There has been a two-day lull in Palestinian missile attacks on Sderot. Our Israeli correspondent MC used the opportunity to examine the recent history of “two-state solutions”, in Israel and elsewhere. He says, “I wrote it on Friday as we sat waiting for the next incoming.”
Two-State Solutions — Do They Work?
by MC
Nobody here in Israel really wants a two-state solution. It is the obsession of a particular clique of elitist left-thinking politicians who see dividing and ruling as their droit de seigneur; their divine right to rape the world in the name of a New World Order. The existing propaganda relates two states to peace. This is a chimera.
In Israel we have had at least three attempts at the “two-state solution”, each one stripping away territory with no quid pro quo. The first one was in 1923; the most recent is still ongoing, but is stagnating because one side will make no concessions.
In many ways, the one side is more honest: they want a one-state solution which is facilitated by the annihilation of the Jewish State of Israel (as a prerequisite to the extermination of Jews worldwide).
This is ‘acceptable racism’ because it is not Judeo-Christian in it origin. To be ‘racist’ one must be born into Judeo-Christianity, and these are Muslims.
There was an attempt at a two-state solution in the USA in 1861; it failed with huge loss of life. That particular two-state solution too was caused by dissension between two opposing and irreconcilable worldviews. The two-state solution is the compromise of moral relativity: if one assumes that all worldviews are equally valid, then the two-state solution becomes a viable outcome.
The Scottish Nationalists want an independent Scotland. They want a two-state solution, on the assumption that, if it works they get power, and if it does not work they will get bailed out and will still retain power. So it is win/win for them as long as they can rely on other people’s money to underwrite the risk.
In 1922 the League of nations mandated Great Britain to create a Jewish Homeland in the territories prescribed by the mandate, and based upon the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a letter of intent addressed to Baron Rothschild. This was land recovered from the defeated Ottoman Turks by the efforts of British and Commonwealth Soldiers in 1917/18. The British immediately ceded some 80% of the land to the Arabs, the first two-state solution in the area, depriving the Jewish homeland of a huge tract of land.
A later two-state solution was proposed by United Nations Resolution 181 ratified in 1947, which further split the remaining land between Jews and Arabs. The Arabs rejected this two-state solution and invaded the Jewish areas in 1948. They lost. They also lost three successive wars to bring about a ‘One (Arab) State Solution’. After the 1973 annihilation they gave up military warfare for political lawfare, claiming the intention of a two-state solution (to appear tractable in the eyes of western liberals) whilst insisting, in reality, on conditions appertaining to a one-state solution, and making political pawns of the people they claimed to be serving.
The 1938 Munich crisis precipitated a two-state solution whereby the Sudetenland was given to Nazi Germany, with dire results for a Czechoslovakia left defenseless against the might of a barbarous enemy. The Soviet-Nazi pact was a two-state solution for Poland that left Poland in ruins and its population ravaged. Germany in its turn was subject to a two-state solution, the Russian part of which suffered immensely. Another barbaric two-state solution was the partition of India in 1948, with a death toll of some three million souls.
The two-state solution is fraught with problems and poses dire risks for the inhabitants of the victim states. The attempted two-state solution in the USA still has its repercussions to this day, even if the Virginian mini two-state solution did work ( I assume that there is still not much love lost between the two to this day). The overall success rate of the two-state solution is not good.
So now we come to the Ukraine, a sad country with a sad history caught as it is between great powers of history, past and present.
Here we have a problem not unlike the Arab/Israeli situation: we have a large immigrant population imported by a third-party occupier into a state that has never really been an independent state. It is also a state with a history of being a victim of mass murder. Here in Sderot there is an elderly Ukrainian lady who was about eight years old at the time of the Holodomor. She remembers surviving by eating grass; there was nothing else. She was a victim of rampant socialism from an early age: “From each according to ability, to each a handful of grass.”
Two-state solutions imply a large degree of social engineering, and that is probably the root of the problem. Left alone, the states would find their own accommodations. Left alone, Ukraine would have found an equilibrium. That is now impossible; the Balrog has been awakened and cannot easily be pacified. The question is: who woke it and why? Are Ukrainians once more to be sacrificed to the ambitions of competing powers?
It appears that Humpty-Dumpty was pushed off the wall, but the result is the same. Maybe a civil war followed by a partitioned Ukraine? A two-state solution to a problem that should never have existed — a futile exercise in Hegelian cynicism.
