The peace process for solving the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead. Many experts say the two-state solution also is dead. I say it is isn’t dead, but the traditional two-state solution is dead. It is that the Palestinians establish a state in the two separated territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank or a Swiss-cheese West Bank that skirts all of those 120 Jewish settlements in there that are illegal according to the UN, of which Israel is a member.
This tradtional two-state solution is so dead that some authorities on both sides of the conflict are now talking about a one-state solution. No way Hosea! That will never work! And I don’t think it will happen.
My two-state proposal for solving the conflict is to let Israel have all of the West Bank in exchange for land surrounding the Gaza Strip. This geographic arrangement would result in a very expanded Gaza Strip as the Palestinian state. It therefore requires a transfer of populations so that Jews and Palestinians are completely separated.
I put forth this proposal in my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia, which was published in 1990. This proposal has become increasingly relevant in the 25 years since this book’s publication due to developments that have occurred in the direction I said in this book. But this proposal was not original with me; in about 1981 I discovered it in the Hebrew prophets. That is, I believe that certain endtimes biblical prophecies show that a Palestinian state will be established in “the land of the Philistines” that we read about in the Bible. The main one is Isaiah 11.14.
Time is wasting. The longer the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, the more the State of Israel risks another Palestinian intifida and, moreover, loss of its Jewish character. How so? The birthrate of Palestinians is much higher than that of Israeli Jews.
Yesterday, a Jewish organization named CENTERPEACE.ORG had a full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline: “Israeli Military Leaders Agree: Separation from the Palestinians is a Must.” I have agreed wholeheatedly with this idea for 35 years. (See my update article “Complete Separation by Relocation of Palestine” at my website kermitzarley.com.)
This NYT ad then quotes retired Israeli military leaders who adopt a two-state solution concept, with both states lying “side-by-said,” though they never say it should be the traditional two-state solution. These men are former Chiefs of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi and General Benny Gantz, and former Commander of the Israeli Air Force, Major General Eitan Ben Eliyahu.
This ad then says the population of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip (“from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River”) is currently 52% Jews and 48% Palestinians. The ad then cites the respectable American Jewish Year Book of 2015 as projecting that by 2020 these figures will be 49% Jews and 51% Palestinians. That is a sobering thought for Israeli Jews that has been long known. One of the generals in this is quoted as saying that this continued population trend eventually will lead to the collapse and dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state unless there is a two-state solution before that happens.
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