Speaking to the British press recently, Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Tzipi Hotovely flatly dismissed the two-state solution to decades of violence with the Palestinians.
"Israel knows today and the world should know now that the reason the Oslo Accords failed was because the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel, they want to have a state from the river to the sea,” she said, calling the two-state solution created at Oslo "a formula that never worked, that created this radical people on the other side.”
Since the accords were signed in 1993 and 1995, the creation of a separate state for Palestinians alongside Israel has been the default political position for Western states as well as the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank and several Arab nations. US President Joe Biden recently castigated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, accusing it of rejecting the two-state-solution, to which Netanyahu responded by openly declaring his pride in sabotaging the creation of a Palestinian state.
The issue has received new attention since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas led an attack on Israeli border towns near Gaza that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and triggered a massive Israeli assault on Gaza that has culminated in a ground invasion, the deaths of more than 20,000 Palestinians, and displacement of nearly all of the territory’s 2.3 million people.
Veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier told Radio Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday that both the Israelis and the Arab states have used the existence of Hamas as an excuse not to push forward on a two-state solution - a dynamic that has only helped fuel the right-wing radicalization of Israeli politics towards a total refusal to work with the Palestinians at all and a willingness to use war as the solution to all issues.
Radicalization of Israeli Politics
“Well, the problem with the Israelis, and particularly the Netanyahu government and people like Netanyahu, or all those radicals who vie among themselves for further radicalism in Israeli politics over the last three decades or so, that they dug behind groups and organizations like Hamas and that. But we all know that they supported Hamas in the formative stage,” he said.
“And the other thing is - okay, let's put Hamas aside. There is the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah group, which has acknowledged Israel's right to exist in the Middle East. So, they came down from their earlier position to destroy Israel; but did Israel basically faithfully negotiate with the Palestinian Authority to give them a state, a proper state of their own? No. So basically any time there was a chance, and particularly in Washington, DC, there was an administration which was willing to negotiate a two-state solution, then they basically did everything to sabotage that. So there had been a proper set of negotiations through which a Palestinian state had come about in that part of the world, then there may not have been a Hamas organization altogether, or it would have been a very small organization in the fringes of Palestinian politics and the Palestinians would have basically taken care of that."
"So today, when the Israeli side is saying, well, there would be no two-state solution, they are also underlining the fact that they destroyed anything and everything, any basis on which a two-state solution could have been founded. Because look at [how] many settlers that they have built that that they have basically installed in the West Bank area to make sure that no two-state solution ever comes about.”
Magnier said that especially since the Oslo Peace Accords, which ended the First Palestinian Intifada, or national uprising, Israeli politics “have become terribly radicalized” even compared to the 1960s and '70s, when Israel was fighting major wars against the Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations.
19 December 2023, 20:57 GMT
“Since the Israeli left basically dropped out of the race, Israeli politics became more and more radicalized. And this is, I think, the result of what happened at the time. And it is not only Netanyahu, but all the coalition partners that have very radical agendas. So with people like these in the saddle in Israeli politics, it is not easy to talk about peaceful things, because they are trigger-happy people. They think they can simply bomb one area after the other, they can order a huge military operation against either this or the other with disastrous consequences. But they don't seem to mind all that. I think this is where the problem is,” he said.
“And the other problem is, okay, Netanyahu's popularity is going down these days and the main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, has been calling for it, calling on him to resign even before the end of the present operation,” he said, adding that “basically there should have been more forceful American administrations over the last three decades or so to put pressure on Israel to bear. That could have smoothened things down a bit, and it would have also paved the way for a comprehensive solution on the basis of two states.”
'They Duck Behind Hamas'
Magnier said he was “at the very cautious end of the argument” that the Arab states, even those that have formal relations with Israel, are either willing or able to stop the Israeli assault on Gaza.
“Because, again, the way they seem to look at the whole issue is similar to the Israeli politicians in a way: they duck behind Hamas again. So, Hamas is a radical organization which may be what it is, you know. So there is a lot of truth in what they say. Hamas is being very critical of all the Arab regimes, of all the Arab governments, of all the Arab states, you know. And that makes things difficult for an Arab unity of some sort. In the 1950s, '60s, even in the 1970s, there was always some degree of Arab unity among the Arab states. But that has largely gone because of their internecine fighting over many things. But these radical Islamic organizations like Hamas, with their very radical Islamist views over how to run their government, and their criticism of all their neighboring Arab states.”
“So on the one hand, one could say that, yes, Israel is ducking behind Hamas in order to eradicate basically entirely the whole [Palestinian] people. But at the same time, the Arab governments don't want to get involved in this, and then the pretext is, again, Hamas, that it is all because of them. But the problem is, Hamas’ popularity is increasing not only in the West Bank, but in the streets of the Arab world,” he observed.
“So what all this would actually translate itself into in terms of political results? We don't know yet,” Magnier said. “But on the other hand, if Israel, after finishing, in whatever form, its operation in the south against Hamas, turns on Hezbollah in the north, and then starts a fight there, then then it would turn into a regional confrontation with Iranian proxies getting involved in various ways in Iraq in particular, and in the Persian Gulf area, including Yemen, and even Iran itself.”
“Now, there are calls in the United States saying that unless the United States bombs Iran, then then you can't basically eradicate all these radical movements. So we may be going towards that, or there's going to be some sort of sobering up in Washington in particular, thinking that, you know, this cannot go on like this, one way or the other. Or, perhaps Netanyahu being forced to resign and somebody else takes over, and then they would sort of start from a different basis on which, on the one hand, they can negotiate, on the one hand they can carry on with their policies in a trigger-happy way.”
America's Debacle
Magnier noted that the failed US policy of supporting Israel to the hilt has created disastrous consequences for US foreign policy and domestic attitudes as well, creating openings for nations to rise that would otherwise be suppressed.
“In terms of the international geopolitics, one book I could say that the countries who challenged the United States-led unipolar world order, like Russia, China and others, and all the medium-sized countries who don't want to see the continuation of this unipolar world order, are sort of happily watching what is happening, because the more US involvement in the Middle East in unwinnable wars, the better for all of them, because they get precious time to get on with their economic development, particularly in the case of China, and also to get their military preparations for a final showdown with the United States,” Magnier said.
“The United States has been wasting its resources in the Middle East, and it is not the first time, but it has been wasting its resources over the last 30, 40 years in particular. And except the US military-industrial complex, which is always very happy with all these expenditures and what-have-you, the United States public basically gain nothing out of that except the world's wrath and the world's frustration. So on that issue, I'm quite optimistic about what Israel has been doing and the unconditional support and solidarity the United States and the Western world have displayed with Israel. They stood behind Israel and are bringing it into the open,” he said.
Asked about the US’ culpability in Israel’s bombing campaign, particularly by sending Israel money and weapons it is using, Magnier questioned how able Biden would be to simply call up Netanyahu and demand a ceasefire.
“Well, I think things have changed over the decades. Maybe some 50 years ago, the United States had a lot of leverage over Israeli political decision-makers and all that. But these days, it seems it is the other way around. Whether the dog actually wags its tail or the tail is wagging the dog is difficult to say these days. The Israeli lobby and its power and strength over American politics, coupled with the military-industrial complex and their power and strength over US politics or US decision-making processes, is enormous. So we can easily talk about a US ‘deep state’ that wants war all over the world. So from that point of view, yes, it may be that the United States is losing its prestige and the United States has been criticized and in the eyes of the world public, its position has come down considerably and all that. But for the US deep state, none of this matters. They seem to have sold out.”