Western political elites foolishly keep pushing for two sovereign states, one for Jews and one for Arabs in that part of the Middle East that has been called Palestine since its short-lived conquest by the Romans (63 BC — 66 AD), a period during which most of the region’s indigenous Israelites were sent into exile.According to a Wikipedia entry termed State of Palestine, “Palestine is … a state in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Founded on 15 November 1988 and officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO,) it claims the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip as its territory, all of which has been Israeli-occupied territories since the 1967 Six-Day War.”No such sovereign state exists or has ever existed since ancient times. Moreover, the West Bank and Gaza strip were both captured in the 1967 defensive war against their former rulers, Jordan and Egypt, respectively. Neither was ever termed an “occupier.”Even the term “Palestine” is a fabricated one. The label was appropriated in recent decades from an Old Testament people called Philistines. These were ancient Aegean invaders of the region who had disappeared from the historical and archaeological record by the late fifth century BC. Moreover, the name Palestine was given by the Roman conquerors to the administrative province they termed Syria Palestinia near the end of their rule, when much of it was occupied by Jews.Moreover, all three geographical regions were part of the Biblical Jewish kingdoms of Samaria and Judea.This never forgotten history formed the basis for an endless yearning among diasporic Jews to return to their ancestral homeland, a hope fulfilled on November 29 1947 when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.In fact, days before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionist officials met to decide what the new country would be called. There were three options: Palestine, Zion and Israel.The officials were working under two assumptions: that an Arab state was about to be established alongside the Jewish one in keeping with the UN’s partition resolution and that the Jewish state would include a large Arab minority whose feelings needed to be acknowledged.Palestine was an obvious choice because the Jews living in what is now the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were called Palestinians until 1948.But they rejected that name because “It is likely that the Arab state that will be established in the Land of Israel will also be called Palestine in the future, which could cause confusion,” the officials wrote.They rejected the name Zion, presumably because the words “Zion” and “Zionist” already had a pejorative meaning in the Arab world. Calling the country Zion “would cause real difficulty for the Arab citizen in the Jewish state,” the record of their meeting says.In the end, they opted for the most straightforward option: Israel..The UN partition planThe Palestinians and most of their surrounding Muslim nations have always refused to accept this resolution and the resulting creation of the modern State of Israel on May 15 1948. The aftermath has been ten wars of extermination against the Jewish state, including the one that began with its invasion by Hamas and terrorists on October 7 2023.Still, none of this 75-year history of chronic warfare and associated intermittent terrorist attacks has prevented the US, a country whose political class is more supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself against external attacks than most other so-called friendly regimes, from continuing to argue that the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state should follow an end to the hostilities.It was not surprising then, that White House spokesperson John Kirby claimed on January 12 that President Joe Biden would “not stop working” toward a two-state solution and that it was in the best interest of Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region."But there's going to be a post-conflict Gaza,” he said, telling reporters the US has been clear Israel should not reoccupy the territory and that his administration supports governance that “represents the aspirations of the Palestinian people.” That these aspirations include a judenrein (Jew free) greater Palestine from the river to the sea went unmentioned. In a nationally broadcast January 18 news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back by announcing he had informed the US of his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar outcome in Israel’s nearly four-month attempt to destroy Hamas. He said this was because Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” to prevent the creation of an enhanced launching pad for Palestinian attacks on Israel.Then on January 20, British shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said “Biden is right” in calling for a two-state solution and described Netanyahu's comments as "unacceptable," adding, “Of course, the Palestinian people deserve a state.” He failed to elaborate on the “of course” part, presumably considering it axiomatic. On January 18, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau opined that "Canada's position is crystal clear. We believe the only way forward for the region, indeed the only way forward for a safe and secure Israel, is to have a Palestinian state that is also safe and secure with internationally-recognized borders. We believe in a two-state solution."Such “crystal clarity” is difficult to discern especially given that the Palestinians already have a state of their own — the Kingdom of Jordan — a newly created post-Ottoman nation headed by an imported monarchy where they culturally form most of the population and where it is illegal for Jews to live. Whether all this bombastic oratory about a two-state solution is merely a case of wilful ignorance or a time-worn reflexive diplomatic platitude, is equally unclear. The next day, Joe Biden added to this opacity by suggesting one path could involve a non-militarized Gaza government when he spoke with Netanyahu about possible solutions for creation of an independent Palestinian state, an incomprehensible option in the hyper-militarized and hate-festering Middle East. