Last weekend, in an interview with Sky News in Arabic, a White House official said, "The term 'two-state solution' has a different meaning for different people. There's no point in using a term that never achieved peace." The same official explained that the Palestinians and Israelis interpret differently the notion of partitioning the land; hence the United States doesn't use the term explicitly.
It's a shame the same official wasn't brave enough to offer the real reason: If a two-state solution is presented before a new coalition government is formed in Israel, such a coalition won't be able to form, and if it is unveiled after the coalition is established – the government won't be able to last, because a far-right party that leans, among other things, on Kahanist principles, will resign immediately. Now, when the heads of this party have already said they would even reject the idea of Palestinian autonomy (which no Palestinian will accept regardless as part of final-status agreement, and which will produce a situation whereby a Jewish minority rules over a Palestinian majority), it seems to me that the Americans are feverishly looking for new words in the dictionary.
Indeed, every side does interpret terms differently. But if this was an alibi for avoiding final-status agreements, Israel would never have signed the peace deals with Jordan and Egypt. The loaded term "peace" is also perceived differently by the various sides. We celebrate, justifiably, the 40-year anniversary of the peace deal signed with Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who paid for it with his life, and Menachem Begin, the hawkish prime minister who promised – prior to the signing – not to cede the Israeli communities in Sinai or return to the pre-1967 borders, and who ultimately rescinded all his conditions to secure a peace accord. But after four decades nearly no Egyptians come to Israel to visit; those who do dare meet with our ambassador to Cairo are openly admonished; lawyers who want to visit Israel are disbarred, and authors who seek the same are boycotted. This wasn't the Israeli interpretation of peace, and the same applies to the situation with Jordan.
An independent entity of governance, or autonomy in the Israeli interpretation, means the IDF would still be free to enter homes in this autonomous entity, in the middle of the night, and arrest suspects, or demolish or seal homes. This, apparently, is not the Palestinian interpretation. Ditto for the term "normalization," which both sides understand contrastingly, or "demilitarization," "security cooperation" and even extradition.
Perhaps if the sides viewed these diplomatic terms similarly, peace would come before the peace deals, but this type of dynamic doesn't exist in any conflict. Therefore, the deal must precede peace and define the meaning of the terms. Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the two Likud leaders who as prime minister expressed support for the two-state solution, suggested a demilitarized Palestinian state; which this was also the intention of Yitzhak Rabin, who on the eve of his murder spoke of "less than a state." The Palestinians, ever since the peace negotiations of September 1993, have never demanded an army, sufficing with a security apparatus to maintain order. The people discussing limitations on a Palestinians state refer precisely to this point; and, for example, just as no one in the world claims Costa Rica isn't a country because it doesn't have an army, the Palestinians would also have a country even if it doesn't have an army.
The idea of a two-state solution is exactly 82 years old but has never been tried. Anyone who claims this solution has always ended badly should take another look at the history books. It's possible that Trump has already given up on his plan, because he doesn't want to embarrass the Israeli government or believes any proposal he puts forth will be met with efforts to torpedo it, but if this isn't the case, then his special envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, and his colleagues, should re-examine the only solution that will ensure Israel remains Jewish and democratic and liberates both sides from the occupier-occupied dynamic.
