Is the Two-State Solution Dead?

This question about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is getting a lot of attention lately. I think the answer is “yes” if you’re talking about the two-state solution that has been the focus of the two parties involved as well as the international community for so many decades now. But I don’t think another two-state solution is dead, one that would accord with Israel’s Proclamation of Independence. It seems hardly anyone thinks about it. But that’s what my 1990 book, Palestine Is Coming, is about.

As the long-time peace broker in this conflict, the U.S. administration just spent a lot of effort trying to get the two sides together to come to a settlement. U.S. President Barak Obama did not do much in his first term to try to solve this conflict. He had a poor relationship with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But in his second four-year term as president, Obama sent out his new Secretary of State John Kerry to do everything he could to resolve this seemingly intractable problem that has been going on for many decades. Kerry threw himself into this mission, working very hard on it for almost the past year.

In recent weeks, it became obvious that Kerry’s efforts were failing as those of so many other U.S. Secretaries of State have before him. Then the Palestinians announced that they would seek further acceptance from the UN. And Israel announced that it would build more housing units in the environs of Jerusalem. This building of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Jerusalem is such a sticking point that always destroys the peace process. When all that happened, the peace process again was dead.

Then something happened that ignited a maelstrom between Israelis and Palestinians which occurs so often when the peace process is dead. Three Jewish-Israeli teenagers who were living in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank were kidnapped and then killed. It still has not been determined who was responsible. This incident sparked another war between Israel and Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip. However, an increased volley of rockets from the Gaza Strip into nearby locations in Israel were a contributing factor. Israel then launched another military incursion into the Gaza Strip, including boots on the ground. After twenty days of fighting and a brief cease-fire, about 1,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been killed and about fifty Jews in Israel have been killed. Most of the deaths in the Gaza Strip are innocent civilians which include about 250 children.

I think it is insane that Hamas either fires, or allows the firing, of all those indiscriminant rockets into Israel which almost always do nothing but land aimlessly and cause only fear. What does it accomplish for them? Nothing. Whenever Israel responds, as it has in the past few days, the death toll ratio between the sides is always about 10-20 Palestinians to 1 Israeli dead. Israel is accusing Hamas of using its innocent civilians as shields by stationing militants and/or their firepower next to schools and mosques, which may be true.

When  the Palestinian dead are carried out of the destruction, many Gaza residents are crying and others are yelling “God is great.” So many Muslims in the Middle East seem to have little respect for human life. They think of the dead in such circumstances as “martyrs” for Allah. This is a big problem because Hamas is a Muslim organization whose ideology is radical, calling for the elimination of Israel and the reclaiming of “the land of Palestine.”

But what is going on in the Gaza Strip also shows how desperate those people are getting with their situation. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Being fences in and Israel controlling all peoples and goods going in and out of Gaza, its almost like living in a prison. When Egypt’s military coup overthrew elected president and leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, the general turned president, el-Sissi, stopped most smuggled goods from Egypt into Gaza through tunnels. Now, in this latest war, Israel has been destroying these sophisticated tunnels. Many of them are reinforced with concrete and extend long distances into Israel.

Americans generally say, “Israel has the right to defend itself against those rockets.” Yes, but why is it happening. Palestinians are right in calling Israel “the occupiers.” Most Americans disregard this. Israel is a member of the United Nations. Its charter says any member nation that goes to war against another nation, which war results in that member nation occupying former land possessed by that enemy nation, must afterwards return that land to its former owner in a peace agreement. The UN also calls that territory in question as “occupied territory.” Therefore, that nation which continues to occupy that newly-acquired territory is called an “occupier.” Israel obtained the West Bank and East Jerusalem among four parcels of “occupied territory” in the 1967 Six-Day War. All that time ever since, Israel has been an occupier of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

If this Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ever going to get settled, I think its going to have be with another solution other than the current two-state solution. What two-state solution does my book propose? In accordance with Israel’s Proclamation which demands only its ancestral land, let Israel have all of the West Bank–which religious Jews call Judea and Samaria and was the very heartland of ancient Israel–and let the Palestinians have their ancestral land, which is “the land of the Philistines.”

What is “the land of the Philistines”? Go look at a map in the back of a good Bible and you’ll see. This Philistia encompassed five major cities: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. All of these territories except Gaza have always been a part of modern Israel. Thus, ancient Philistia was located in the coastal plain west of ancient Israel, with Philistia’s entire western border being the Mediterranean Sea. The country usually stretched from just south of the city of Joppa, present Tel Aviv, to the wadi el Arish, a seasonal stream called “the river of Egypt.” It’s eastern boundary was the Shephelah and the western environs of Beersheba and Kadesh Barnea to the south. Thus, the shape of this nation was elongated from north to south and bulged in the south.

Why do I call “the land of the Philistines” the Palestinians’ ancestral land? The modern Palestinians acquired their name from the name of the land in which their ancestors lived, which was called “Palestine” or “Palestina” ever since the Romans defeated the Jews in the Second Jewish Revolt, in AD 132-135, threw them out of much of their land, and caused the Jewish Diaspora. Although Palestinians are a mixed population, I believe they have a stronger genetic link to the ancient Philistine people than to any other people group. In the future, I think DNA may prove that I’m right. But I also believe that’s what the Bible says. Read my book.

The Palestinians would get such a better deal if they would focus on trying to establish a Palestinian state in “the land of the Philistines.” First, it would truly be two nations living “side-by-side,” and the current focus of a Gaza Strip and Swiss-cheese entity joined by a corridor through Israel would certainly not achieve that. Such an arrangement would create great security problems for both states and not be very economically viable for Palestinians. But a recent development would cause this arrangement to result in a financial bonanza for the Palestinians. There are tremendous quantities of oil and natural gas lying under the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Levant. They began to be discovered in this century. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be resolved as I’m proposing, this Palestinian state would have a 80-mile coastland that would result in much wealth from drilling such deposits, and Israel would have an 80 mile coastland as well and still retain its present, large gas discoveries offshore which are called Leviathan, Tamar, and Dalit. Because of such wealth, this New Palestine as I call it would result in a “desert that would blossom like a rose.”

So, to solve this conflict, do as Israel’s Proclamation of Independence says. Let the Jews have all of their “ancestral land” as it says in their Proclamation, which does not include all of the so-called Promised Land of the Bible, and let the Palestinians have all of their ancestral land as well, which is “the land of the Philistines.” With this proposal, the two-state solution will be revived.