The arch-egotist John Kerry is also trying to push on Israel a two-state solution that everybody here knows is a farce. Palestine is to be ethnically cleansed of Jews; this is acceptable. Israel, however, is to be left with a large and hostile Arab minority because ethnic cleansing of non-Judeo-Christians is not acceptable. Abbas is the unelected dictator of the West Bank, and even there he has to be propped up, for he has little power except via the funds donated by the West. Any peace document signed by Abbas is about as binding as an Oslo accord. But of course, it only has to last until the voting in the U.S. mid-term elections is done. Then it can be abandoned and the peoples of Israel and Judea and Samaria left to suffer the consequences, ’cos that’s what history shows us happens in “two-state solutions”.
The two-state solution is a political toy played with by bully states who wish to ‘rule’ both parties, a political football to kick around until it’s time to do something else. Then the two sides are abandoned to the resulting hate and hostility.
Israel sorted out its two-state problem, only to have it re-imposed by the Carter and Clinton administrations. The Ukraine’s two state problem only became a problem because third parties fanned the flames of ethnic tensions for their own purposes. People, when you hear of a two-state solution, “be afraid, be very afraid.”
Previous posts by our Israeli correspondent MC:
The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East
Your posts always lead me into the historical byways. In this case, The Balfour Declaration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
(There was a second, later one, on granting more autonomy to Commonwealth countries. Balfour was a busy man.)
Considering the subject, this wiki is ‘balanced’. And it gives plenty of sources to follow. What I find most interesting was the engine driving this whole thing: to get Jews world-wide to support WWI, not least of which were two of Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisors.
—————————
Here’s a fascinating passage from that wiki account:
During the first meeting between Chaim Weizmann and Balfour in 1906, Balfour asked what Weizmann’s objections were to the idea of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, (the Uganda Protectorate in East Africa in the British Uganda Programme), rather than in Palestine. According to Weizmann’s memoir, the conversation went as follows:
“Mr. Balfour, supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?” He sat up, looked at me, and answered: “But Dr. Weizmann, we have London.” “That is true,” I said, “but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh.” He … said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: “Are there many Jews who think like you?” I answered: “I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves.” … To this he said: “If that is so you will one day be a force.”
So why was Weizmann listened to so carefully by the British? Well, Germany had possession of most of the available acetate needed for making modern ammunition- i.e., ‘smokeless’. Weizmann had something better: he was a chemist who’d created a way to synthesize acetone. So it was a matter not of the usual “follow the money” but instead “follow the munitions” (or “follow the technology”).
Hmm…that clears up the mystery for me of why Weizmann was a man to be reckoned with. Now if “they” would just develop a workable replacement for petroleum…and share it. The Gulf States’ heads would explode, but it would be quite a bargaining chip for a one state of Israel with reasonable defensible borders.
IOW, all Israel has to do to be granted a firm reality is to save the world.
Scientia Potentia Est exemplified in real life.
Its interesting how vividly Weizman describes the differences between London and Jeruzalem in past times.
MC: You forgot to mention the 1937 Peel Partition Plan, whereby the 22% of Mandatory Palestine that wasn’t hived off to be an explicitly Jew-free “Emirate of Transjordan” was to be further subdivided through a two-state solution. The proposed Jewish state of 1937 comprised less than a third of the residual 22%. The Jews reluctantly accepted the Peel partition proposal. The Arabs – they didn’t start calling themselves “Palestinians” until 30 years later because in 1937 the very name “Palestine” was regarded by them as a bogus imperialist artifice coined to assist the Zionist cause – of course rejected the Peel proposal. The Arabs had boycotted any participation in the Peel Royal Commission of 1936; the sole exception being Emir Abdullah of Transjordan whose regal dignity required the Commissioners to visit him in his Amman palace and who anticipated annexing the proposed Arab state. Which he did in 1948.
Resolution 181 was essentially the Peel commission plan…..
@MC,
“The Scottish Nationalists want an independent Scotland. They want a two-state solution, … “
You should have said the Scottish National Party (SNP) not Scottish Nationalists.
Only after the referendum whatever the outcome – Yes or No – will a coherent form of Scottish nationalism present itself at the moment aspirations for Scots independence are being blunted, channelled and compromised through progressive politics – this can be illustrated by the politically counterintuitive SNP slogan “Independence in Europe”.
Canny Alex Salmond is underrated in the field of political craft.
The two-state solution is the latest U.S. fad as we slowly fracture back to our original sins.
*Western Maryland is working on a way to break off from Baltimore and environs.
*Parts of rural Colorado want out of the sections of the state that fleeing Californians are fast turning into California 2.0 – those lefties leave a state they helped ruin and then try to make the new place into a new mess. Old Colorado doesn’t want to be new California. I hear they’re (transplanted Californians) doing it in parts of Texas, too, but Texas has more experience with resistance.
*Many southern Virginians would like to break away from NoVa – the Baron’s “wretched hive of scum and villainy” that is an appendage to the Federal Behemoth. It will never happen; so much of VA’s history is there, buried under the detritus. Besides the State Assembly would never allow all that tax money to get out of their hands.
