Dear Secretary Blinken, as an oleh and an Israeli who is grateful to the United States for its all-out support of Israel in its war with Hamas, I accept the sincerity of your belief that a two-state solution is essential to ensure Israel’s long-term peace and integration into the Middle East.
However, the vast majority of Israelis are disgusted with Hamas’s atrocities and with the West Bank Palestinians’ overwhelming approval of Hamas’s behavior and are not currently ready to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Even the shrinking minority of Israelis who believe in a two-state solution believe that negotiations now will be viewed as a message that unspeakable violence and terror can achieve what cooperation and past restraint could not.
Ninety percent of Israelis believe that the Palestinian Authority is not competent to administer Gaza; nor will it lead a Palestinian state that would live in peace with Israel.
The only way to get Israel to reconsider is if there is a change in action
You are trying to pressure Israel to reconsider, using the important incentive of normalization with Saudi Arabia. But only the Palestinians can alter the Israelis’ conviction – based on four decades of firsthand experience – that what Palestinians want is a state from the river to the sea which excludes Israel altogether.
First and foremost, the Palestinians must change their narrative and their policies, which pursue delegitimizing Israel over building a Palestinian state.
In 2000 and in 2009, Israel offered Palestinians a sovereign state with 95% of the West Bank. Neither Yasser Arafat nor Mahmoud Abbas accepted because the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and permanent neighbor.
The Palestinians’ policies: calling Israel an apartheid state, the BDS movement, and denial of Jewish ancient roots in the land, all deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state.While the right hand of the PA cooperates on security with Israel and assists in foiling some terror attacks, the left hand supports terror activities, including grants to families of imprisoned terrorists.
These grants are not welfare; the greater the damage the terrorist inflicts, the greater the stipend. PA school curricula continue to demonize Jews, glorify jihad, and incite hatred and terrorism against Israel.
President Biden recognizes the PA’s lack of capacity – as well as the total Israeli lack of trust – so he calls for a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” to be the peace partner. But how to revitalize?
THE FIRST step toward restoring Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state would be a joint declaration by the Palestinian leadership, in conjunction with the Arab League, that they accept the Jewish state and acknowledge the Jews’ right to live in peace. A repudiation of Hamas and its atrocities would add credibility to the declaration. The US and European countries can serve as guarantors for both sides.
The US should add a corollary that if the Palestinians do not turn decisively to nonviolent nationalism, they do not deserve their own state. People forfeit their right to self-rule if they base their cause on the destruction of another nation.
Secondly, the Palestinians should undertake to build their state in three areas: democratizing, strengthening the economy, and peacemaking.
Why should democratization be a requirement for Palestinian statehood? Because a dictatorship (as presently exists) will be corrupt and incompetent. Unable to meet the needs of its citizens, it will predictably blame Israel and divert its citizens’ anger towards an external enemy.
What if the Palestinians had accepted the offer of statehood in 2000 or 2009? With a corrupt and incompetent PA, a few years later (as in the 2006 election,) a majority of Palestinians would have voted for Hamas.
In fact, the PA suppressed the 2006 election, fearing that outcome, and has refused to allow another election until this day. The US has supported this suppression because everyone believes that the Palestinians would elect Hamas.
Had Hamas controlled Palestine, it would have launched its October 7 massacre and atrocities within 5 km. of Jerusalem. It could have killed not 1,200 but 12,000 or 120,000 while destroying the capital city’s institutions such as the Knesset and the Supreme Court.
No sane Israeli will allow a dictatorial Palestine to come into being because, as we saw on October 7, a state that could quickly be turned over to a genocidal antisemitic leadership is a mortal threat to all Israelis.
Democratization means allowing for free media and press to grow and allowing new candidates and parties pledged to democracy to join the electoral process.
A neutral international institution (like Freedom House which rates democracy worldwide) can be selected to monitor performance, degree of improvement, etc. When predetermined levels of democratization are reached, then a specific percentage of areas B and C can be transferred to PA rule as reward/incentive to continue the process.
The second area is improving the economy. The years between 1967 and the 1991 Oslo Accords saw the greatest expansion of the Palestinian economy. The GDP of the West Bank grew by 12.9% annually between 1968-1979 and at an impressive but lower rate over the following decade. Reducing corruption, releasing Palestinian entrepreneurial talents, and allowing free markets can repeat an economic miracle.
The Palestinians would be rewarded with a better life for themselves.
THE THIRD area is peacemaking. Beginning by dropping international policies that delegitimize Israel and by ending hatred in the school curriculum. There is a simple measure of achievement – daily acts of terrorism or no acts of terrorism.
If the Palestinians truly turn to nonviolence, then the pressure of their attitudes (or their willingness to alert the authorities to an impending terrorist act) would stop terrorism.
Would-be terrorists would come to understand that their violence would only succeed in delaying a Palestinian state.
Given the anger at Israel and the Palestinian’s entrenched culture of terror as resistance, this will be the greatest challenge for the Palestinians. However, Israel might help the process by reciprocating for a specific amount of time of no terrorist activity such as by reducing checkpoints, or by transferring a certain percentage of territory to PA self-rule.With achievements in all three areas, the Palestinians would be able to have their own state, Palestine. You and President Biden could sleep well at night knowing that you have not jeopardized Israel’s existence.
This process of attaining statehood will take years. But that is a positive because only years of exemplary behavior can earn the Israeli majority’s trust that a Palestinian state would live in peace alongside Israel.
You should press the Palestinians to renounce violence and thus take their future into their own hands. Their actual behavior can convince the Israeli majority to trust them and allow the state of Palestine to come into being.
FOCUS YOUR pressure on the Palestinians. The new Israeli political leadership which will be elected after the end of the Gaza war would sign on to such a process, once it begins.
Insisting that Israel accept the two-state solution now, puts Israel in the role of bad guy.
This pressure might well backfire and save the present governing coalition from collapse.
To the Palestinians and their allies who object that they want a state now, the response is that had they launched these suggested policies after the Six Day War, or after the Oslo Accords, or after the First or Second Intifada, they would have had their state many years ago.
Turning away from their terrorist past is the slow but achievable way of winning the trust of the Israeli public. Without Israeli acceptance, no Palestinian state can be born.
The writer is an oleh, who was a public intellectual and activist in the United States. He is the author of The Triumph of Life (Jewish Publication Society, 2024, forthcoming).