Why the Two-State Solution Is No Longer a Solution

For decades, the international community has repeated the phrase “two-state solution” as though repetition alone could transform it into reality. Presidents use it. European governments use it. The United Nations uses it. Diplomats present it as the inevitable destination of the Israeli Arab conflict.

But there is a fundamental problem with this approach.

A political formula does not become workable simply because diplomats have repeated it for thirty years.

At some point, we have to examine history, geography and, most importantly, experience.

From a pro Israel perspective, the first uncomfortable question is rarely asked: how many times must Israel surrender territory, accept additional security risks and hope that the result will finally be peace?

There Are Already Two States

The history of the region did not begin in 1967, 1948 or even with the establishment of the British Mandate.

For centuries, the territory was part of the Ottoman Empire. After the First World War and the collapse of Ottoman rule, enormous parts of the Middle East were reorganized into new political entities.

The territory of the Palestine Mandate originally included land on both sides of the Jordan River. Britain subsequently separated the territory east of the Jordan from the area in which the provisions facilitating the establishment of the Jewish national home were to be implemented. Transjordan eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The overwhelming majority of the territory of the original Mandate framework lay east of the Jordan River.

What remained west of the Jordan was comparatively tiny.

That historical reality matters.

The Jewish people did not receive some enormous colonial empire carved out of an Arab continent. Israel emerged on a very small piece of territory in a Middle East overwhelmingly populated and governed by Arabs and Muslims.

Jordan today covers roughly 89,000 square kilometers. Israel covers only a fraction of that area.

Yet Israel, rather than the much larger Arab states surrounding it, is continuously expected to surrender........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)