ESR | February 20, 2023 | The “Two-State Solution�? and the Arab Palestinians: Partition or politicide?

The world still believes that the “Two-State Solution” is the way to resolve the Israel-Palestine Conflict. But when the Arab Palestinians invoke this idea, they are holding something back.

For decades, the slogan, the “Two-State Solution,” has triggered a conditioned reflex. It has been widely accepted as the optimal solution to the war that the Arab world has waged against Israel.

Each side, however, interprets the term differently. Only by tracing its origin, can we understand its double meaning. From the outset, it was designed as a weapon of political warfare, whose purpose was deception. Its facile appeal has remained because the general public is largely ignorant of the real motives behind it.

Most people of good faith understand the “Two-State Solution” as Partition, dating back to the Peel Commission, which, on July 7, 1937, recommended the division of Mandatory Palestine into two unequal parts: one, Palestinian Arab, and the other, Jewish, with transfers of population. Its conclusion eloquently presented the Commission’s compromise: “Half a loaf is better than no bread” is a peculiarly English proverb; and, considering the attitude that both the Arab and Jewish representatives adopted in giving evidence before us, we think it improbable that either party will be satisfied at first sight with the proposals we have submitted for the adjustment of their rival claims. For Partition means that neither will get all it wants….1

The prominent Zionist leaders of the time, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion, accepted the Commission’s compromise, namely “the half a loaf,” which actually was much less than half, because they understood the limitations of power. In contrast, the Arab Palestinian leadership, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, rejected the Commission’s proposals. Later, in May 1939, seeking to appease the Arab world, Great Britain caved and issued the White Paper, severely limiting Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. At this critical moment in history, a real “Two-State Solution” could have saved many lives.

For his part, the Mufti ardently collaborated with Nazi Germany and spent most of the Second World War in Berlin as a privileged guest with a fat budget.2 On November 2, 1943, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, he participated in a rally in the Luftwaffe building in Berlin, whose purpose was to repudiate the Declaration, despite the fact that the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad. His speech was beamed by radio to the whole Arab world. The following is an excerpt:

The Mufti made a common cause with Nazi Germany. He viewed his war against the Jews as a religious war and supported genocide.

After the war, the idea of Partition found new life in the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947. However, when seven Arab countries invaded the newly declared State of Israel, the United Nations did nothing. According to historian Bernard Lewis, “the United Nations failed to act after the Arab states invaded the Land and then treated Jewish and Arab refugees differently, leaving problems that remain today.” As a consequence, the powers that condoned the naked aggression of the Arab world bear a good measure of moral responsibility for the present impasse.

By rejecting the compromise of the Peel Commission and of the United Nations, the Arab side made a costly mistake. When the Arab states attacked Mandatory Palestine in 1947, they were not concerned with the fate of the “Arab Palestinian People” (who at the time simply considered themselves Arabs). They intended to partition the land for themselves.

The nascent State of Israel won the 1948 War for Independence, changing the demographic balance that had previously been to the Arab advantage. Both in 1937 and 1947, the Jews of the Yishuv were the only side that accepted Partition, i.e., “the half loaf.”

At present, the main advocates of the idea of “territorial compromise” are Israel’s enemies, along with well-meaning outsiders and “progressive” Israelis. For the Arab Palestinians, the basic objective is to achieve “justice” by means of “armed struggle.” One need only consult Article 21 of the Palestinian Covenant:

Further, one cannot overlook the PLO’s “authentic genocide message.” For example, Daniel Pipes published a reader’s comment in the Middle East Forum stating that the PLO’s first chairman, Ahmad al-Shukeiri (Shuqayrī) (1908–80), coined the phrase “Driving the Jews into the sea,”/“Throwing the Jews into the sea.” The contributor [who most likely was Prof. Barry Rubin of the IDC, Herzliya] observed: “After the Six-Day War, realizing the great damage it has done to Arabs, Arab propagandists, including Shukairy himself, tried somehow to ‘transform’ his statement from the meaning of annihilation to the meaning of ‘transfer’ of Jews (or ‘ethnic cleansing’), but it was too late, the clarity of his authentic genocide message was already publicized.”5

Indeed, in a 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, and, later, in 1980, Yassir Arafat stated the Palestinian position succinctly: “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else.”6 During a visit to Venezuela in February 1980, he elaborated on this theme:

Over time, intransigent pronouncements and terrorist attacks, such as Black September (1970) and the Munich Massacre at the Olympics (1972) harmed the Arab Palestinian cause. Consequently, the PLO needed to repair its image in order to achieve its political goals. On the prompting of the Soviet Union, the Politbureau of North Vietnam coached a PLO delegation.

As early as February 1970, Salah Khalaf, a.k.a. Abu Iyad, led a PLO delegation to Hanoi where they met the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap. Their political experts advised them how to manipulate the Western media and transform their public image from terrorists to “moderates.” Abu Iyad described this important encounter in his book, My Home, My Land, a series of interviews with Eric Rouleau published in 1978.

