With the bloodshed in Gaza ongoing and Israeli hostages still in captivity, it can be difficult to consider the future when it comes to Israel and Palestine. But it's an urgent question, and one that has been occupying many policymakers tasked with charting a path forward in a small and contested land. Yet when considering possible futures, there's one proposal that is repeated ad nauseam by American policymakers: the two-state solution. President Biden even declared it to be the "only real solution" in his last State of the Union address last month. In a guest essay for Times Opinion, the Palestinian writer Tareq Baconi questions why the two-state solution has become such a mantra for politicians and explains why he thinks this "solution" offers little justice for his people. Baconi outlines the ways the two-state solution has been dangled in front of Palestinians as a means to independence and sovereignty, even as it became "a central pillar of sustaining Palestinian subjugation and Israeli impunity." The promise of sovereignty offered by two states, he argues, is undercut by the reality on the ground. Today, Baconi and many human rights groups say that Israel has de facto control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, controlling and subjugating Palestinians through barriers — some physical, like walls and fences, others tactical, such as military law and stringent limitations on how Palestinians can live, work and travel — all the while presenting itself as a democratic state. For Baconi this amounts to apartheid, whereby a separate system of governance and control exists for unwanted populations. Crucial to his argument is the complicity of current Palestinian leadership. Baconi points out that Palestinians have rarely been asked for consent when their homeland has been partitioned, and now their representatives at the bargaining table are the Palestinian Authority, an entity that many Palestinians consider to be a "subcontractor to the occupation." Israeli leaders, too, have been unwilling to consider Palestinian sovereignty: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has forcefully rejected the idea as recently as January, months into the war in Gaza. Baconi argues that the future for Israel and Palestine will not come down to an easy policy prescription. The tens of thousands of lives lost and the countless more shattered demand that we think more expansively about the region's future.
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Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Opinion Today: On the two-state solution
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