After almost three months of unabated brutal war by Israel against 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza to "punish" Hamas for the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, the talk of a two-state solution has once again returned to center stage of Middle Eastern politics. It has resurfaced after it was laid to rest amid the Arab uprising and was finally buried under the debris of the Abraham Accord and self-declared "deal of the century" grand success for the duo that includes then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Premier Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu.
Today no one under the sky needs to be told of the endless slaughter of men, women and children, and the devastation of 8% of Gaza's infrastructure amid alarming silence and abetment of friends and allies of Israel inside and outside the Middle East. One does not know the endgame of the ongoing terrible ploy, which has already been dubbed by many as a reflection of Nazi days.
Like many conflicts and wars of the past, the ongoing one in Gaza will also come to an end, but one is anxious if this human catastrophe will help Palestinians accomplish their dream of being citizens of their own independent state or if this will be another copycat of historical suffering and occasional butchery which has become a new normal for Palestinians.
Amongst many of the accords signed between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, the Oslo Accord (1993) is known to be the most comprehensive and inclusive despite its disastrous and deceptive content which fulfilled all objectives of Israel but offered only delusions to Palestinians. Though it was hailed as the first step toward self-determination and an independent state, the euphoria died after the growing belligerency of the Israeli government became explicit.
The prophecy made about the danger of the Oslo Accord by the late Edward Said, one of the most renowned Palestinian-American intellectual activists who not only exposed the malice of Orientalist intellectualism but also revealed the betrayal involved in the Oslo peace process, is proving more and more to be a voice of wisdom as the Oslo Accord ruined all prospect of nationhood for Palestine.
The Oslo Accord served all objectives of the Zionist mission without any promise for the people of Palestine. The Oslo Accord was an all-time concession to the Israeli government to expand settlement with all collaboration of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in a way, the accord created a kingdom of illusions. Through the Oslo Accord, Palestinians were made to accept municipal-like control on a fraction of their land and never think of sovereignty. The accord made resistance groups disarm themselves without commitment or obligation on the part of the Israeli government to concede statehood to Palestine. The Oslo Accord was a declaration of Palestinian capitulation to the dictate of Israel and its allies.
Post-Oslo leadership in Israel not only accelerated settlement expansion but showed no interest in the Oslo Accord's stated goals. The current Prime Minister Netanyahu, who succeeded Ishaq Rabin, the signatory of Oslo, has disdain for the Oslo Accords. His successor, Ehud Barak, was more stringent in his rejection of statehood for Palestinians. He once declared that there would be no tolerance for a unilateral declaration of an independent sovereign Palestine. Ehud Barak was succeeded by the most hawkish premier in the history of Israel, Ariel Sharon (until Bibi proved him a dove) who treated the issue of Palestine without the Oslo Accords.
For almost a quarter of a century, Netanyahu has dominated the Israeli political scene and has been the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Israel. The current turmoil seems to have tightened his grip on Israeli politics while just before Oct. 7, a danger was looming on his political future because of his belligerent and undemocratic politics at home. Since the Camp David days (1978-79), Israeli negotiation strategy has been guided by the politics of deception, suspension, deviation and the imposition of harsh conditions in pursuit of its policy of "no negation is the best negotiation." Netanyahu has been the master of this craft, as almost for a decade Isarel-Palestine talks have been on hiatus.
The Oct. 7 attack and ongoing bloodshed in Gaza in the guise of self-defense has further provided all leeway to him to delink the issue of the Palestinian state from the larger post-Gaza political discourse and all hopes for statehood, if it was there at all, has further diminished.
For the sake of combating Hamas, all talks of statehood for Palestine are being subdued and the focus now has shifted to who would govern Gaza in the absence of Hamas.
In December, Netanyahu said that he had spent a year thwarting the formation of the State of Palestine and one of his senior advisers too said that Palestine with true sovereignty was never an option, and now it should be common sense. Similar views were expressed soon after Oct. 7 by the Israeli envoy to the U.K. and close associate of Netanyahu, Sholomo Karhi, when he said that there would be no Palestinian state and we would never go back to Oslo.
Last year at the United Nations General Assembly annual meeting, Netanyahu proudly unfolded the map of the New Middle East where Palestine was conspicuously absent. The racist and supremacist ideology of Netanyahu can be judged by his invoking of Amalek to provide a theological justification for the ongoing massacre, which has already led to the death of 23,000 Palestinians. Though the two-state solution was never on the table, after Oct. 7, Netanyahu seemed so politically desperate that he could not resist telling the truth about it himself.
