How to get to two states
Setting aside a perplexing remark by President Trump, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a strong and important show of unity at the White House Wednesday. Bad news first: Trump’s apparent ignorance of the two-state solution, which for very good reason has been the basis for Mideast peace negotiations for decades.
“I’m looking at two states and one state. I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one,” said the President, perhaps unaware that a one-state solution would either consign Palestinians to permanent second-class status — or, via demographic change over the course of a few generations, end Israel’s status as a Jewish state.
But that shaky statement was an aberration in a joint appearance that otherwise helpfully reset relations that, over two terms under President Obama, were pained and strained.
Most meaningfully, Netanyahu delivered a bracing articulation of the true obstacles to a lasting agreement:
“First, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state. They have to stop calling for Israel’s destruction. They have to stop educating their people for Israel’s destruction.
“Second, in any peace agreement, Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River. Because if we don’t, we know what will happen — because otherwise we’ll get another radical Islamic terrorist state in the Palestinian areas exploding the peace, exploding the Middle East.
“Now, unfortunately, the Palestinians vehemently reject both prerequisites for peace. First, they continue to call for Israel’s destruction — inside their schools, inside their mosques, inside the textbooks. You have to read it to believe it.
“They even deny, Mr. President, our historical connection to our homeland . . . . Jews are called Jews because they come from Judea. This is our ancestral homeland. Jews are not foreign colonialists in Judea.
“So, unfortunately, the Palestinians not only deny the past, they also poison the present. They name public squares in honor of mass murderers who murdered Israelis, and I have to say also murdered Americans. They fund — they pay monthly salaries to the families of murderers, like the family of the terrorist who killed Taylor Force, a wonderful young American, a West Point graduate, who was stabbed to death while visiting Israel.
“So this is the source of the conflict — the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state in any boundary; this persistent rejection. That’s the reason we don’t have peace.”
And we say, Amen.