forced a million Israelis into bomb shelters last weekend, now deployed along a much longer front and in far superior topographical positions.

Even given the impressive performance of the Iron Dome anti-rocket system, this would make any semblance of economic or social routine untenable.

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The point many well-intentioned friends of Israel seem be to missing is that it is precisely “moderate supporters of the two-state solution” who have, in large measure, sown the seeds for the delegitimization of Israel.

While this contention may appear counterintuitive, the logic behind it is unassailable. Once the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is conceded, the delegitimization of Israel is inevitable.

The chain of reasoning is clear: If the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is accepted, then any measures incompatible with its viability are illegitimate. But, Israel’s minimum security requirements necessarily obviate the viability of Palestinian state. Thus, by accepting the admissibility of a Palestinian state, one necessarily admits the inadmissibility of measures required to ensure Israeli security.

Conversely, measures required to ensure Israeli security necessarily negate the viability of a Palestinian state.

For the notion of a secure Israel to regain legitimacy, the notion of a Palestinian state must be discredited and removed from the discourse as a possible means of resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict.

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The first – and most crucial – step along this arduous road is to expose the Palestinian claim to nationhood for the hoax it is.

For the Palestinians are indeed an “invented people.” Not because Newt Gingrich deems them to be, but because they themselves declare this to be so.

The historical record is replete with proclamations from Arab and Palestinian leaders, echoing the frank admission by the late Zuheir Mohsen, former PLO Executive Council member, that a “separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons,” and that the “the establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel.”

Indeed, the Palestinian National Charter (Article 12) concedes that the endeavor to “safeguard... Palestinian identity” in merely a temporary ruse.

Moreover, not only was the territory, now claimed as the age-old Palestinian homeland, under Jordanian rule for two decades prior to 1967, without even a feeble effort to establish a Palestinian state in it being made; but the Palestinians eschewed any sovereign claim to it, explicitly conceding (Article 24 of the 1964 National Charter) that it belonged to another sovereign entity – Jordan – which only in 1988 relinquished its claim to it.

It was only after these territories came under Jewish control that Palestinians began to see them as a location for their state.

Read the whole thing. He's spot on.

Labels: Alan Dershowitz, defensible borders, two-state solution

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:34 PM