Posted on 04/14/2015 4:30:54 AM PDT by SJackson
The Palestinian Statehood Idea Begins to Crumble
Posted By Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn On April 14, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments
A sea change began within hours of the Israeli election returns.
Thomas L. Friedman, who has devoted much of his life to promoting Palestinian statehood, declared in his New York Times column that the idea of a Palestinian state is “not possible anymore.” That was followed by his Times colleague David K. Shipler, another longtime advocate of a Palestinian state, announcing that the “the two-state solution looks dead.”
Just a couple of elite, pro-Palestinian journalists venting their frustration?
Don’t bet on it. The American public is losing faith in Palestine too. Friedman and Shiplers declarations merely echo the latest poll numbers on the American public’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll has found that Americans’ support for the idea of creating a Palestinian state has reached its lowest point in twenty years. Just 39% of Americans support it; 36% are opposed.
That 39% is down from the 58% who backed Palestinian statehood in 2003. And the three-percentage point gap between supporters and opponents is the smallest such gap in at least twenty years.
One can understand why Friedman and Shipler would be disillusioned by such trends in American and Israeli public opinion. For eight years, Shipler and Friedman used the news columns of the world’s most important newspaper to turn American public opinion against Israel and promote the need to establish a Palestinian state. They might have imagined they were making inroads.
Shipler was the New York Times’ bureau chief in Jerusalem from 1979 to 1984. His news articles were slanted to stoke hatred of Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians. Then he shed all pretense of objectivity and wrote a book, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, which made it clear that his previous reporting had been agenda-driven. Nonetheless, the book won a Pulitzer Prize.
Friedman picked up where Shipler left off. In 1988, Friedman succeeded Shipler as the new bureau chief in Jerusalem. His reporting was just as biased against Israel as Shipler’s had been. And when Friedman finished his four years there, he wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem, a book filled with vitriol against Israel. Nonetheless, the book won a National Book Award.
In the years to follow, it must have seemed to Shipler and Friedman that their goal was within reach. Israel signed the Oslo accords and pulled out of all the Palestinian-populated areas in the territories. Two Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, reportedly offered to create a Palestinian state. Even Benjamin Netanyahu eventually said he could accept a demilitarized Palestinian state under certain conditions.
So why did the push for a Palestinian state fail?
It failed because of reality–and the Israeli election results reflect that.
“It is hard to see how a viable two-state solution is possible anymore no matter who would have won,” Friedman wrote after the election results arrived last month. The public’s strong support for Netanyahu was a response to the reality of Palestinian violence and extremism, Friedman conceded. “The insane, worthless Gaza war that Hamas initiated last summer that brought rockets to the edge of Israel’s main international airport and the Palestinians’ spurning of two-state offers of previous Israeli prime ministers built Netanyahu’s base as much as he did.”
In other words, Israeli voters, instead of paying attention to Friedman’s years of writings, paid attention to the reality around them–and voted accordingly.
Shipler, writing in his online newsletter, The Shipler Report, has reached essentially the same conclusion. “A bet on statehood for the Palestinians is about as good as money in a Ukrainian bond,” Shipler wrote on the eve of the Israeli vote. “Conditions can always change, of course, but for the foreseeable future, a two-state solution looks dead.”
The idea of Palestinian statehood has been dead for years. The questions what is the long term solution?
The solution is the Balfour Declaration, where England partitioned the Palestine Mandate into two parts, one Jewish, on Arab. Jordan is the Arab one. Time to move all the Philistini to Jordan or the Sinai.
BINGO! We have a winner!
There has never been an Arab State called Palestine.
Why would anyone want to form one now?
I don't think they want to go. And I don't think that Jordan or Egypt wants them.
Jordan did have them at one time, and then had to evict them with tanks.
The ‘Palestinians’ are not good neighbors.
Next rocket launched is a formal declaration of war.
Bounce the rubble, then bounce it again!
The Palestinian issue has changed because the threat of Iran getting a nuke has become more likely due to the negotiations in Lausanne.
This has galvanized the formation of the new Arab Coalition, now seeing the fight in Yemen as an existential one. The issues of the Arab Sunni states and Israel now align. It is realized by the Arabs that Israel’s help will be needed, thus the Palestinians are relegated to the back of the bus.
‘zackly.
Gaza used to be part of Egypt. Israel can come to some sort of arrangement with Egypt where they will pay Egypt to relocate all of Gaza into Egypt.
The preview of a Pali state has been Gaza, ever since the Israelis evac’d it in 2005.
Look at Gaza then picture it ten times its present size. Not a pretty sight.
Who needs five million splodydopes on their border?
Well then.
Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
Why would Egypt want to do that? And when you say "they will pay" don't you mean the U.S. will pay?
“The questions what is the long term solution? “
Turn Sinai into Palestine. It gives both Israel and Egypt defendable borders. The UN can summon their smartest to create a “green” country where fossil fuels are non existent.
Desalination can be built along the red sea to bring in fresh water which can be used for agriculture and the greening of the new Palestine. Because of this, CO2 will be extracted from the atmosphere, reducing global warming.
And the best part of it all, move the UN their.
Israel captured the circus and the monkeys that came with it almost 50 years ago. It is their problem, and a vexing one at that.
Palestinians represent the worst of what is wrong with the world. The haters of peace even hate these haters. It’s a hate problem.
Agree 100%.
I fully support “Palestinian” statehood.
The Arabs on the West Bank should be forcibly repatriated to their home state of Jordan and the Arabs on in the Gaza Strip should be forcibly repatriated to their home state of Egypt. Statehood achieved.
Never have seen this word before.
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