What are the effects of this war on the viability of some kind of Palestinian sovereignty? Yesterday, Evelyn Gordon argued in Mosaic that the Jewish state’s best safeguard against terrorism is occupying territory. Efraim Karsh takes this argument one step further:
Hamas’s latest aggression may well have driven the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. For one thing, while most Israelis have been disabused of the idea by Yasir Arafat’s war of terror and the subsequent confrontations with Hamas, Saturday’s horrendous massacres may convince other international players of the mortal dangers that would follow if Israel withdraws from key West Bank areas (which would be needed for a viable Palestinian state to exist).
After all, were such an invasion to ensue from a West Bank state, hordes of terrorists would be able to roam the more populous streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in no time. What do two-state solution campaigners believe would happen then? What sovereign state could possibly allow a situation that would arise in which their citizens could be indiscriminately slaughtered on its streets?
What’s more, the grim brutality of Hamas’s recent atrocities may also draw international attention to the corrupt and oppressive nature of its regime. And just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation, so long as the West Bank and Gaza continue to be governed by Hamas’s (and the PLO’s) rule of the jungle, no Palestinian civil society, let alone a viable state, can possibly develop there.
Read more on Spectator: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-death-of-the-two-state-solution/