In PJ Media this morning I discuss why the "two-state solution" should be abandoned forever.
As yet another round of the relentless jihad against Israel opens up, it’s useful to consider: would the two-state solution now taken for granted and offered by both parties really bring peace?The need to establish a Palestinian state wasn’t even a point of controversy during the last election campaign. The Democrat Party platform read: “A just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord, producing two states for two peoples, would contribute to regional stability and help sustain Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state.” For his part, Mitt Romney promised to “recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel.”
But would a Palestinian state really stop the rain of rockets into Israel? Judging from the fact that so many of those rockets are coming from Gaza, it looks as if the dreaded, notorious, much-maligned object of frenzied Leftist and Islamic supremacist propagandizing, the Israeli “occupation,” was much more conducive to peace than independent or even semi-autonomous Palestinian entities. For before Israel withdrew voluntarily from Gaza in 2005, rockets were not flying into Israel in anything like the numbers they reached after the withdrawal. Around 35 rockets were fired into Israel in 2001; by 2006, the number had grown to 1,777 – almost all from Gaza.
Yet at the time of the withdrawal, pundits and politicians the world over predicted that the withdrawal would herald the dawn of a new age of peace between Israel and the Palestinian Muslims. Palestinians, we were told, would finally be able to turn away from war and live normal lives. Publishing magnate Mortimer Zuckerman tried to facilitate that return to normalcy by spearheading the purchase (for $14 million) of greenhouses the Israelis had constructed in Gaza; he gave them to the Palestinians so that they would have places to work. Instead, they turned them into weapon-smuggling tunnels.
Why would an independent Palestinian state be any different from post-withdrawal Gaza? Would such a state really bring, at long last, peace between Israel and the Palestinians – and, for that matter, “contribute to regional stability”? Egyptian Muslim cleric Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub answered that question in January 2009, when he said on al-Rahma TV:
If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them. Absolutely not. The Jews are infidels – not because I say so, and not because they are killing Muslims, but because Allah said: ‘The Jews say that Uzair [Ezra] is the son of Allah, and the Christians say that Christ is the son of Allah. These are the words from their mouths. They imitate the sayings of the disbelievers before. May Allah fight them. How deluded they are.”
The quotation is from the Qur’an (9:30). Ya’qoub explicitly rules out what is conventional wisdom in the U.S.: that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Muslims is simply over land, and can ultimately be resolved if only the right formula could be found. He goes even farther, saying that if all the Jews left “Palestine,” Muslims should still hate them, because it is their responsibility before Allah to do so. “It is Allah,” continued Ya’qoub, “who said that they are infidels. Your belief regarding the Jews should be, first, that they are infidels, and second, that they are enemies. They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing. Allah said: ‘You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the disbelievers [sic] to be the Jews and the polytheists.’”
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On page 369 (554 in the Arabic) of the earliest Muslim biography of Muhammad, Muhammad says "kill any Jew who falls into your power":
It's a "charming" story of two brothers, Muhayyissa and Huwayyisa: (To avoid confusing the two brothers, keep in mind that the brother whose name begins with M is the Murderer in the story.)