North Macedonia (Brussels Morning Newspaper), The two states’ “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now promoted aggressively by both the USA and the EU, is a counterfactual pipedream. It will never materialize.
But many actors have a vested interest in promoting this sideshow, thus diverting attention from the real issue at stake: the mutually exclusive claims of Israelis and Palestinians to the same piece of territory, from the River (Jordan) to the Sea (Mediterranean). History teaches us that such persistent entitlement usually results in genocidal ethnic cleansing of one sort or another.
Attempts to divide the indivisible among the parties to this intractable 140-year-old conflict date back almost 100 years. A kaleidoscope of declarations, committees, plans, and resolutions during this period led nowhere but to increasing bloodshed in a series of skirmishes and outright wars.
The Palestinians purposefully maintain the only leverage they possess: their partly self-inflicted victimhood, a refugee status, now in its 75th anniversary. Lacking a standing army, they resort to atrocious terrorism time and again.
Israel, in the meantime, has expanded its presence in the disputed territories and has devolved into committing war crimes habitually.
A cursory look at the map tells the story. The Palestinians are shoehorned into two non-contiguous land masses. Linking these hyper-dense enclaves above or under the ground would bisect Israel and render it a hostage to many returns of October 7. It is a non-starter.
The Hamas, the most popular political faction among the Palestinians, is committed to the annihilation of Israel, pragmatic truces ad interim notwithstanding. It represents the surge of belligerent and anti-Western Islamism that gripped both Sunnis and Shia across the world. Israel is perceived as a colonial outpost of settlers, a replay of the Crusades in lands that by right and by might belong to Muslims.
Israel, with some justification, perceives an accommodation with the Palestinians as a lost cause, having witnessed their interlocutors rebuff and trample on the olive branches that it had extended multiple times since the Oslo Accords.
Both parties are now firmly entrenched in an all-or-nothing, zero-sum game mindset. This is not conducive to a deal.
But time is not on Israel’s side. Palestinian birth rates are far higher than Jewish ones. Ubiquitous age-old anti-Semitism has now transformed into anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Democratized weapons technologies have rendered terrorist organizations in asymmetrical warfare all but unbeatable.
Israelis argue among themselves whether the Jewishness of Israel should outweigh its democratic nature. But this is a delusional and solipsistic debate. Israel cannot remain Jewish for much longer, even if it were to sacrifice the rule of law and adopt apartheid and genocide as policies.
Moreover: Israel is a paper tiger. It is not self-sufficient and its army is comparable to the Russian one, not the American one. The IDF is a mere glorified militia, one of many in a region overflowing with paramilitary formations. Israel’s doomsday show-off nuclear weapons are no more relevant than North Korea’s, Iran’s, or Pakistan’s.
In the wake of an armed insurgency, North Macedonia is now ruled by an Albanian Prime Minister with multiple government ministries in the hands of the hitherto much-reviled minority. Its foreign minister, the polylogue MD, Bujar Osmani, is arguably the most eloquent and educated representative abroad the country has ever had.
Israel is heading the same way: a one-state solution. The day Israel has a Palestinian Prime Minster and a Palestinian Foreign Minister, Hamas and its ilk are doomed and much-needed peace will have been restored all over a prosperous and proud land.
Dear reader,
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