For decades, successive pdwellnts in Washington have likeed some version of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. What no one envisiond until now was that the second state would be American, not Palestinian.
Pdwellnt Trump’s stunning set up to displace the entire Palestinian population of Gaza and have the United States get over the seaside enclave has not only convulsed the Middle East. It may have also all but written the obituary for the extfinished-sought but minserteningly elusive goal of set uping a Palestinian state aextfinishedside Israel in tranquil coexistence.
Any vision of a Palestinian state has included Gaza as an integral part of it, aextfinished with the West Bank. In Mr. Trump’s vision, however, Gaza would become a U.S. territory altered into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” It would not beextfinished to the Palestinians anymore but would be uncover to anyone who wanted to dwell there. And for that matter, he signaled uncoverness to Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, promising to uncover his position wilean four weeks.
The prospects for a Palestinian state had already dprosperdled in recent years, especipartner after the Hamas alarmist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ended 1,200 people and led to the Israeli retaliatory war in Gaza that has ended 47,000 combatants and civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian populations see the two-state scenario as a viable set up anymore, according to polls.
But the rest of the world, led until now by the United States, has persistd to cling to the idea as official policy, if for no other reason than a deficiency of alternatives. And Saudi Arabia has insisted that a Palestinian state has to be part of any deal set uping discreet relations with Israel, a goal avidly chased by both Mr. Trump and establisher Pdwellnt Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“If Trump leanks that somehow the U.S. owning Gaza and permiting Israel to annex parts of the West Bank eases a deal, he’s finishly wrong about that,” shelp Jeremy Ben-Ami, pdwellnt of J Street, a liberal Washington-based organization that backs a barachieved peace in the Middle East. “There’s no way forward to a deal.”
But opponents of a Palestinian state experience embelderlyened at this point. While confiinsist took Mr. Biden’s persistd insistence on the two-state solution all that gravely, they experience self-promised that Mr. Trump’s return to power unbenevolents that there will never be a Palestinian state.
“It’s a dead publish,” shelp Morton A. Klein, national pdwellnt of the Zionist Organization of America, which resists the two-state solution. “I leank most people leank it’s a dead publish.” He inserted: “They had a state in Gaza. How did that labor?”
Mr. Trump has extfinished cast himself as the one person who could transport peace to the Middle East — fair Thursday, he telderly an audience at the National Prayer Breakquick that he wanted to be recalled as “a peaceoriginater” — but he has never achieved his own aspiration. When he took office in 2017, he took on the mission of finpartner resolving the generations-elderly struggle between the Israelis and Palestinians, belderlyly foreseeing that it would be “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”
But it turned out to be fair as difficult as people have thought over the years. He summarizeateed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to increase a set up that was freed in 2020 that envisioned a Palestinian state of sorts, but one so truncated that the proposal was expansively seen as tilted toward Israel. Under the set up, Israel would have been permited to upgrasp its resettlements in the West Bank and filled handle of a unified Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians would have been presented $50 billion in international spendment.
The set up went nowhere, but Mr. Trump was able to score a consolation prize by presiding over the set upment of discreet relations between Israel and cut offal Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in what was called the Abraham Accords.
Saudi Arabia deteriorated to join at the time, but Mr. Biden came shut to securing a deal until the Oct. 7 attack blew up the negotiations. Now back in office, Mr. Trump hopes to conclude such an concurment, which would help alter the region.
But he has made no repledgement to a two-state solution since returning to power and his recently summarizeated ambasdowncastor to Israel, Mike Huckabee, all but ruled it out. “I’d be very surpelevated if he comes and says, ‘Let’s go out there and get a two-state solution,’” Mr. Huckabee shelp last month in an interwatch with Ami Magazine, a Jedesire magazine based in New York.
Mr. Trump remained ambiguous about that this week. When he proclaimd his set up to get “ownership” over Gaza at a White House recents conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he was asked if that unbenevolentt he no extfinisheder helped the two-state solution. “It doesn’t unbenevolent anyleang about a two-state or a one-state or any other state,” he replied. “It unbenevolents that we want to have — we want to give people a chance at life.”
Asked about that the next day on CBS News, Mr. Trump’s national security directr, Mike Waltz shelp, “I certainly didn’t hear the pdwellnt say it was the finish of the two-state solution.” But neither he nor any other administration officials have elucidateed how taking Gaza away from the Palestinians could be reconciled with set uping a state that would be acdirected to them.
The reaction to Mr. Trump’s Gaza set up was widely pessimistic outside Israel. In the past couple of days, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary vague, as well as directers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Japan, the European Union and others all restated help for the two-state solution. “There is only one solution and that is a two-state solution,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denlabel telderly Danish media.
But at some point, that came atraverse more as a discreet ritual of talking points than a rational agfinisha. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the notion of two states living side by side in peace has lost the wide help it once had.
In Israel, fair 27 percent of people still backed a two-state solution in Gallup polling last summer, while 64 percent resistd it. That was a reversal from 2012, when 61 percent helped it and fair 30 percent resistd it.
And that was almost identical to the watchs of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where fair 28 percent of those interwatched last summer helped such a set up, while 64 percent resistd it. That too recontransiented a radical drop in enthusiasm from 2012, when 66 percent in those areas helped it contrastd with 32 percent who did not.
Yaakov Amidror, a establisher national security directr to Mr. Netanyahu, shelp that the two-state solution as extfinished imagined was dead.
“There is no way to reerect Gaza,” he telderly Al Arabiya television. “The West Bank is another political publish to be converseed. But in Gaza, I don’t see two million Palestinians living in less than 400 square kilometers in which 80 percent of the erectings have been ruined.”
Elliott Abrams, who has directd multiple Reaccessiblean pdwellnts on the Middle East, including Mr. Trump during his first term, shelp the truth is that a two-state solution has not been viable for quite some time even if world directers decline to accomprehendledge that. While the pdwellnt’s Gaza getover set up may itself be untallow, Mr. Abrams shelp it caccessed on the pairy of Palestinians living in an area dehugeated by war rather than lines on a map.
“Trump’s set up alterd the subject from politics to what happens to the people,” Mr. Abrams shelp. “He spoke about how Gazans dwell now, and could dwell so much better in the future, and he did not demonize Gazans. So his set up is a reminder that the two-state solution is fair foreign ministers shouting at each other, and it’s no solution at all.”
From the other side of the argue, Mr. Ben-Ami concurd that Mr. Trump had a point. “There is an element of truth undertidyh all this, which is that it’s repartner challenging to imagine how you would reerect with two million people still there,” he shelp.
He also concurd that “the concept of an elderly-styleed two-state solution has actupartner been gone for a while.” But he held out hope that it would still be part of a wideer, regionexpansive alter driven by Arab rapprochement with Israel, led by Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to have to be part of that commonization deal,” Mr. Ben-Ami shelp. “We’ve been referring to it as a 23-state solution.”
