A Palestinian state would only be a new base for renewed jihad attacks against a diminished Israel. It is refreshing to see an American President who is not committed to this false and faulty “solution.”
What a difference:
“Trump, Meeting With Netanyahu, Backs Away From Palestinian State,” by Peter Baker and Mark Landler, New York Times, February 15, 2017:
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would no longer insist on a Palestinian state as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, backing away from a policy that has underpinned America’s role in Middle East peacemaking since the Clinton administration.
“I’m looking at two-state and one-state” formulations, Mr. Trump said, appearing in a joint news conference at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”
Mr. Trump’s comments were a striking departure from two decades of diplomatic orthodoxy, and they raised a host of thorny questions about the viability of his position. The Palestinians are highly unlikely to accept anything short of a sovereign state, and a single Israeli state encompassing the Palestinians would either become undemocratic or no longer Jewish, given the faster growth rate of the Arab population.
Mr. Trump did not address these dynamics, preferring to focus on his confidence that he could produce a breakthrough agreement. “I think we’re going to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said, describing that as personally important to him. “It might be a better and better deal than people in this room even understand.”
But even as Mr. Trump drastically reoriented American policy, he told Mr. Netanyahu to stop building new housing in the West Bank for the moment. “I’d like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit,” he told Mr. Netanyahu, whose government has been racing to announce new settlement construction in the weeks since Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
That’s a shame, as the settlements are just the latest of many pretexts for the Palestinian jihad.
The president also stressed that Israel would have to be flexible in any future peace talks. “As with any successful negotiation, both sides will have to make compromises,” Mr. Trump said.
Turning to Mr. Netanyahu, he asked, “You know that, right?”
Mr. Netanyahu responded with a smile. “Both sides,” he said, pointedly emphasizing the first word.
Nonetheless, Mr. Netanyahu, who nominally supports a two-state solution, quickly embraced Mr. Trump’s declaration, saying he preferred to deal with “substance” rather than “labels” in negotiating with the Palestinians.
He noted that the concept of the two-state solution meant different things to different people in the region. And he repeated his two prerequisites — that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state and that Israel maintain security control over the entire West Bank. The obstacle to peace, he said, is Palestinian hate, as demonstrated by building statues to those who carry out terrorist attacks and paying their families salaries. “This is the source of the conflict,” he said.
Mr. Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, have been exploring an approach called the outside-in strategy, enlisting Arab states in the region that already have found common cause with Israel against their mutual enemy Iran to help broker a settlement with the Palestinians. But it is not at all clear that Palestinians would ever accept an arrangement that did not leave them with a state of their own….