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How the Two-State Solution Act Undermines Peace

Levin’s Two-State Solution Act is yet another chapter in the never-ending failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace charade. It aims to improve the likelihood of a two-state solution, but by undermining Israel’s legitimate rights, ends up doing the very opposite.
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September 26, 2021
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If someone stole your car, would you feel obligated to negotiate with them to get it back?

You need go no further than that analogy to understand why the Israeli-Palestinian peace “process” has been such an epic failure. Anyone who calls Israel “occupiers” of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), while ignoring the Jews’ genuine connection to the land, effectively turns Israel into land thieves.

And if Israel has no rights to the land, what is there to negotiate? What leverage does it have? By asking Israel to give back the land rather than give it up, diplomatic geniuses for decades have sabotaged any hope for a deal.

By asking Israel to give back the land rather than give it up, diplomatic geniuses for decades have sabotaged any hope for a deal.

Last Thursday, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Michigan) fell into the same trap. Along with a number of co-sponsors, Levin unveiled the Two-State Solution Act, which states that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip are all “occupied” territories and should be referred to as such in all official US policies, documents and communications.

Had the Act called the territories “disputed” rather than “occupied,” it would have given the parties something to negotiate. Instead, by parroting the failed approach of countless peace processors, it has perpetuated the definition of insanity—repeating the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.

If you study the body language of Palestinian leadership through the decades, it is precisely the body language of people who feel zero obligations to make any concessions to a thief. This is the monumental blunder of a diplomatic world that has appeased, coddled and infantilized the Palestinians, while treating Israel as war criminals: They chased the Palestinians away from the negotiating table.

Right on cue, a few days after Levin’s Act called Israel “occupiers,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded at the United Nations General Assembly that Israel withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem within a year. That is not the kind of demand from someone interested in negotiations; it is the demand one makes to a thief.

You might recall that even President Barack Obama failed for the eight years of his presidency to bring the parties together. It’s not a coincidence that one of his first moves was to call for a draconian freeze of any Jewish construction in all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and one of his final moves was to allow passage of UN Resolution 2334, which branded Israeli settlements as “illegal.” As longtime expert Dennis Ross wrote at the time, with classic understatement, “If there is one area in the resolution that may be potentially problematic for the future, it is the reference to the settlements being illegal.”

The irony is that there’s a strong case to be made for Israel’s legal rights in the West Bank, but few international players have cared to make it, because they failed to see its essential value to the peace process.

The irony is that there’s a strong case to be made for Israel’s legal rights in the West Bank, but few international players have cared to make it, because they failed to see its essential value to the peace process.

Indeed, as I wrote in 2013, “a commission led last year by the respected former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy did, in fact, conclude that ‘Israeli settlements are legal under international law.’”

I quoted Alan Baker, director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and a member of Levy’s commission, who asserted that “The oft-used term ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ has no basis whatsoever in law or fact. The territories are neither occupied nor are they Palestinian. No legal determination has ever been made as to their sovereignty, and by agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, they are no more than ‘disputed’ pending a negotiated solution, with both sides claiming rights to the territory.”

Baker added that Israel has “solid legal rights” to the territory, including “the rights granted to the Jewish people by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1923 San Remo Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate instrument and the United Nations Charter,” and that the Oslo agreements “contain no prohibition whatsoever on building settlements in those parts of the territory agreed upon as remaining under Israel’s control.”

You can agree or disagree with that assessment, but there is enough evidence to, at the very least, characterize the territories as disputed rather than occupied. Had the world been wise enough to go along with that crucial premise, it might have given peace negotiations a chance. Instead, it chose to malign Israel and kill the hope for peace.

Levin’s Two-State Solution Act, whether it passes or not, is yet another chapter in the never-ending failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace charade. It aims to improve the likelihood of a two-state solution, but by undermining Israel’s legitimate rights, ends up doing the very opposite.

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