In “Three-State Solution,” a New York Sun Editorial (thanks to Ruth King), the nameless editorial writer demonstrates that he or she doesn’t even realize the implications of what he or she is writing:
For years the debate in respect of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs has been between partisans of a one-state solution and partisans of a two-state solution. The one-state solution is advanced by those Jews “” at this point a minority, though distinguished, faction “” who believe that Israel can remain a Jewish state and a democracy while also ruling the West Bank and Gaza, lands with which the Jewish people have longstanding religious and historical ties. It is also advanced by those Arabs who believe that Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state can be achieved by a demographic and military triumph of the Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The two-state solution is advanced by those who believe the best solution to the competing demands of the Jews and the Arabs is to create an Arab state called ” Palestine” in the West Bank and Gaza, a state that partisans of this idea claim would co-exist with Israel in peace. President Bush put the case for a two-state solution in his June 24, 2002, remarks in the Rose Garden this way: “A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for.” What the latest developments in Gaza and the West Bank herald is the possibility of a third option “” a three-state solution, in which Gaza and the West Bank are not artificially mashed together into a single Palestinian state with no real historical precedent or logic, but allowed to go their own separate ways. This, by the way, is the situation that obtained in the first 19 years of Israel’s modern existence. Three states occupied the land now controlled by Israel and the Palestinian Authority “” Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled the West Bank. It was hardly an ideal situation “” Egyptian territory was used as a base for attacking Israel, while Jordan desecrated Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem. But, with important modifications, it might provide at least on an interim basis a better pattern for a way forward than either the one-state or the two-state solutions.
Just a few of the many things wrong with this:
1. The author postulates a “three-state solution” as an alternative to, among other things, a unified Arab jihadist state, which is “advanced by those Arabs who believe that Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state can be achieved by a demographic and military triumph of the Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” But what evidence is there that any “Palestinian” state of any kind would not be dedicated to Israel’s ultimate destruction?
2. The author criticizes the “two-state solution” for “artificially mas[ing] together” Gaza and the West Bank “into a single Palestinian state with no real historical precedent or logic.” But no Palestinian state has any historical precedent or logic. There never has been a Palestinian state in the history of the world. So it is hardly a strike against one solution or another to say that it has no historical precedent: no solution involving a Palestinian state does. (This is not to say I favor a two-state solution; I don’t, because of the jihad ideology which makes it quite clear that any Palestinian state will just be a base for further attacks on Israel.)
3. The author doesn’t notice that there was no clamor for Palestinian statehood while Egypt and Jordan controlled Gaza and the West Bank. Now, why was that? And seeing as how Egypt and Jordan used their control of Gaza and the West Bank to launch attacks against Israel, as the author notes, what makes him think the Palestinians won’t, when they’ve shown no sign of stopping up to now?