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, no friend of Israel, was far less opaque on January 22 when he said, “Last week’s clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable. This refusal and the denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people, would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security.” Nor was any recognition given to the threat Palestinian sovereignty would pose to Israel’s survival or that neither of the two main combatants are demanding a two-state solution: countless political polls, including very recent ones, show most ordinary Israelis and Palestinians seek only a single state of their own from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.For example, a November 14 survey by a West Bank polling firm showed that only 5.4% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank wanted to see one state for the two competing peoples. A two-state solution was supported by 17.2% and 74.7% favoured a “Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea with no State of Israel in between.” The most important question few diplomats or politicians are asking is how Palestinian sovereignty, whether based on legitimate cultural grounds or not, could ever prevent some other Muslim Brotherhood affiliate from continuing to control Gaza in the unlikely event that Hamas were eliminated. Netanyahu’s January 18 remarks suggested a strong one-state solution to the ceaseless clash between the two sides is the only strategically realistic one for Israel. Presumably, this is because absent such control over the Palestinians there would be unregulated funding from Iran, Qatar and other bad actors, allowing the construction of land and sea facilities in Gaza for planes and ships carrying all manner of offensive weaponry. Moreover, given the existing border with two countries, Lebanon and Syria, either hosting or occupied by Iran-backed militant terrorist groups openly calling for a judenrein Islamic waqf — an inalienable land of greater Palestine cleansed of its Jews — adding a third one with a Palestine state would only reduce Israel’s already tattered security system. Arab opposition to a two-state solution was key to the founding of Hamas. Its formative 1988 Charter. This is a thoroughly antisemitic document, many of its sentiments lifted straight from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, says: (Art. 22) "The (Jewish) enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe...They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it."The revised and softened 2017 Hamas Charter, a document that neither recognizes the existence of Israel nor repudiates its goal of “liberating all of Palestine,” shows that any claim that Hamas only wants to see the creation of a Palestinian state separate from Israel is thoroughly false when it states:“Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration) … Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”With enemies like this, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that statehood for a comparatively new ethnicity, headed by genocidal antisemites, would only strengthen the call for Jewish liquidation by strengthening it with political independence.NOTE: A longer version of portions of this opinion piece appeared in the Dorchester Review.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Israel & Palestine Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.
Western political elites foolishly keep pushing for two sovereign states, one for Jews and one for Arabs in that part of the Middle East that has been called Palestine since its short-lived conquest by the Romans (63 BC — 66 AD), a period during which most of the region’s indigenous Israelites were sent into exile.According to a Wikipedia entry termed State of Palestine, “Palestine is … a state in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Founded on 15 November 1988 and officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO,) it claims the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip as its territory, all of which has been Israeli-occupied territories since the 1967 Six-Day War.”No such sovereign state exists or has ever existed since ancient times. Moreover, the West Bank and Gaza strip were both captured in the 1967 defensive war against their former rulers, Jordan and Egypt, respectively. Neither was ever termed an “occupier.”Even the term “Palestine” is a fabricated one. The label was appropriated in recent decades from an Old Testament people called Philistines. These were ancient Aegean invaders of the region who had disappeared from the historical and archaeological record by the late fifth century BC. Moreover, the name Palestine was given by the Roman conquerors to the administrative province they termed Syria Palestinia near the end of their rule, when much of it was occupied by Jews.Moreover, all three geographical regions were part of the Biblical Jewish kingdoms of Samaria and Judea.This never forgotten history formed the basis for an endless yearning among diasporic Jews to return to their ancestral homeland, a hope fulfilled on November 29 1947 when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.In fact, days before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionist officials met to decide what the new country would be called. There were three options: Palestine, Zion and Israel.The officials were working under two assumptions: that an Arab state was about to be established alongside the Jewish one in keeping with the UN’s partition resolution and that the Jewish state would include a large Arab minority whose feelings needed to be acknowledged.Palestine was an obvious choice because the Jews living in what is now the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were called Palestinians until 1948.But they rejected that name because “It is likely that the Arab state that will be established in the Land of Israel will also be called Palestine in the future, which could cause confusion,” the officials wrote.They rejected the name Zion, presumably because the words “Zion” and “Zionist” already had a pejorative meaning in the Arab world. Calling the country Zion “would cause real difficulty for the Arab citizen in the Jewish state,” the record of their meeting says.In the end, they opted for the most straightforward option: Israel..The UN partition planThe Palestinians and most of their surrounding Muslim nations have always refused to accept this resolution and the resulting creation of the modern State of Israel on May 15 1948. The aftermath has been ten wars of extermination against the Jewish state, including the one that began with its invasion by Hamas and