Among Western opinionmakers and policy experts—even those supportive of Israel in its war against Hamas—there is a widely held belief that after the fighting ends, Washington must renew efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians to agree to a two-state solution. Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller, both former State Department officials, recently made such a case in Foreign Affairs, despite the repeated failures of this approach, and the bloodstained results. Elliott Abrams comments:
Our two peace processors . . . acknowledge that “addressing legitimate Israeli security concerns” must be part of the picture—but they give no sense of what they think those concerns might be and how they might be “addressed.” They acknowledge that “even if Netanyahu leaves office, no other current top politician in Israel appears eager to embark down a path of peace. And there are no Palestinian leaders with the gravitas and political weight to engage seriously with Israel in the aftermath of the conflict.” But they do not draw the obvious conclusion from those two sentences: well, okay, so that’s dead. . . .
From everything we can see about Palestinian politics and public opinion, basing Israeli security on dreams about Palestinian pacifism is nuts. Moreover, Iran has under way a vast effort to build proxy forces and strengthen every terrorist group—from the Houthis to Hizballah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Hamas—to attack Israel by stocking the groups with guns and money. That is the problem with the two-state solution: no one can explain how a sovereign and independent Palestinian state will not constitute a grave security threat to Israel (and Jordan as well, by the way). Kurtzer and Miller certainly don’t explain it; like all the peace processors, they wish it away, conjuring up a mythical Palestine that loves peace. If you believe, clap your hands!
This is going to be a hard sell in Israel. It ought to be an equally hard sell in Washington.
Read more on National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/the-peace-processors-return/?bypass_key=bFVuSDV1Y0ZoK2pxb1ZNSEhnc2tkUT09OjpZVlVyWm5GWWRFUTJkVGxKYjJKSmVXRktjMXBhWnowOQ%3D%3D