Momentum to put two states in place grows

There is an alternative to the despair we feel in the face of Gaza war, as the will to recognise Palestine is taking hold internationally and history shows it could put the right structures in place to succeed

Overwhelmed by the task of writing about Gaza this week, I took to asking those around me what they would want to read about it. “Is there any cause for hope?” asked one friend, in despair. There are, indeed, many causes for despair. Most obviously, the sheer bru— tality of the conflict: the incomprehensible brutality of the Hamas attack on October 7, followed by the relentless, mechanised brutality of Israel’s attack on Gaza.

So beware false hope. Not merely are there no easy solutions, there is no obvious solution at all. The violence done is too great; the trauma will be too enduring. That makes the “twostate solution” something of a glib misnomer. Even should the Palestinian state be recognised, and “two states” somehow be achieved, that is unlikely to be a “solution”. As we should know: the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the conflict, but not to the trauma, or the division.

Still, the two-states formula is the only credible aspiration for those who ultimately wish for a just and sustainable peace. Writing in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Martin Indyk — a member of the US negotiating team during the Oslo process in the 1990s — describes what this would look like according to the outline they developed then: “A Palestinian state in 97pc of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with mutually agreed swaps of territory that would compensate the Palestinian state for the 3pc of West Bank land that Israel would annex, which at that time contained some 80pc of all the Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands.” This would involve split sovereignty of East Jerusalem.

Oslo failed, and was followed by the Second Intifada. In 2006 Hamas won elections in Gaza and then won a civil war with Fatah, splitting the Palestinian movement. Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli prime minister (for the second time) in 2009 and has occupied that position almost continuously since. Rejected by both the Israeli right and by Hamas and neglected by the international community, the “two-state solution” has appeared to recede ever further.

Paradoxically, amid the greatest crisis in the region in decades, the idea now has renewed momentum. The G20 group of the world’s largest economies, which includes Russia and China, was nearly unanimous in support for the two-state solution at its meeting in February; the idea commands a consensus in the EU and has been championed since the start of the war by both the UK and the US.

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and expert on the Middle East who is influential within the Biden administration, has outlined a “Biden doctrine” that he believes the US administration is gestating. This will incorporate “an unprecedented US diplomatic initiative to promote a Palestinian state” and an expanded security alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia, including normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel — as long as Israel agrees to support the creation of the Palestinian state.

That may seem to be off the table at least under Netanyahu. But momentum is gathering in Israel for a change of government: a poll last week found almost three-quarters wanted Netanyahu to resign; war cabinet member Benny Gantz, the likely replacement, has called for elections in September.

In the meantime, the US has growing leverage over Israel — which is increasingly reliant on US weapons supplies — and is showing tentative signs of finally using it.

What would the Palestinians make of it? Statehood is hardly the first thing on Palestinian minds yet, according to the Arab Barometer survey of public opinion in the Palestinian territories, support for two states on the 1967 borders is relatively strong and consistent. On the eve of the war, polling found a 51pc majority preferred the two-state solution in a choice between that and a one-state solution, confederation or unspecified “other”.

A separate poll conducted in November found that when Palestinians were asked solely whether they supported or opposed a two-state solution (without specifying the 1967 borders), a majority opposed it; but support for the two-state solution actually increased following the outbreak of the war.

According to that poll, Hamas had seen a rise in support, but was still only supported by a minority. Palestinians in Gaza were more sceptical about Hamas than those in the West Bank. A clear majority supported

You can’t forever label a faction as forever being one thing or the other

armed struggle, but the vast majority had not seen videos of atrocities committed by Hamas, did not believe they had occurred and did not believe that attacking civilians was permissible.

The same survey found that, when asked to select the most vital Palestinian goal, 57pc prioritised the Palestinian state and its democratic nature.

One clear obstacle to Palestinian statehood is the lack of institutions of state. What capacity Hamas had built up in Gaza has been destroyed; the Palestinian Authority (PA), meanwhile, has lost the confidence both of its own people and of international donors. Yet the latter was similarly the situation in 2002 during the Second Intifada when the economist Salam Fayyad, a technocrat, was appointed finance minister in the PA.

Despite almost impossible circumstances, Fayyad set about implementing reforms and building state capacity, later becoming prime minister and winning widespread support from the international community, before resigning in protest at the increasing concentration of powers in the executive.

Fayyad’s mission (perhaps similar to that of Michael Collins as minister for finance) was to build the state that he wanted Palestine to become; his success for a time showed that it was possible, even under the most arduous circumstances.

In an insightful podcast interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times in February, Fayyad noted that violence had been part of the identity of the Palestine Liberation Organisation before they signed up to the peace process in the 1990s and suggested that Hamas had a similar capacity to evolve. “You can’t forever label a faction as forever being one thing or the other,” he said.

Recognising the state of Palestine will not help create a functioning state; nor will it meet the immediate needs of Palestinians in the aftermath of the war. But the Irish initiative with Spain may contribute to an international context that changes the calculus in Israel; if it can move the dial even an increment on the prospect of a two-state solution, it will have served some purpose. That is hardly cause for hope, but at least there is an alternative to despair.