As UNCivilization and its attendant chaos takes hold all over the world, rural areas will increasingly push away from the urban mess. But both sections need each other and will have to find a way to get along. See Copley’s book on the sidebar.
BTW, what many Europeans don’t realize that vast reaches of the West are not in the hands of private individuals. They are owned by government, state and federal, and thus provide no tax revenue to the states. Like most absentee landlords, their oversight leaves much to be desired – e.g., brush cutting and thinning of the forests to prevent large scale fires. Privately held lands are much better tended.
From the Strange Maps website:
The United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly 30% of its total territory.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/291-federal-lands-in-the-us
Be sure to look at the map…
“The question is: who woke it and why?”
The answer is George Soros.
“Soros first involved himself in Ukrainian affairs in 1989, when he established the Ukrainian International Renaissance Foundation, or IRF, two years before Ukraine became an independent nation. Since then, Soros has provided more than $100 million to support Ukrainian groups, mostly through the IRF and the Open Society Institute.”
“Soros’ IRF, headquartered in Kiev, not only supports numerous non-governmental organizations, it holds regular seminars and training sessions for local groups regarding such topics as “open borders” and the transformation of the region via the European Union.”
….
“Within the purview of its local work, the IRF supported at least one of the main groups now protesting in Ukraine.”
“The Spilna Sprava activist organization, which has been central in leading some of the protests, took in a $3,000 IRF donation in 2009. Spilna Sprava, or Common Cause, has been in the news repeatedly in recent days for seizing numerous government buildings.”
http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/soros-heavily-invested-in-ukraine-crisis/#7wS0zAB2bPFyVTfG.99
“…the snipers — who shot both police and demonstrators — were hired by the organizers of those same demonstrations.”
http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-catherine-ashton-phone-shoot-maidan-bugged-leaked
“The question is: who woke it and why?”
The answer is George Soros.
“Soros first involved himself in Ukrainian affairs in 1989, when he established the Ukrainian International Renaissance Foundation, or IRF, two years before Ukraine became an independent nation. Since then, Soros has provided more than $100 million to support Ukrainian groups, mostly through the IRF and the Open Society Institute.”
“Soros’ IRF, headquartered in Kiev, not only supports numerous non-governmental organizations, it holds regular seminars and training sessions for local groups regarding such topics as “open borders” and the transformation of the region via the European Union.”
….
“Within the purview of its local work, the IRF supported at least one of the main groups now protesting in Ukraine.”
“The Spilna Sprava activist organization, which has been central in leading some of the protests, took in a $3,000 IRF donation in 2009. Spilna Sprava, or Common Cause, has been in the news repeatedly in recent days for seizing numerous government buildings.”
http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/soros-heavily-invested-in-ukraine-crisis/#7wS0zAB2bPFyVTfG.99
“…the snipers — who shot both police and demonstrators — were hired by the organizers of those same demonstrations.”
http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-catherine-ashton-phone-shoot-maidan-bugged-leaked
Tend to think the union of Scotland and England 1706-7 was a progressive two-state solution borne out of moral and economic bankruptcy. Scots independence would be a reconstitution of what was dissolved – Scots independence a resurrection not an insurrection.
Everybody knows the two-state solution in the case of Israel is progressive flattery to coax Israel into self destruction, why cede hard won territory for strategic disadvantage? Thought Israeli statesmen and politicians were made of better stuff.
The USA has Israel in a “double nelson” headlock, miltarily and financially
Militarily, the IAF is totally dependant upon critical logistics from the USA, the US could ground the IAF in two weeks if it wanted to.
The financial deals cut at Camp David render out Israeli politicians impotent…..
The net result is that US pressure on a two state solution is hard to resist.
Not the USA, but America’s increasingly narcissistic leadership. Every administration wants to be the one to bring “peace” to MENA.
I’d say we were to blame for who we elect, but the choices permitted us by the nomenklatura are all mediocre or worse. Many Americans are considering whether they want to continue any longer voting in this criminal charade. Hobson’s choice, for sure.
After 60+ years, the global bitter clingers of anti-semitism still can’t believe Israel remains standing.
We get wonderful support from Americans, and for this Israelis are very thankful. Today I was helping at a children’s Purim party at the Chabad Synagogue, paid for by Americans.
Yes, you are quite right, the US government is no longer for the people or by the people and has not been since it was sold to the bankers in 1913.
I am corrected!
Two-State Solutions is possible Only if TransJordan will be the “Palestinian Arab” state and Israel will dwell between the River and the Sea shore. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria could be either citizens of ThransJordanian Palestine and inhabitants of Israel or live in some few free cantons with internal sovereignty.