Palestinians don't want two-state solution - opinion

In a recent interview, Israeli President Isaac Herzog offered a message to American politicians: “What I want to urge against is just saying ‘two-state solution’... In order to get back to the idea of dividing the land, of negotiating peace or talking to the Palestinians, one has to deal first and foremost with the emotional trauma that we are all going through and the need and demand for a full sense of security.”

In other words: cut your nonsense about a two-state solution. The Palestinians have no meaningful interest in the idea, and even the most progressive Israelis have woken up to this reality.

Harsh reality

These days, the only people still discussing it as a viable alternative are liberal Western powers, who throw around this phrase to paper over ugly realities and signal their moderate, “liberal” principles, paying no mind to Palestinian public opinion or years of rejected peace deals. The Palestinian side has proven itself perfectly content to continue the status quo of violence and victimhood, which they prefer to the democratic constraints of a Western-enforced two-state vision.

At this point, calling for a two-state solution signifies a blatant, patronizing refusal to look at the stated goals of the Palestinian side, very few of which involve peace. In a recent poll from the most reliable center for Palestinian opinion polling, 72% of respondents said that Hamas was correct to mount their recent attack. Of respondents, 69% said that they supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada to establish an independent Palestinian state. And 64% of Palestinians said that they do not support a two-state solution.

Respondents were also asked about the most “vital Palestinian goals.” At the very bottom of the list, below the 11% who want to build a pious Islamic religious society? “Establishing a democratic political system,” which was selected by a whopping 7% of Palestinians.

The truth is that few Palestinians share the lofty Western hopes for two coexisting democratic states, and their contempt for peaceful compromise is nothing new. The Palestinians and broader Arab side have been spurning peace efforts for decades.

Look at the facts

Early on, there was their initial rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have granted them a much larger state than the one remaining after Israel’s war of independence, and the 1967 Jordanian refusal of Israel’s warnings not to attack. These led to the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank.

LATER, IN 2000, there was Yasser Arafat’s historic rejection of a Clinton-mediated Israeli offer for a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, which would have given them 95% of the land in the West Bank, 100% of the Gaza Strip, and even some Israeli land. Israelis offered the Palestinians control over al-Aqsa  and the Dome of the Rock, and the return of many refugees into this new Palestinian state, aided by a massive aid program. The Palestinians said no.

Clinton banged on the table when Arafat rejected the plan, uttering the famous words: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.” He was proven right – Arafat’s dismissal of peace ushered years of Palestinian intifada and terrorism and shattered the Israeli peace camp, which had steadfastly championed the two-state solution even through turbulence of the negotiations.

As recently as 2020, the Palestinians again rejected a peace plan offering Palestinians a sovereign state on largely contiguous territory, the return of prisoners, a connection between Gaza and the West Bank, and $50 billion in economic aid. Decades later, the famous 1973 line from Israeli diplomat Abba Eban holds true – the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Two different languages

Contrary to the delusions of virtue-signaling Westerners, the reasons for this are clear – the two camps are speaking two different languages. Israel’s highest aspirations are for coexistence and democracy; Palestinians’ highest aspirations are for independence, self-rule, and national liberation by any means necessary. The Palestinian narrative is, and has always been, predicated on a fundamental negation of Jewish sovereignty, a rejection of Zionism as a racist, colonialist movement, and an insistence on indiscriminate violence against Jews as a means of advancing their objectives.

You can see this in Palestinian political documents, from the Hamas charter, with its stated goal of killing Jews, to the “phases theory” adopted by the PLO in 1974. It holds that Palestinians should take as much as possible from the Israelis, then form a state which will keep battling to control the remaining area.

You can also see this in their education programs, which teach children to glorify terrorism and violence, demonize Jews, and delegitimize Israel’s existence starting at a very young age – including at Palestinian schools overseen by the UNRWA, where teachers regularly create and circulate antisemitic material. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas even runs summer camps teaching jihadist ideology and military tactics to thousands of schoolchildren.

THE EXAMPLES are endless, but after October 7 the takeaway should be clear. The Palestinian leadership has told the world time and time again what they want, and it is not a democratic, two-state coexistence.

They are hell-bent on a national liberation project that fantasizes about eliminating Jewish presence “from the river to the sea.” They will use whatever state they are given to continue this project.

Basing plans for a safe Israeli future on pipe dreams of Palestinian pacifism is not just an insane fantasy. It is a death wish for Israelis, who now recognize the deadly stakes of gambling their national security on imported, baseless aspirations of eventual peace.

Rather than focusing their energies on disastrous luxury beliefs, the two-state fantasizers might do well to revisit an aspect of another failed plan for peace – the dashed initiative in 2020. It held as a condition an end to the incitement, glorification of violence, and hostile propaganda in Palestinian education and government institutions, aiming to start building a culture of peace.

Whatever plan is made for post-war Palestine should involve similar education efforts to combat the ugly reality that Westerners ignore – Palestinians still do not want peace because they have been taught that terror and struggle are the only way. The two-state fantasy will only perpetuate the cycle of violence, paving the way for more terror and war.

 Instead, anyone wishing for long-term peace should insist on education as a condition of the ultimate agreement, and a means to a healthier, more functional Palestinian society, animated by a desire to thrive on its own merits rather than existing solely to oppose and terrorize the Jewish state.  Any vision of a democratic two-state solution can only be realized when the root obstacles in Palestine are addressed.

The first aim is through ending the broad indoctrination with antisemitic propaganda. Then creating opportunities for Palestinians to succeed within their own society. In it, corruption currently runs rampant, 68% of Gazan youth and 28% of West Bank youth are unemployed, and desperate young men are incentivized into “pay for slay” terrorism as the only way to feed their families. This means that they or their families get a monthly salary by killing Jews either after their martyr’s death or while they smolder in jail.

Turning away from Western two-state fantasies and taking a pragmatic look at these challenges is neither an abandonment of liberal values nor is it giving up on the eventual dream of peace. Palestinian children deserve better than to grow up in a culture of hate, and they deserve to know higher aspirations than dying a martyr.

Only when there is education, empowerment, and hope within Palestinian society will there be a meaningful prospect of coexistence. In the words of Golda Meir, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

The writer is a prominent Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, and star of the Emmy-nominated Netflix original series, Skin Decision: Before and After.