"A Two-State Solution is Impossible! (Because of Me)"

The tired argument that none of us should fall for

Build from an image by mesh cube via Getty.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Tareq Baconi — the head of a pro-Palestinian think tank — called “The Two State Solution Is an Unjust, Impossible Fantasy”. I thought the op-ed was terrific in the same way that I thought the 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar rom-com “Simply Irresistible” was terrific, which is to say: It was terrible. As regular readers of this blog know, my soul died in a blimp crash in 2016, so I can only derive pleasure by ironically enjoying awful things. And Baconi’s piece truly made my day because it was a delectable smorgasbord of absolute shit.

If you switched around some specifics, Baconi’s op-ed could double as a screed by the most right-wing member of Netanyahu’s cabinet. It was all there: The litany of grievances (that don’t change the reality on the ground), the cherry-picked historical events (that don’t change the reality on the ground), and the complaints about Western behavior (that don’t change the reality on the ground). I hope psychologists one day unpack the link between chauvinist politics and a fixation on history (which Vladimir Putin recently demonstrated so vividly). You know you’re talking to a zealot when they bring up the 1161 Treaty Of Artlenburg or the Kingdom Of The Five Eunuchs or whatever the fuck — the farther back in history a person reaches to justify their views, the more one-sided their views are likely to be.

Baconi’s first deception is to conflate “won’t happen now” with “will never happen”. He declares partition “unattainable” and says the idea has “lost all meaning”. One-staters often pull this trick: They linguistically blend the correct observation that two states are impossible right now with the incorrect belief that two states could never happen. If someone in 1,000 B.C. had said “the iPhone is impossible,” they would have been partially right: The iPhone was impossible at the time and a billion things needed to happen before that would change. But if that same person had said “the iPhone is impossible, and therefore we should ditch that fantasy and embrace clay tablets, which are the most advanced form of communication that humans will ever achieve,” they would have been dead wrong. As wrong as Baconi is today.

Baconi’s second deception is to argue against a two-state solution by arguing against a one-state solution. We often act as if there are two alternatives: Two states or one state. But there are actually three: 1) A two-state solution, 2) One state that is Israel, or 3) One state that is Palestine. Baconi spends a lot of time arguing that a two-state solution is a smokescreen for a single Israeli state; he says that Biden’s call for two states “rings hollow” and calls partition “a central pillar of sustaining Palestinian subjugation and Israeli impunity”. I find it telling that Baconi doesn’t actually argue against the thing that he nominally opposes. Arguments become easy if you can simply say that Thing A is actually Thing B and then argue against Thing B. When I argue that Maroon 5 sucks — as I frequently do — I argue that their music is dickless pop for soccer moms with a transparently phony “edge”. I don’t argue that they granted a religious decree in 1478 that led to the Spanish Inquisition, because they didn’t — that was Pope Sixtus IV. If I wrote an op-ed called “Maroon 5 Sucks” and spent my entire word count complaining about their relationship with Queen Isabella and their involvement in the Pazzi conspiracy, it would be fair for you to conclude that my real issue is with Pope Sixtus IV and that I lack legitimate criticisms of Maroon 5.

Baconi also never says what he’s for. It’s easy to deduce what he’s for, of course: He doesn’t support two states, and he really doesn’t support a single Israeli state, so he must support a single Palestinian state. I’m dismissing the “bi-national state” canard out-of-hand because neither Palestinians nor Israelis want that; if two states are “impossible”, then no word exists to describe the impossibility of the entire region joining hands and declaring The People’s Republic Of Smiles And Hugs. I’m also assuming that Baconi doesn’t support an outside-the-box outcome like, I don’t know…a five-state solution — Israel/Palestine/Kurdistan/Catalonia/Quebec, anyone? He also probably doesn’t favor ceding all the land to, say, Peru. Baconi clearly wants a single Palestinian state, and the fact that he spent more than 1,600 words dancing around a concept that he could have expressed in four (“there shouldn’t be Israel”) should tell us something.

You can probably see why Baconi’s piece strikes me as a mirror-image of opinions held by Netanyahu’s cabinet members or even Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu has damaged prospects for peace by giving up on a two-state solution without ever explicitly saying: “I have given up on a two-state solution.” He has rejected a Palestinian state for the time being, but been vague about whether his stance is circumstantial or permanent. He said that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” but modified that with “in the foreseeable future”. He deploys the same obfuscation of time frames and failure to be explicit about his long-term goals as Baconi. But if you switch on your bullshit detector, it’s clear: Netanyahu will never support a Palestinian state. Never ever ever ever ever. Liberace never said he was gay, Barry Bonds never admitted to using steroids, and Benjamin Netanyahu never publicly denounced the possibility of a Palestinian state, but if you think that any of those situations are still ambiguous, then I really don’t know what to tell you.

The thing that makes a two-state solution impossible is people who insist on a single state. Two-staters are clear about what we want; one-staters dissemble and obfuscate because they know that saying “we want all the land and the other side should die, leave, or be marginalized” wouldn’t go over well. They obnoxiously declare a two-state solution “impossible” without acknowledging their role in the stalemate. The dynamic gives me perverse respect for opponents of an idea who at least admit to being opponents. George Wallace stood in the door at the University of Alabama because he opposed integration; he didn’t say “Gee, I’ve love to let in Black students, but unfortunately there’s a gas leak, and we’re spraying for termites, and the floors just got mopped so they’re super slippery, plus some racist is blocking the door, so sadly letting in Black students is impossible!”

I don’t expect there to be an Israeli state next to a Palestinian state any time soon. I’d bet against it happening in my lifetime, and I’m merely “hates all popular entertainment” old, not “binge-watches cable news” old. My pessimism is due to the ascendance of one-staters, not due to flaws in the two-state concept. I feel that a safe and secure Israel next to a safe and secure Palestine remains the only solution consistent with peoples’ right to self-determination. I can’t see that ever changing. And I think that people who imagine that an ethical one-state solution exists are the ones who are seeking something impossible.

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