Analyst Explains Why a Two-State Solution Between Israel and Palestine Won’t Work
JERUSALEM—For decades, many political leaders on the Left and Right alike have advocated for a two-state solution to solve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, but such a plan is not a viable solution, says Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Eugene Kontorovich.
“The best thing about the two-state solution is its name because it has the word ‘solution’ in it,” said Kontorovich, who lives in Israel and works in Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. He joined Heritage this year as the Washington-based think tank’s first international-based senior research fellow in Jerusalem.
The two-state solution, in which Israel and Palestine would have their own state side by side, is “a great branding move,” Kontorovich says, but it is “not a solution. It is an interim step to the destruction of Israel.”
“The minimum demands of the Palestinians are the ethnic cleansing of every single Jew in Judea and Samaria, every single Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem,” according to Kontorovich. “They want something no one has ever asked for before—they want an independent country, free of Jews, free of an ethnic minority.”
The two-state solution has been discussed for years, and Palestine has been offered statehood in the past. In 2000, the Palestinians were offered a deal that would have given them full control of most of the land in the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. Important religious sites would have operated under dived control and sovereignty. The deal was on the table, but “the Palestinians let it slip away,” as David Brooks, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, wrote in 2023.
Instead of agreeing to a diplomatic solution, Kontorovich says, the Palestinians have chosen “war and jihad.”
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Currently, Israel does not rule over the Palestinians, nor do the Palestinians pay taxes to Israel. The Palestinians’ lack of statehood prevents them from purchasing large weapons, such as tanks, on the international market. Possession of such weapons would pose a grave threat to Israel, Kontorovich contends.
Pressed on the issue of giving the Palestinians statehood, he said previous steps toward doing so have ultimately led to further conflict and the deaths of Jews and Palestinian civilians.
Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a series of agreements known as the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. The Oslo Accords were aimed at peace, but a series of terrorist attacks and violence led to the breakdown of the agreement.
Then, in 2005, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza. Hamas become the ruling authority over Gaza in 2007, and about 16 years later, Hamas led the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that left 1,200 people in Israel dead and 251 others hostage.
“We tried” exploring the Palestinian state option, Kontorovich said, but “it did not work.”
“We can’t go double or nothing with our country,” he said of Israel.
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