Here's the Truth: It Is the Lack of a Two-State Solution That Most Threatens Israel

By Jeffrey D. Sachs & Sybil Fares

As a result of its belligerence and intransigence, Israel is now almost completely ostracized by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands.

Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would profoundly endanger Israel’s national security. In fact, it is the lack of a two-state solution that endangers Israel. Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, its continuing apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians, and its extreme violence to defend that rule, all put Israel’s survival in jeopardy, as Israel faces dire threats from global diplomatic isolation and the ongoing war, including the war’s massive economic, social, and financial costs.

There are three basic reasons for Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, reflecting a variety of ideologies and interests in Israeli society.

The first, and most mainstream, is Israel’s claim that Palestinians and the Arab world cannot live alongside it and only wish to destroy it. The second is the belief among Israel’s rapidly growing religious-nationalist population that God promised the Jews all of the land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, including all of Palestine. We recently wrote about that ideology, pointing out that it is roughly 2,600 years out of step with today’s realities. The third is straightforward material gain. With its ongoing occupation, Israel aims to profit from control over the region’s freshwater resources, coastal zones, offshore natural gas deposits, tourist destinations, and land for settlements.

These various motives are jumbled together in Israel’s continued intransigence. Yet taken individually or as a package, they fail to justify Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, certainly not from the perspective of international law and justice, but not even with regard to Israel’s own security or narrow economic interests.

Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging “unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.”

After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference:

All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing “to guarantee Israel’s security” in the context of a two-state solution. Minister Safadi, alongside the Palestinian Prime Minister, articulated the region’s peace proposal, an alternative to Netanyahu’s endless wars.

Earlier this year, the Bahrain Declaration in May 2024 of the 33rd Regular Session of the Council of the League of Arab States, on behalf of the 22 member states, re-iterated:

We call on the international community to assume its responsibilities to follow-up efforts to advance the peace process to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which embodies an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the lines of the fourth of June 1967, able to live in security and peace alongside Israel in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references, including the Arab Peace Initiative.

The many Arab and Islamic statements for peace, including those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which Iran is a repeated signatory, trace back to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative of Beirut—where Arab countries first proposed the region’s readiness to establish relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution. The initiative declared that peace is based on Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese occupied territories.

Israel claims that even if the Arab states and Iran want peace, Hamas does not, and therefore threatens Israel. There are two crucial points here. First, Hamas accepted the two-state solution, already 7 years ago, in their 2017 Charter. “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” This year again, Hamas proposed to disarm in exchange for Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders. Israel, in turn, assassinated the Hamas political chief and cease-fire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh.

Second, Hamas is very far from being a stand-alone actor. Hamas depends on funds and arms from the outside, notably from Iran. Implementation of the two-state solution under UN Security Council auspices would include the disarmament of non-state actors and mutual security arrangements for Israel and Palestine, in line with international law and the recent ICJ ruling, which Iran voted in favor of at UN General Assembly.

The giveaway that Hamas is an excuse, not a deep cause, of Israel’s intransigence is that Netanyahu has tactically if quietly supported Hamas over the years in a divide and conquer strategy. Netanyahu’s ruse has been to prevent the unity of different Palestinian political factions in order to forestall the Palestinian Authority from developing a national plan to forge a Palestinian state. The whole point of Netanyahu’s politics for decades has been to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state using any argument at hand.

Israel and its boosters often claim that the failure at Camp David in 2000 proves that the Palestinians reject the two-state solution. This claim also is not correct. As documented by many, including Clayton E. Swisher in his meticulous account in The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, the Camp David negotiations in 2000 failed owing to Bill Clinton’s last-minute approach to deal making, combined with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s political cowardice in failing to honor Israeli obligations under the Oslo Accord.

As time ran out at Camp David, Clinton was a dishonest broker, as were the blatantly pro-Israel US negotiators, who refused to acknowledge Palestine’s legal claim to the borders of 4 June 1967, and prevarications about Palestine’s right to its capital in East Jerusalem. The “final offer” abruptly pushed by the Israelis and their American backers on the Palestinians did not secure basic Palestinian rights, nor were the Palestinians given time to deliberate and respond with alternative proposals. The Palestinians were then falsely blamed by the Americans and Israelis for the failure of the negotiations.

Israel persists with its intransigence because it believes that it has the unconditional backing of the United States. Through decades of large campaign contributions and assiduous lobbying, the Israel lobby in the United States not only controls votes in the Congress, but also has also placed arch-Zionists in top positions in every administration. Yet due to Israel’s brutality in Palestine and Lebanon, the Israel Lobby has lost its ability to control the narrative and votes across mainstream American society.

Trump, Biden, and Netanyahu all believed that Israel could “have it all”—Greater Israel and peace with the Arab states, while blocking a Palestinian state—through a US-brokered normalization process. The Abraham Accords (which established diplomatic relations of Israel with Bahrain and the UAE) was to be the role model for normalizing relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This approach was always cynical (as it aimed to block a Palestinian state) but is surely delusional now. The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia has made crystal clear in his op-ed in the Financial Times on October 2, that the two-state solution is the only pathway to peace and normalization.

“A two-state solution is not merely an ideal; it is the only viable path to ensuring Palestine, Israel and the region’s long-term security. Uncontrolled escalatory cycles are the building blocks of wider war. In Lebanon, we are witnessing this firsthand. Peace cannot be built on a foundation of occupation and resentment; true security for Israel will come from recognising the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s ongoing intransigent opposition to the two-state solution, recently reiterated by a vote of the Knesset, has become the greatest danger to Israel’s own security. Israel is now almost completely ostracized by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands. As just one indicator of the emerging economic disarray, Israel’s credit rating is already plummeting, and Israel is likely to lose its investment grade credit rating very soon, with dire long-term economic consequences.

Nor does Israel’s violent pursuit of its extremist vision serve US security or US interests, and the American people oppose Israel’s extremism. The Israel Lobby is likely to lose its grip. Both the US public and the US deep state are very likely to withdraw their uncritical and unconditional support for Israel.

The practical elements of peace are at hand, as we recently spelled out in detail. The US can save the region from an imminent conflagration, and the world from a possible global war of great powers. The US should drop its veto of Palestine’s membership in the UN, and support the implementation of the two-state solution under the auspices of the UN Security Council, with enforcement of mutual security for both Israel and Palestine on the basis of justice and international law.