The North Vietnamese advised the Palestinians on the need to devote attention to the intermediate stages of their war and to accepting “provisional sacrifices.”8 They suggested that by seemingly accepting “the division of the land between two independent states, without stressing that this was only an interim phase,” the PLO’s opponents in the West would be placated. This is the true origin of the “Two-State Solution.”

Salah Khalaf added a most interesting insight, “a member of the Politbureau explained that they would prefer to use moderate, even vague, so as not to offend American Jews, many of whom were active in the antiwar movement…. There again, I thought, we had much to learn from our Vietnamese colleagues, who don’t hesitate to sacrifice the detail so as to preserve the essential.”9

Several years later, the recommendations of the North Vietnamese provided the basic principles of the “‘Phases Program/Phased Plan’, which was formulated in the resolution of the Twelfth Palestinian National Council in Cairo on June 9, 1974.”10 Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, describes how this strategy was meant to work:

Indeed, several Palestinian leaders proudly revealed that they entered into the Oslo peace process in bad faith. For example, Faysal Al-Husseini (1940-2001), whom the media designated as a “Palestinian moderate,” declared in an interview published on June 24, 2001, in the Egyptian (Nasserite) newspaper, Al Arabi, that the Oslo arrangements constituted a “Trojan horse” and part of the “Phased goals”:

It is clear that Faysal Al-Husseini gave an accurate explanation of what the Palestinians mean when they speak of the “Two-State Solution.” The term is a type of bait that conceals their ultimate strategy of bringing about the politicide of Israel by other means. The Palestinians are engaged in an open-ended religious war using military and non-military tactics.

If our leaders sincerely want to advance the cause of peace, they should not delude themselves so that they can make our sworn enemies into friends. Advocating the “Two-State Solution” in any form is tantamount to gambling with the future of the Jewish state because the Palestinians are committed to its destruction. They have told us so, and we must take them at their word.

Dr. Joel Fishman, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center, is a historian and former editor of the Jewish Political Studies Review. He served as the assistant editor of volumes X (July 1920-December 1921) and XI (January 1922-July 1923) of The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1977).

Palestine Royal Commission Report Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Parliament by Command of His Majesty July, 1937 (London: H. M. Stationary Office, 1937), 394.↩︎
See: Joel Fishman,“The Recent Discovery of Heinrich Himmler’s Telegram of November 2, 1943, the Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, to Amin al Husseini. Mufti of Jerusalem.”

Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 27, Nos. 3 -4 (Fall 2016): 77-87. https://jcpa.org/article/heinrich-himmlers-telegram-balfour-declaration-amin-al-husseini-mufti-jerusalem/ (accessed January 25, 2023).↩︎
“Rede zum Jahrestag der Balfour-Erklärung, 2.11. 1943,” Mufti-Papiere, ed. Gerhard Höpp (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2004), 197, 198. Translation by the author with the kind help of Dr. Dafne Mach.↩︎
Y. Harkabi, The Palestinian Covenant and its Meaning (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1979), 80.↩︎
“1961: Genocidal pro-Nazi Arab leader: Ahmad Shukairy, ‘father’ of ‘Apartheid’ slander,” (June 10, 2011) https://www.danielpipes.org/comments/186160 (accessed January 25, 2023). The reader used the pen name, “Gloria,” which suggests that Prof. Barry Rubin, of the Gloria Center of the IDC in Herzliya, was the author of this letter.↩︎
Yossef Bodansky, The High Cost of Peace; How Washington’s Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism (Roseville, CA: Prima, 2002), 9.↩︎
El Mundo of Caracas, as quoted by Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession (New York: Random House, 2010), 703.↩︎
Abu Iyad [Salah Khalaf] with Eric Rouleau, My Home, My Land (tr. Linda Butler Koseoglu, New York: Times Books, 1978): 69.↩︎
My Home, My Land, 70.↩︎
High Cost of Peace, 10. For the text of this resolution, see: Covenant, Appendix E, 147, 148.↩︎
Ibid, 10.↩︎
“Faysal Al-Husseini in his Last Interview: The Oslo Accords Were a Trojan Horse; The Strategic Goal is the Liberation of Palestine from the ‘[Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea’,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 236 (July 6, 2002), https://www.memri.org/reports/faysal-al-husseini-his-last-interview-oslo-accords-were-trojan-horse-strategic-goal (accessed January 24, 2023) as quoted by Joel Fishman, “Ten Years since Oslo: The PLO’s ‘People’s War’ Strategy and Israel’s Inadequate Response,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 503 (1 September 2003), https://jcpa.org/article/ten-years-since-oslo-the-plos-peoples-war-strategy-and-israels-inadequate-response/ (accessed January 25, 2023).↩︎