On Monday, 16 June, France and Saudi Arabia postponed a three-day conference involving most of the United Nations member states. The scheduled conference was aimed at reviving the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Caught up in accusations of apartheid and genocide of Palestinians by the Israelis, and an existential threat to the State of Israel from Hamas and its allies, France and Saudi Arabia hoped to reopen a discussion of almost 80 years on a solution of two states, one Israeli, the other Palestinian.
There is, however, nothing even close to a general agreement as to what such a solution might mean. Thus, “Is the two-state solution possible?” and “Is a two-state solution possible?” are different questions.
From the outset, several things need to be clear.
First, while related, “the two-state solution” and “a two-state solution” are neither identical nor synonymous. Each has its own methodology, strategy and goal. While the two-state solution is the oldest and best-known of proposed “solutions” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is not the only solution. And while repeatedly resurrected, it cannot be said to have enjoyed any more success than other proposed “solutions.”
The origins of the two-state solution can be traced to 1947, yet with roots stretching to the alliance of Great Britain and France during World War I.
The end of World War II, the discovery of the Nazi Vernichtungslager, or “extermination camps,” which revealed the extent of the horror of the Holocaust, and the creation of the United Nations provided the setting in which Jews were able to advocate for the national homeland promised them in Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, declared after Great Britain and France agreed with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 to divide the remnant of the defeated Ottoman Empire.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was primarily concerned with the national interests of Britain and France with little concern for, or knowledge of, the historical, cultural or religious situation of the polities they were dismantling and creating. One of the outcomes of the arrangement was the British Mandate for Palestine, which originated with the League of Nations in 1920 and France’s acceptance of the British Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan. This lasted until 14 May 1948, when Britain unilaterally withdrew from the Mandate.
Part of the Mandate for Palestine (that is, the land west of the Jordan River) was for Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration’s “national home for the Jewish people” alongside one for Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population. This was the cause of serious ongoing conflicts (Arab Revolt 1936-1939; Jewish Insurgency, 1944-1948) among Palestinians and Jews; some of latter were indigenous and others were refugees from Europe.
On 19 November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution, known as U.N. A/RES/181 (II), that called for the partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state and an internationally guaranteed independent enclave, or “corpus separatum”, which would include Jerusalem, Bethlehem and some surrounding villages. For the most part, Jews were satisfied with the resolution while Arabs unanimously rejected it.
The British Mandate was due to end on midnight 14 May 1948. Although the U.N. resolution called for the establishment of boundaries, rights and obligations of the two states to be determined by negotiations, on the evening of 14 May, the Jewish People’s Council declared “the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”
This immediately prompted the first Arab Israeli War. Some 3,000 people, including 2,500 Jews, were killed. All told, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, almost half the Mandate’s population, fled or was expelled. Many fled to the West Bank, which was then part of the Kingdom of Transjordan, or to Lebanon. These refugees eventually settled in camps, where today some third-generation refugees continue to live awaiting a return to their former homes, which have either been destroyed or confiscated by Israelis — the basis of the very controversial demand of the “Right to Return.”
This humanitarian crisis prompted the Holy See to found Pontifical Mission for Palestine, entrusting its administration and direction to CNEWA to coordinate worldwide Catholic aid for all Palestinians.
A second displacement after the so-called Six-Day War in 1967 provoked an exodus of an additional 300,000 Palestinians, who have been barred from returning to their homes.
In a real sense, the notion of the two-state solution became a political reality in U.N. Resolution 181, which attempted to establish a Jewish state and an Arab state. As such, it was not so much a “solution” as a “decree.” In either case, it was a total failure, and the British withdrew.
The Arab Israeli war began an uninterrupted cycle of violence and unsuccessful negotiations that continue to this very moment in time. The two-state solution, therefore, is built on the U.N. Partition Plan that was not a “solution” crafted to solve specific issues. Rather, it was built on a decree commanding what must be done.
Since the Six-Day War, there have been several attempts to implement the two-state solution to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. The most prominent include: the Camp David Accords in September 1978; the Oslo Accords I and II in 1993 and 1995; the Arab Peace Initiative, sponsored by the Saudis in 2002; and the Roadmap for Peace, sponsored by the United States in 2003.
It does not take a historian or a scholar of the Middle East to recognize that none of the above succeeded. If anything, the situation has deteriorated, especially since the terrorist attack of Hamas on 7 October 2023, that killed some 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage, and the total war response of Israel in which more than 55,000 Palestinians, including some 14,000 children, have been killed and which has reduced Gaza to rubble.
As the world looks on in (all too often paralyzed) horror, the need to solve this 80-year nightmare surfaces again. And yet again, one hears of “the two-state solution,” which, to be honest, stirs up neither hope nor enthusiasm. However, a new proposal has surfaced that may offer some possibilities.
Published by the Cambridge Initiative on Peace Settlements, “A Palestinian Armistice Plan: Charting a Rights-Based Transition for Palestinian-Israeli Peace,” offers a creative possibility to move in a new, although certainly not backward, direction when it states:
“It is up to the Palestinians and Israelis themselves to decide whether there will be (1) two independent states, where the rights of all citizens are guaranteed regardless of national origin, religion or race and where Palestinians are free from occupation and apartheid rule and a just resolution to refugeehood is implemented and reparations are provided; (2) a binational state with equal rights for all; (3) a confederal arrangement between Israel and the State of Palestine; or (4) some other solution consistent with international law.”
A stark choice between “the two-state solution” and “a two-state solution” comes across as a choice between reality and chaos. By offering concrete examples of alternatives, the “Armistice Plan” shows the choice may not be between two mutually exclusive options, but among a full range of creative and even perhaps overlapping alternatives to achieve a just and sustainable peace for Israelis and Palestinians.