What's the Significance of Israel's New Declaration that There Will Absolutely Not Ever Be a Palestinian State?

The "two-state solution" has always been a morally wrong idea, and its impossibility an excuse for the oppressive status quo

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Before Discussing the Significance of Israel’s Newly Declared Absolute Opposition to a Palestinian State, i.e., to the “Two-State Solution,” Let’s Make the Key Facts about that “Solution” Clear

The “two-state solution” has always been morally wrong. Why? Because of these two related facts.

First, the #1 grievance of ordinary Palestinians is that they—the Palestinian refugees—are denied their Right of Return to the 78% of Mandate (“River to the Sea”) Palestine that is now called Israel, from which they (or their parents or grandparents) were forcibly expelled by Zionists in 1948 and 1967 because they were not Jewish, and to which even today they are prevented from returning despite the fact that it is their individual right to return, a right that no third party or government can waive for them, a right that is both morally theirs as well as theirs under international law.

Second, the “two-state solution” tells the Palestinian refugees that they will NEVER be allowed to return to the part of Palestine now called Israel from which they were expelled by Zionist ethnic cleansing, that they will only be allowed to live in some very small part of Palestine that will be called a “Palestinian state”—a state that will almost certainly be kept so weak and so dominated by Israel that it will be no more “independent” or “sovereign” than the nominally independent Gaza was from 2005 (when Israel withdrew Jewish settlers from Gaza) to 2023 when people in Gaza could not leave or import things or fish off their coast without Israel’s very restrictive permission.

This explains why ordinary Palestinians—the have-nots—view the “two-state solution” as a refusal to grant their #1 demand: The Right of Return.

The “Palestinians Just Want a Palestinian State” Myth

We often here public opinion polling companies tell us that “Most Palestinians favor a two-state solution.” What these polling companies and mass media never explain is that the question that Palestinians are asked is whether they prefer a) the “two-state solution” or b) the status quo of remaining stateless in the open air prison of Gaza or in the West Bank that is occupied and ruled by a harsh and deliberately de-humanizing Israeli military force that lets armed Israeli settlers torment Palestinians daily, or in Israel itself as second class citizens with far fewer rights than Jews and with the worry that at any time their homes can be demolished by the Israeli government for some trumped up reason. Of course they say they prefer the “two-state solution.” They are NEVER asked if they prefer a) the “two-state solution” or b) all of Palestine being a single democratic secular state in which Jews and non-Jews are equal under the law and the Palestinian refugees enjoy their Right of Return!

But the upper class Palestinians, the haves, the people who run the PLO and the Palestine Authority (which got its authority from the Oslo Accords), the people who get rich from corruption and power, THESE people like the idea of the “two-state solution.” They like it for the same reason that the upper classes—the haves—of ALL ethnic/national groups want a state of their own, i.e., a working class of their own that they can dominate and oppress and exploit to get rich off of. This is exactly why the early Zionist leaders wanted a state of their own and why they betrayed the European Jews to be killed by the Nazis to get it, as I show in detail here.

The reason the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) switched from being for making all of Palestine one single democratic secular state in which Jews and non-Jews would be equal under the law (which gained great support for the PLO from ordinary Palestinians), to instead being for the “two-state solution” is this. In 1993 the United States in the Oslo Accords put pressure on the PLO to accept a framework implying a “two-state solution” eventually, and the PLO was willing to yield to that pressure for despicable reasons of its upper class leaders.

From that time, virtually all of the governments of the world officially supported the “two-state solution.” For a while there wasn’t enough of the West Bank occupied by Israeli settlers to make the “two-state solution” obviously impossible. But eventually Israeli settlers took over so much of the West Bank that it became obvious to anybody looking closely that the “two-state solution” was not even possible anymore. Still, virtually all the world’s governments (including Israel’s now and then) continued to perfunctorily advocate the “two-state solution,” pretending that it was a real possibility “if only an agreement can be reached and Israel will stop expanding its settlements in the West Bank, bla bla bla.”

