While it’s understandable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other world leaders keep talking about a “two-state” solution to the ongoing war in Gaza, it’s also important to understand this is a pipe dream.
The two-state solution, also advocated by the United Nations, means creating an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel, thus ending the ongoing conflict in the Mideast, the latest chapter of which began a year ago on Oct. 7, with Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.
The problem is that both Hamas and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reject the two-state solution.
Hamas, designated by Canada as a terrorist group, wants what in effect would be a one-state solution — Israel cleansed of its Jewish population (Judenfrei as the Nazis called it) — as the new Palestine.
Netanyahu says unilaterally granting a separate state to the Palestinians would reward Hamas for its terrorism of Oct. 7 and that any future negotiations— stalled for a decade — must be carried out directly between the parties, without international pressure.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who effectively controls the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza, supports a two-state solution, but has neither the power nor enough popular support among Palestinians to negotiate for one.
Iran’s dictators, along with its terrorist proxies of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, also designated by Canada as a terrorist organization, reject a two-state solution.
Beyond all this, the creation of a Palestinian state, even if the parties involved wanted one, would pose enormous logistical problems, given that about 700,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem on land that would become a part of Palestine along with Gaza.
Finally, the creation of a Palestinian state in and of itself will not put an end to the ongoing and wider conflicts in the Mideast.
For almost the first 20 years of its existence, there were no so-called “occupied territories” in Israel, the dismantling of which would be necessary to create an independent Palestinian state.
Despite that, Israel was attacked by its Arab neighbours the day after it declared its independence in 1948 and again in the 1967 Six-Day War, indicating that their real objection to Israel was the presence of so many Jews in their midst.