Few today believe that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is viable. Poll after poll has shown declining support among both Israelis and Palestinians, with a vast majority on both sides seeing themselves as the rightful owners of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. A Pew survey in June found that only 21 per cent of Israeli adults think Israel and a Palestinian state can coexist peacefully, the lowest since 2013. Palestinian support has also eroded: A recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed that just 40 per cent back the two-state concept.
Multiple attempts over the years to arrive at a two-state solution have failed, most notably through the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly and repeatedly rejected the proposal (as recently as Sunday) and taken steps to actively undermine it. The United States, too, has pulled back from engaging with the framework, with Donald Trump’s first administration recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and moving the US embassy there. And Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (despite the 2005 “disengagement”, Israel continued to control the borders, the airspace, and the sea) means that a de facto single sovereign authority has existed since 1967. These ground realities meant that the two-state solution had, indeed, been killed off, despite the West’s token assurances that they are committed to such a framework.
So why bother, one may ask, about the recent UN General Assembly resolution backing the “New York Declaration” that calls for a peaceful settlement of the conflict through the two-state solution? What is the point in celebrating a non-binding resolution when Israel, with the backing of the most powerful state in the world, is, to quote the United Nations, “permanently extinguishing the Palestinian presence” in parts of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror attack?
For one, nations and their peoples possess inalienable rights enshrined in international law. Also, when an ethnonational identity faces the threat of erasure, the recognition that its people do, in fact, constitute a nation-state confers a legitimacy powerful enough to resist attempts at erasure, no matter how violent or systematic.
Palestinian identity has long existed independently of a State of Palestine. As Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi demonstrates, significant segments of the Arab population under the British Mandate identified primarily with “Palestine” even before the Mandate was formally endorsed by the League of Nations in July 1922. Education, newspapers and public discourse in Mandatory Palestine fostered a distinct Palestinian consciousness. In the years that followed, a distinct self-identification as “Palestinian” took shape in the region — one that was strengthened with the advent of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964 and continues to define the Palestinian people today. Khalidi further argues that the Palestinian identity was not simply a reaction to Zionism, though engagement with and resistance to Zionism became an important part of its development.
It is this Palestinian identity that is at risk of erasure today as Netanyahu’s Israel begins yet another ground offensive against Gaza on September 16, expanding an assault that has already killed 60,000 Palestinians. A quick look at Netanyahu’s cabinet shows that those calling the shots have no intention to allow Palestinians self-determination. The principal architect of Israel’s expansionist drives in Gaza and the West Bank, Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, has said, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.” Of course, he merely echoes Golda Meir’s “There was no such thing as Palestinians” proclamation and the Christian Zionist phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land”. This continuity of denial, from Meir’s remarks in the 1960s to Smotrich today, highlights how erasing Palestinian identity has long been central to Zionist discourse and objectives.
If Israel’s military cannot be restrained from carrying out this erasure because of the impunity it enjoys thanks to the US, then the responsibility falls upon the rest of the world to acknowledge that a people are being stripped of their land, their lives, and their identity — and hold the aggressor state to account, as any other would be. Recognition of the State of Palestine is, in this sense, a direct rejection of the idea that Israel can drive out residents of Gaza in the name of “self-defence” or expand its settlements legitimately in the West Bank, for the rightful owners of the land are the Palestinian people.
Of course, such recognition will not, by itself, end the bombing, the humanitarian catastrophe, or the famine in Gaza. If it could, then the fact that more than 140 countries, including India, already recognise the State of Palestine would have deterred Israel from its brutal operations long ago. What recognition does achieve, however, is to delegitimise Israel’s actions. At a moment when the Israeli government is formalising plans to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and to build a so-called “humanitarian city” in Gaza, the recognition of a State of Palestine asserts both the independence of the Palestinian people and the sovereignty of their land. It affirms their unconditional right to live freely rather than under permanent occupation and siege.
Above all, advancing the two-state solution assumes a Palestinian nation that is equal to Israel. Without that recognition of equality, peace will remain elusive.
saptarishi.basak@expressindia.com