The Actual Purpose of the “Two-State Solution”

The fact of the matter is that the only actual purpose of the “two-state solution” has been to give diplomats some words to utter while they maintained the status quo. The status quo meant keeping the Palestinians super-oppressed so they remained the frightening bogeyman enemy that Israeli billionaire rulers need to control the Israeli working class Jews whom they oppress economically severely to get rich off of, as I prove here. The status quo also meant keeping credible the bogeyman enemy (“freedom-hating antisemitic Muslim terrorists”) that the War on Terror narrative relied on to deprive American have-nots of liberties and the better lives they deserved, as I discuss here.

Why Has Israel Declared Absolutely No Palestinian State?

I don’t know what exactly Israel is planning to do now. But I do know what it is NOT planning to do.

The Israeli ruling class absolutely depends, for its continued ability to stay in power and get rich off of the Israeli Jewish working class, on having the Palestinians remain a frightening bogeyman enemy for controlling the Israeli Jewish working class by pretending to protect those have-not Jews from the Palestinians. One can see this at work in the words of the Israeli ambassador who declared absolutely no Palestinian state. She said, when pressed about having no Palestinian state,

“I think the biggest question is what kind of Palestinians are on the other side,” the ambassador said. “This is what Israel realises…”

What kind of Palestinians indeed! Israel’s rulers assert, and need its Jewish have-nots to believe, that the Palestinians are a violent antisemitic existential threat to Israeli Jews. Israel’s rulers absolutely must prevent its Jewish have-nots from knowing what ordinary Palestinians actually want. (Read what they want here.) The Israeli ambassador’s recent “absolutely no Palestinian state” declaration with its warning about “what kind of Palestinians are on the other side” ramps up the already previously hysterical rhetoric by asserting that Palestinians are so dangerous to Israeli Jews that they cannot even be allowed to exist anywhere near Israel.

Israel’s rulers seem to fear that their control over their Jewish have-nots (who were demonstrating against Netanyahu before October 7 and are still calling for his ouster now) is slipping and it requires making the Palestinian bogeyman enemy even more frightening than before, hence the ramped up “absolutely no Palestinian state” rhetoric.

This is why I know that whatever else the Israeli government is planning on doing, it will not be anything that entails ending its seven-decades long policy of treating the Palestinians like dirt to make them be a credible bogeyman enemy. Israel for decades has funded Hamas and worked to keep it in power precisely BECAUSE it is a terrorist organization that makes the Palestinian bogeyman enemy maximally frightening to Israeli Jews. I prove this here.

How exactly Israel’s rulers will treat the Palestinians like dirt I cannot predict. But for sure they will not stop doing that because if they did, then—the horror! the horror!—peace would break out. Palestinians would repudiate Hamas and anyone else who advocated violence against people just because they were Jews or Israelis. Israeli Jews would stop viewing Palestinians as their existential enemy. The have-not Palestinians and have-not Jews in all of Palestine would no longer remain under the control of their respective upper class haves for very long, upper class haves who control their have-nots by pretending to be fighting against, or protecting them from, their supposed “real enemy.”

Yogi Berra famously said that it’s hard to make predictions, especially of the future. True enough. But when it comes to predicting what Israel’s Zionist rulers will NOT do, it’s easy. Israel’s new declaration emphatically rejecting a Palestinian state does not point to any significant change in the nature of the class conflict in that region.

Israel and the United States Versus the People of the World

The United Nations General Assembly on December 12 voted 153 to 10 for a ceasefire. These national governments are all governments of the haves ruling over their have-nots. But nonetheless, the have-nots of the world are so rightfully furious at Israel for its horrifying ongoing massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza (with full U.S. backing), that their rulers feel obliged—for their own ability to remain in power!—to vote for a ceasefire.

Israeli and United States rulers are today more than ever viewed as rogue dangerous criminals carrying out genocide. How will Israeli and U.S. rulers respond to this new situation? I don’t know. But again, I know how they will NOT respond. They will not respond by becoming something different from what they are. Leopards don’t change their spots, nor tigers their stripes. These rulers will remain oppressors of have-nots, to their core.

We, the have-nots, will have to wage the class war tomorrow no less than today, whatever Israel’s rulers or the U.S. rulers decide to do tomorrow.