Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel and Israel’s continuing war on Gaza have brought the Palestine question back to the fore of West Asia’s geopolitics.
As the war has destroyed much of Gaza and killed 37,000 of its people, the world has also seen more and more countries voicing strong support for a future Palestine state. Recently, three European countries–Spain, Ireland and Norway–recognised the Palestine state.
More are expected to follow. Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, say there wouldn’t be lasting peace in the region unless the Palestine question is resolved. An internationally recognised solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is what’s called the two-state solution.
What’s the two-state solution?
The short answer is simple: divide historical Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state to find lasting peace. But the long answer is complicated. Israel, a Jewish state, was created in Palestine in 1948. But a Palestine state is not yet a reality. So, a two-state solution today means the creation of a legitimate, sovereign Palestine state that enjoys the full rights like any other nation state under the UN Charter.
Let’s take a look at history.
The rootsof the two-state solution go back to the 1930s of the British-ruled Palestine. In 1936, the British government appointed a commission headed by Lord William Robert Peel (known as the Peel Commission) to investigate the causes of Arab-Jewish clashes in Palestine. A year later, the commission stated that the Mandate had become unworkable and proposed a partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. At that time, Jews accounted for some 28% of Palestine’s population. According to the Peel Commission proposal, the West Bank, Gaza and Negev desert should make up the Arab state while the much of Palestine’s coast and the fertile Galilee region should be part of the Jewish state. Arabs rejected the proposal.
After the Second World War, the UN Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) put forward another partition plan after Britain expressed its interest in vacating the Mandate. UNSCOP proposed that Palestine be divided into three territories—a Jewish state, an Arab state and an international territory (Jerusalem). Jews made up roughly 32% of Palestine’s population at this time. According to the UNSCOP plan, the Jewish state was to have 56% of the Palestine land and the rest for the Arabs. The Partition plan was adopted in the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181), but it never made it to the Security Council. Arabs rejected the plan, while the Zionist leadership of Israeli settlers in Palestine accepted it.
As there was no UN Security Council decision on Partition, Zionists unilaterally declared the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, a day ahead of the expiration of the British Mandate. This triggered the first Arab-Israel war. And by the time a ceasefire was achieved in 1948, Israel had captured some 22% more territories, including West Jerusalem, than what the UN plan had proposed. Jordan seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the Old City, while Egypt took the Gaza Strip.
Another pivotal event in the conflict was the 1967 Six Day War.
In the War, Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. So the whole historical Palestine has been under Israel’s control since 1967. Palestine nationalism emerged stronger in the 1960s, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The PLO initially demanded the “liberation” of the whole of Palestine, but during the Oslo process of the 1990s, it recognised the state of Israel and agreed to the creation of a state of Palestine within the 1967 border, which made up some 22% land of historical Palestine. Israel initially rejected any Palestinian claim to land and continued to term the PLO a “terrorist” organisation. But in the Camp David agreement, which followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which Egypt and Syria surprised Israel with an attack, it agreed to the Framework for Peace in the Middle East agreement. As part of Framework, Israel agreed to establish an autonomous self-governing Palestinian authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and implement the UN Resolution 242, which has demanded Israel pull back from all the territories it captured in 1967.
The Framework laid the foundation for the Oslo Accords, which, signed in 1993 and 1995, formalised the two state solution. As part of the Oslo process, a Palestinian National Authority, a self-governing body, was created in the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO was internationally recognised as the legitimate representative body of the Palestinians. The West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C. While the Palestinian Authority was to have limited powers in Areas A and B, Area C remained under Israeli control. But the promise of Oslo was the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state which would live next to the Israeli state in peace. This promise has never been materialised.
Why so?
The first setback for the Oslo process was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister who signed the Accords, in November 1995 by a Jewish extremist. Rabin’s Labour party was defeated in the subsequent elections and the right-wing Likud, under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, came to power. The rise of Hamas, the Islamist militant group that was opposed Oslo saying the PLO made huge concessions to the Israelis, also contributed to the derailment of the peace process.
There are specific structural factors that make the two-state solution unachievable, at least for now. One is boundary. Israel doesn’t have a clearly demarcated border. In 1948, it captured more territories than it was promised by the UN. In 1967, it expanded further by taking the whole of historical Palestine under its control. From 1970s onwards, Israel has been building illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories. Palestinians say their future state should be based on the 1967 border, but Israel is not willing to make any such commitments.
Two, the status of settlers. Roughly 700,000 Jewish settlers are now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If Israel is to withdraw to the 1967 border, they will have to pull back the settlers. The settlers are now a powerful bloc in the Israeli society and no Prime Minister can pull them back without facing political consequences.
Three, the state of Jerusalem. Palestinians say East Jerusalem, which hosts Al Aqsa, Islam’s third holiest mosque, should be the capital of their future state, while Israel says the whole of Jerusalem, which hosts the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism, is Israel’s “eternal capital”.
Four, the right of refugees to return to their homes. Some 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was declared. According to international law, they have a right to return to their homes (today, Israel proper). Israel says it won’t allow the Palestinian refugees to return.
While these are the structural factors that make the two state solution complicated, on the ground, Israel’s rightwing leadership show no willingness to make any concession to the Palestinians. For Israel, even the recognition of the state of Palestine by European countries, was a reward for “terrorism”. Israel wants to continue the status quo — the status quo of occupation. The Palestinians want to break that status quo.
Presentation: Stanly Johny
Production: Shibu Narayan
Video: Thamodharan B.