At present, Palestinians seem to be deprived of both a two-state and a one-state solution because the two-state solution seems to be a military threat to Israel and the one-state solution might deprive Israel of its Jewish identity by giving the Palestinian demography. Hence the political stalemate or status quo is the best option for Israel. Israel has always managed to evade every single commitment toward the people of Palestine. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid himself said that after Oct. 7, the prospect of a two-state solution seems to be a distant dream.
Israel does not desire any solution for Palestine because it is more keen to expel Palestinians from the "promised land" as they did in 1948 and 1967. The Oct. 7 attack and subsequent massacre in Gaza seem to have given Israel all military and political cover to achieve the goal. The nature of post-Gaza discourse has completely changed and even calling for a cease-fire is anti-Semitic, pro-Palestine chants are support for Israeli genocide and ongoing war is aimed at establishing permanent peace in the Middle East.
Any hope for autonomy or economic freedom in Gaza seems to have gone amok amid Gaza bombardment. Amid the Gaza operation, there was some speculation that Israel was already prepared with a plan to settle the people of Gaza in Sinai. This became true when U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, proposed this to Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who rebuffed it and suggested shifting them to the Negev Desert until Israel ends its military operation in Gaza. The Israeli military first started bombarding northern Gaza and gradually expanded it to central and southern Gaza, which was part of a larger design to force residents to leave Gaza forever and move toward the Sinai desert. Thousands of Gaza residents have already entered the governorate of Rafah, which is not far away from the Sinai desert.
Recently, the two most hawkish ministers in Netanyahu's Cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, called for replacing the people of Gaza with Israelis for the sake of the security of Israeli citizens. According to a report in the pro-state Times of Israel, the Israeli government is already in negotiation with the government of Congo to "rehabilitate" the people of Gaza there. The same report also suggests that Israel has already planned to convert 60% of Gazan agricultural land into a security buffer zone.
There are some media reports that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose partisan role in the Iraq war and biasedness as an international envoy to the peace process in the Middle East is no longer secret, traveled to Israel to meet Netanyahu and has been asked to mediate the transfer of people of Gaza to some Arab or other counties.
In the guise of fighting Hamas, Netanyahu is also targeting the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Since Oct. 7, around 300 people there have been killed and around 25,000 have been arrested on several charges. Netanyahu has drawn parallels between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, asserting that the only distinction lies in their approaches – Hamas aims to destroy Israel immediately, while the PA supposedly pursues a gradual process. He has not dismissed the possibility of employing Gaza-like aggression in the West Bank. This would be an alarming scenario for Jordan, which has already expressed its fear that in case of a Gaza-like conflict, another exodus on the people of Gaza could be imposed like witnessed in 1948 and 1967.
Netanyahu also said that he would not allow Gaza to be governed by either Fatah or Hamas after a few suggested that PA could be handed over the governance of Gaza. What is happening in East Jerusalem and around Al-Aqsa Mosque is known to everyone. Since Oct. 7, people have not been allowed to perform Friday prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Today all three primary zones (West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) are fully under the control of Israel, which would be the principal territory of the Palestinian state if it were ever to become a reality.
The Oct. 7 attack has not only laid bare Israelis’ long-term objective of depriving Palestinians of their sovereign state but also exposed the hollowness of all talk of a two-state solution. The ongoing destruction of Gaza, the war of attrition in the West Bank and the speedy settlement there serve to make a Palestinian state politically and geographically unattainable.
All agree that the post-Oct. 7 Middle East will not look like what it was but if it would help Palestinians to fulfill their objectives is everyone’s concern. Oct. 7 has completely changed the views of both Israelis and Palestinians toward each other, and according to the latest survey, the percentage of Israelis supporting the two-state solution decreased from 38% to 29%. Those supporting negotiations with PA also decreased from 47% to 24% after Oct. 7.
With the growing Arab-Israel intimacy and global silence on Israeli brutality, the horizon for the state of Palatine is becoming further dark, and the stalemate and status quo seem to be the only future that has always suited Israel.
How can one think of a state for Palestine under the most hawkish government in the history of Israel, whose members and supporters are calling for the bombing of the people of Palestine with nuclear weapons and expelling them from their lands?