terrorists on October 7 2023.Still, none of this 75-year history of chronic warfare and associated intermittent terrorist attacks has prevented the US, a country whose political class is more supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself against external attacks than most other so-called friendly regimes, from continuing to argue that the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state should follow an end to the hostilities.It was not surprising then, that White House spokesperson John Kirby claimed on January 12 that President Joe Biden would “not stop working” toward a two-state solution and that it was in the best interest of Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region."But there's going to be a post-conflict Gaza,” he said, telling reporters the US has been clear Israel should not reoccupy the territory and that his administration supports governance that “represents the aspirations of the Palestinian people.” That these aspirations include a judenrein (Jew free) greater Palestine from the river to the sea went unmentioned. In a nationally broadcast January 18 news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back by announcing he had informed the US of his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar outcome in Israel’s nearly four-month attempt to destroy Hamas. He said this was because Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” to prevent the creation of an enhanced launching pad for Palestinian attacks on Israel.Then on January 20, British shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said “Biden is right” in calling for a two-state solution and described Netanyahu's comments as "unacceptable," adding, “Of course, the Palestinian people deserve a state.” He failed to elaborate on the “of course” part, presumably considering it axiomatic. On January 18, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau opined that "Canada's position is crystal clear. We believe the only way forward for the region, indeed the only way forward for a safe and secure Israel, is to have a Palestinian state that is also safe and secure with internationally-recognized borders. We believe in a two-state solution."Such “crystal clarity” is difficult to discern especially given that the Palestinians already have a state of their own — the Kingdom of Jordan — a newly created post-Ottoman nation headed by an imported monarchy where they culturally form most of the population and where it is illegal for Jews to live. Whether all this bombastic oratory about a two-state solution is merely a case of wilful ignorance or a time-worn reflexive diplomatic platitude, is equally unclear. The next day, Joe Biden added to this opacity by suggesting one path could involve a non-militarized Gaza government when he spoke with Netanyahu about possible solutions for creation of an independent Palestinian state, an incomprehensible option in the hyper-militarized and hate-festering Middle East. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, no friend of Israel, was far less opaque on January 22 when he said, “Last week’s clear and repeated rejection of the two-state solution at the highest levels of the Israeli government is unacceptable. This refusal and the denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people, would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security.” Nor was any recognition given to the threat Palestinian sovereignty would pose to Israel’s survival or that neither of the two main combatants are demanding a two-state solution: countless political polls, including very recent ones, show most ordinary Israelis and Palestinians seek only a single state of their own from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.For example, a November 14 survey by a West Bank polling firm showed that only 5.4% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank wanted to see one state for the two competing peoples. A two-state solution was supported by 17.2% and 74.7% favoured a “Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea with no State of Israel in between.” The most important question few diplomats or politicians are asking is how Palestinian sovereignty, whether based on legitimate cultural grounds or not, could ever prevent some other Muslim Brotherhood affiliate from continuing to control Gaza in the unlikely event that Hamas were eliminated. Netanyahu’s January 18 remarks suggested a strong one-state solution to the ceaseless clash between the two sides is the only strategically realistic one for Israel. Presumably, this is because absent such control over the Palestinians there would be unregulated funding from Iran, Qatar and other bad actors, allowing the construction of land and sea facilities in Gaza for planes and ships carrying all manner of offensive weaponry. Moreover, given the existing border with two countries, Lebanon and Syria, either hosting or occupied by Iran-backed militant terrorist groups openly calling for a judenrein Islamic waqf — an inalienable land of greater Palestine cleansed of its Jews — adding a third one with a Palestine state would only reduce Israel’s already tattered security system. Arab opposition to a two-state solution was key to the founding of Hamas. Its formative 1988 Charter. This is a thoroughly antisemitic document, many of its sentiments lifted straight from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, says: (Art. 22) "The (Jewish) enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe...They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it."The revised and softened 2017 Hamas Charter, a document that neither recognizes the existence of Israel nor repudiates its goal of “liberating all of Palestine,” shows that any claim that Hamas only wants to see the creation of a Palestinian state separate from Israel is thoroughly false when it states:“Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration) … Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”With enemies like this, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that statehood for a comparatively new ethnicity, headed by genocidal antisemites, would only strengthen the call for Jewish liquidation by strengthening it with political independence.NOTE: A longer version of portions of this opinion piece appeared in the Dorchester Review.Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Israel & Palestine Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.
