THE PALESTINIANS DEMAND A ONE-STATE SOLUTION, NOT A TWO-STATE ONE

The Palestinians remain the greatest obstacle to Palestinian statehood

Palestinian rejectionism and jihadi antisemitism keep reinforcing one another—and inflaming the Middle East. 

 

By Gil Troy 

 

JNS

Aug 8, 2025

 

 

  

Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas 

 

If traditionally, the Holy Grail was the great, broadly-pursued, illusory key to mass healing, today, Palestinian statehood is the great, broadly-pursued, illusory key to world peace.

In mythology, they just couldn’t find the darned thing, but never stopped looking. Today, the Western world never stops yearning, while Palestinian leaders keep sabotaging any serious attempt at Palestinian statehood.

Palestinian extremists may be running the world’s oldest diplomatic con. They get the world to condemn Israel for opposing a two-state solution, while mainstream Palestinian ideology seeks a one-state solution, leaving no room for a Jewish-democratic state, “from the river to the sea,” meaning the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

On Nov. 29, 1947, reflecting the world consensus, the newly formed United Nations recognized the Jews’ right to a state. The United Nations also proposed partitioning Palestine to compromise with the Arabs.

Yet on Sept. 16, the Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha proclaimed: “The Arab world is not in a compromising mood.” Acknowledging the plan as “rational and logical,”  he nevertheless insisted: “The fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise.”

Pasha ended with a chilling threat, just two years after the Nazi Holocaust: “We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand, we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions.” 

This Palestinian rejectionism, which continues, fused with the Islamists’ profound antisemitism. Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, described the rise of Zionism in Palestine as a process whereby “Jewish excrement from all countries assembled there, rascally striving to seize the land from Arabs.”

The Grand Mufti, who befriended Hitler during World War II, peppered calls to oust the Jews with Jew-hating attacks on the “Jewish lust for possessions and Jewish corruption.”

Despite these threats, most Jews, led by David Ben-Gurion, accepted the 1947 Partition Plan. Most Arabs didn’t, which is why six Arab armies attacked Israel when, respecting the UN, it declared its independence in May 1948.

Palestinian rejectionism and jihadi antisemitism keep reinforcing one another—and inflaming the Middle East. In the 1970s, Yasser Arafat, who used terrorism to publicize the Palestinian cause, wrote an introduction to an Arabic edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, used in PLO training camps.

Today, the Hamas Charter demands “every inch” of Palestine, deems “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences… in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” and proclaims: “In the face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of jihad be raised.”

Such a clash is ideological and epistemological.  Most Westerners solve problems by division—giving each side half a loaf, more or less. Jihadists solve problems by annihilation—taking everything when you can, conceding nothing, especially against Jews—or Christians.

To Westerners—and many Israelis—compromising with enemies reflects strong character and is a red light, stopping further fighting. To jihadists, compromising conveys weakness—and is a green light inviting aggressive attacks.

Those dueling sensibilities explain why, after the June 1967 Six-Day War, the Arab League endorsed the “Three Nos of Khartoum”: No peace with Israel; No negotiations with Israel; No recognition of Israel. It’s why Arafat, in Johannesburg in May, 1994, compared the Oslo Accords he had signed in Sept. 1993 to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which eventually triggered Muhammad’s conquest of Mecca.

Ultimately, Arafat couldn’t match most Israelis’ willingness to compromise. That’s why, in their concluding Oval Office meeting, President Bill Clinton yelled at Arafat, “I’m a failure. And on this, you made me a failure”—by resisting compromise. By then, Arafat had led his people away from negotiation back to terror, murdering over 1,000 Israelis in what Palestinians called “The Second Intifada.”

Similarly, in 2008, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented Arafat’s successor as Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a peace plan offering 93% of Judea and Samaria, all of Gaza, and 5.8% of pre-1967 Israel to balance out the territorial exchange. In 2015, when asked, “What did you propose in return?” Abbas admitted, “I did not agree. I rejected it out of hand.”

To Israelis, the most dramatic proof of how Jew-hatred reinforced Palestinian rejectionism is the  Gaza disengagement debacle, twenty years ago this month. In the buildup, President George W. Bush reassured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel’s “right to defend itself against terrorism,” while insisting: “Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel.”

By 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from every inch of Gaza, Hamas had seized power violently, was digging tunnels, and bombing Israel regularly. The jihadis were honest. Their charter admits: “Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason and cursed be he who does that.”

Given that—and Oct. 7’s mass murders—most Israelis have lost faith in a two-state solution. Many wonder: Do the prime ministers now endorsing Palestinian statehood actually believe today’s Palestinian leaders will compromise? Hamas operatives, who keep promising October 7 repeats, call these politicians’ calls “fruits of October 7.” Today’s Canadian-European wave building up Palestinian statehood sounds like another way of knocking Israel down.

Still, having seen the monolithic, seemingly insurmountable Israeli-Arab conflict evolve into a series of smaller conflicts mitigated by once-inconceivable treaties with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, progress is possible. But it requires retiring this tired, failed, “two-state for two peoples” formula.

Better to seek “two democracies for two peoples.” No one wants to duplicate the failed jihadi regime Hamas created in Gaza. “Two states for two peoples” implicitly asks: How much more will Israel carve from its tiny territorial sliver, the size of New Jersey, to satisfy clearly insatiable Palestinian demands?

“Two democracies for two peoples” challenges Palestinians and their intractable leaders. Until genuine reforms take root, until Palestinians repudiate their leaders’ toxic Jew-hating rejectionism, Israel will remain threatened.

Cultivating civil society, launching fair elections and achieving honest governance, however, would soften Israelis’ well-justified wariness. It just might spark a genuine peace process, not today’s Israel-bashing peace posturing.