Four months after Hamas, in control of a small independent Palestinian entity called Gaza, launched its savage attack on Israel that sparked the current war, the world is abuzz with renewed talk about a Palestinian state.
Never mind that Gaza has, for all intents and purposes, been an independent Palestinian entity since Israel withdrew in 2005 and removed every army installation and soldier, every settlement and Jew.
Never mind that, narrowly elected in 2006, Hamas, expelled the Palestinian Authority in 2007 in a murderous coup and used the territory not to build a Palestinian Singapore on the Mediterranean, but rather an Iranian-backed launching pad for attacks on Israel, with an unprecedented maze of underground tunnels from which to attack the Jewish state.
Never mind that Hamas used that territory which it controlled to carry out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
The world is once again convinced that the panacea to the problems in the Mideast is a Palestinian state.
A solution that is unimaginable in the wake of October 7
To many Israelis, however, the discussion is surreal.
If the mini-Palestinian state of Gaza led to October 7, what would a full-blown Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank lead to?
Saudi Arabia is releasing trial balloons that it would still be willing to normalize ties with Israel, despite the war in Gaza, as part of a sweeping defense pact with the US on the condition that Israel provide some kind of political commitment to a two-state solution.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is sure to pledge allegiance to the idea during one of his public appearances here later this week.
British Foreign Minister David Cameron is busy pushing the idea, saying in a recent AP interview that the UK should consider recognizing an independent Palestinian state, including in the United Nations, after a Gaza ceasefire and long before the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
“It could be something that we consider,” Cameron said. “What we need to do is give the Palestinian people a horizon towards a better future, the future of having a state of their own.”
That rhetoric is reminiscent of the rhetoric extant during and immediately after the mind-numbing terror of the Second Intifada when the Bush Administration and others were calling on Israel to provide confidence-building measures to the Palestinians.
What they disregarded was the trauma that the terror of the Second Intifada had on the Israeli psyche, and that while they were busy looking for Israeli confidence-building measures for the Palestinians, it was Israelis who needed their confidence restored, so that they could believe a peace process would lead to peace, not to increased terrorism.
Israel is very well known for its national resilience, and for its ability to bounce back and do so swiftly. Author Micah Goodman said recently that if a country’s strength is its ability to deliver blows, its resilience is its ability to absorb them.
Israel absorbs blows very well and rebounds quickly, and that is one of the country’s great assets.
The world has moved on too fast
But there is also another side to this: the world misinterprets this ability to move on as if all is forgotten. Though Israel survived the Second Intifada and overcame that very difficult period, the terror of that period had a long-lasting effect – the country did not emerge from the Second Intifada keen on resurrecting the Oslo Accords, and its voting patterns since then bear that out. These types of traumas are not just left in the past, even as the country moves on beyond them.
President Isaac Herzog has, on a couple of occasions in the last two months, articulated this point. Shortly after US President Joe Biden put the two-state solution back on center stage in an op-ed in The Washington Post, Herzog told AP in December, “What I want to urge is against just saying ‘two-state solution.’ Why? Because there is an emotional chapter here that must be dealt with. My nation is bereaving. My nation is in trauma.
“To get back to the idea of dividing the land, of negotiating peace or talking to the Palestinians,” he said, “one has to deal first and foremost with the emotional trauma that we are going through and the need and demand for a full sense of security for all people.”
In other words, first security, then talk about the possibility of a Palestinian state. He repeated that sentiment last month as well, telling the Davos Economic Forum on January 18, “When nations come forward and say ‘two-state solution,’ they have to first deal with a preliminary question, which is a core question for human beings: Are we offered real safety? Israelis lost trust in the peace process because they could see that terror is glorified by our neighbors.”
Again, this is Herzog speaking, not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has made clear his opposition to a two-state solution. There is a tendency by some abroad to feel that opposition to a Palestinian state is only Netanyahu’s position, and that if he were just removed from office, it would be easier to move forward on this front.
Wrong. Talk now of two states is not only jarring to Netanyahu, but also to Herzog and millions of other Israelis who are stunned that Hamas launches an attack – murders, rapes, kidnaps, mutilates, and pillages – and in response, the world wants to recognize a Palestinian state to give the Palestinians a positive horizon. Many Israelis see a Palestinian state not as a positive horizon, but as a deadly one.
There are those in the US, UN, and European capitals trying to figure out how they can move Israel on this issue. What type of guarantees can be given, and what type of sweetener can be thrown into the pot?
Interestingly, both Biden and the Saudis have altered their demands a bit. Biden has recognized that a future Palestinian state may have to be demilitarized, saying recently that not all UN states have militaries. And the Saudis stepped back from demanding a state as a condition for normalization, saying now they would suffice with a political commitment to work towards that goal.
Regardless of how much the Americans, Europeans, and even the Saudis want to see a Palestinian state emerge from the recent crisis, in the final result, Israelis will have to agree. And the Israelis are not there – at least not this soon after October 7.
It’s not just Netanyahu, it’s the country. As Herzog said, “One has to deal first and foremost with the emotional trauma that we are going through and the need and demand for a full sense of security for all people.”
This is a message Israeli officials need to articulate consistently as the diplomatic pressure begins to mount.
In an ABC interview in early December, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer put it well: “I know that everybody is racing forward right now to try to establish a Palestinian state. The people of Israel don’t even understand that because we just suffered the equivalent of 20 9/11s. And I think the last thing you want to do is send a message to any terror group that the way you’re going to achieve some sort of aim is to perpetrate a massive terror attack.”
The problem is that Dermer and Herzog’s message is not registering, and the talks about a Palestinian state keep increasing. It is not enough to say that in light of the attack from a mini-Palestinian state on October 7, Israel is in no mood to entertain suggestions that the Palestinians be given an even bigger area. It is not enough for Israel to make clear what it does not want to see.
To fend off these efforts, Israel needs to be proactive, not reactive. It needs to spell out what it wants to see, articulating a plan of its own about how to move the region forward after the war.