Two-State Non-Solution

The Biden team’s roadmap to Mideast peace isn’t just blinkered, it’s outdated.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed last week that Arab nations won’t accept a post-Hamaswar solution that ensures Israel’s security absent a “pathway to a Palestinian state.” Yet the Abraham Accords prove that’s just not true.

“This crisis has clarified that you can’t . . . achieve either goal without an integrated, regional approach,” argues Blinken. No: If anything, Hamas’ 10/7 attack, and Palestinians’ support for it, shows that a Palestinian state would be a disaster for Israeli security.

Polling indicates that average Palestinians favor Israel’s eradication through Oct. 7-style savagery, as 57% of Gazan and 82% West Bank Palestinians back the Hamas attack. Heck, Palestinian leaders have passed up multiple offers of statehood on the condition of accepting Israel’s continued existence.

And if they got a state — one that, like pre-Oct. 7 Gaza, couldn’t be monitored and controlled sufficiently to ensure Israel’s security — how could anyone trust them not to use it to launch more attacks?

No wonder two out three Israelis now oppose a two-state solution, per Gallup — a complete flip from a decade ago, when 61% of Israeli adults backed it.

Yes, some Arab leaders publicly insist on a plan for a new nation before normalizing ties with Israel: “We can’t live with Israel without a Palestinian state,” Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom Kahlid bin Bandar declared Tuesday. Of course they’ll say that, when Team Biden has been demanding it: They don’t want to look more pro-Israel than Washington.

The notion that Palestinian statehood is the only hope for broader regional peace prevailed for decades, with little to show for it. But then President Donald Trump (and son-in-law Jared Kushner) took a different approach — and got four Arab nations (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco) to sign peace deals with Israel without even talks toward a Palestinian state.

The powerful logic: Such deals pressure Palestinians to give up their delusions of destroying Israel. Truth is, many Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia, realize their biggest threat is from Iran and see only benefits from ties with Jerusalem; they’re eager to establish relations.

Team Biden should admit publicly that Oct. 7 made any Palestinian state impossible in the near term, and push for broader Arab-Israeli normalization (including Arab states’ cooperation in governing post-war Gaza) that can foster the normalization of Palestinians from a perpetually aggrieved and impoverished people to a populace that realizes they can prosper alongside Israel.

A genuine two-state solution is a wonderful goal, but the roadblock isn’t Israel but a Palestinian population that’s been taught for decades that the only “solution” is Israel’s elimination.

Demanding a Palestinian state now is pure fantasy, and utterly counterproductive when it comes to advancing peace. Then again, “counterproductive” is par for the course for this White House.