This may come as a rude shock to peaceniks on both sides of the Atlantic, but Oslo was a colossal failure that resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis and a mortal enemy on our doorstep, firing rockets. Two states for two people is crude propaganda, reminiscent of the Nazis in 1938.  There are already 22 Arab states, one of which, Jordan, sits on 78 percent of the original British Mandate for Palestine, and by the way, a state in which Jews may not own land or become citizens. So, two states for two people really means 23 states for one people and a crippled, non-viable state for the other people.

If any of this sounds conjectural just look at the attempts Israel has made to secure peace with Arab people who have invaded three times in an effort to kill the Jews (their words) and have maintained rocket fire and terror bombing almost continuously since 1947.  In 2005, Israel made the idiotic attempt to gain peace by unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Ten thousand Jews were displaced, along with their synagogue and their dead in the local cemetery. (Even the Nazis didn’t empty the cemeteries in Germany.) The grand gesture didn’t buy peace. It showed weakness that only bought more rockets.

Now Israel is facing a triple threat, in addition to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Iran is close to achieving a nuclear weapon, which they say they will use to destroy the Jews. The Arab neighbors surrounding Israel are in chaos and some possess chemical weapons of mass destruction. Lebanon is the safe haven for Hezbollah, who use the Lebanese as human shields behind which to attack Israel, and the western alliance, i.e. the EU and the U.S. president/State Department, are overtly hostile to Israel and Jews worldwide. The BDS  movement that defines Israel as apartheid and demands boycott of Israeli goods, is gaining traction in Europe.

The “two state solution,” as accepted in principle by several U.S. presidents and several Israeli prime ministers, is a snare and a delusion. It appears to be an objective that everyone can accept, including most Israelis, yet it ignores the express hostile intentions of the entire Arab world, including Hamas and Hezbollah, who sit on Israel’s borders. The sooner Israel declares that Oslo, Gaza and “two states” have been failures, the sooner they can move on to more realistic solutions.

Frederick Leder

Fairfield