‘Two state solution’ is code — intended or not — for condemning the Palestinians to hell.
OK. Laugh away. “The Riviera of the Middle East.” “Move out the whole Gazan population.” “America will own Gaza.” Throw in: America will own Gaza “without boots on the ground and without spending a penny.” “Gaza is a demolition site” — as if this will motivate the locals to head off to Arab countries that don’t want them.
Yes, laugh away. Trump’s Gaza plan may be a fantasy. Of all the criticism, sarcasm, eye-rolling, anger and rejection that have greeted the plan, the best response is that of a former French ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, who told The New York Times:
“Trump’s proposal for Gaza is met with disbelief, opposition and sarcasm, but as he often does, in his brutal and clumsy way, he raises a real question: What to do when two million civilians find themselves in a field of ruins, full of explosives and corpses?”
What to do?
First, expect the baseless bromide to be trotted out once again: the “two state solution.” When Arab states such as Saudi Arabia counter Trump’s plan with the alternative of a two-state solution, the Arab states mean is: Keep the Palestinians in hell for eternity, just so we don’t have to deal with them. There is no basis for a two-state “solution” when the authoritarian leaders who control the residents in both the West Bank and Gaza — and when the majority of the residents themselves — want a one-state solution: whatever is left after the destruction of Israel.
Just like insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome — ignoring reality — the two-state solution ignores the Palestinian reality, which is twofold: It doesn’t want Israel to exist; and, it is willing to pay what it takes to be a temporary hellish price to achieve its ultimate goal, the end of Israel.
Trump’s plan leapfrogs all that.
His plan, clumsy and bizarre though it may be, is saying: No more inhumanity, even for those who prefer suffering over peace with Israel. Trump is saying: I’m sick of the endless wars between Israel and Palestinians, and sick of the policies that put them in place, and sick of the refusal to see their cause.
Of course there are Palestinians who want peace, but they do not control the Palestinian narrative, and certainly do not control their leaders. The Palestinians elected Hamas and they elected the PA’s Abbas to his 21-year term.
What to do?
Second, after clarifying that the two-state solution has no realistic basis, lay down the next critical fact, as Trump did, namely, that all previous plans and policies for the Palestinians have failed. Start over. Abandon the corollaries of the previous failures:
• Abandon the illusion that a sixth-generation refugee status for Palestinians — building on the five generations that UNWRA put in place — will yield a solution.
• Abandon the illusion that Arab states will pay to rebuild Gaza, or pay to underwrite a two-state solution.
• Abandon the illusion that because Gaza is now a demolition site (due to Hamas’ unprovoked war), Hamas will cease its terrorist aims and practices.
Trump’s plan to empty out Gaza in order to build “the Riviera of the Middle East” seems to be an illusion of its own. Nonetheless, it has the force of challenging “the Lost Cause” narrative of the Palestinians.
“Lost Cause” gained currency after the American Civil War as a salve for the horrendous wounds suffered by the South. As a concept, “Lost Cause” is painfully pertinent to the Palestinian narrative and those who nurture it.
The Lost Cause of the Civil War had many planks, such as “the contented slave” and, long after the war, the equivalent moral status of the Blue and the Gray. Of larger impact, the Lost Cause was the idea that the Civil War was not fought over slavery — not over an inhumane reality, a moral issue — but only over states’ rights. The Lost Cause divided the North and the South this way: the North saw the US as a union that bound its parts, its states; the South saw the union as a voluntary arrangement under which its parts could freely withdraw. The common denominator in the planks in the Lost Cause was detachment from reality.
As Elliot Kaufman put it in the Wall Street Journal, Trump has challenged the “Lost Cause” in the Palestinian narrative. Trump has challenged the Palestinian detachment from reality:
• that Palestinian suffering is due to Israel, not to Palestinian rejection of Israel;
• that the Palestinian education system, which demonizes Israelis and glorifies murderers as “martyrs,” is morally justified;
• that terrorists who use Palestinians as human shields are morally justified;
• that the Palestinian Authority’s financial rewards to terrorists and their families are morally justified;
• that Arab countries who insist on a two-state solution are absolved of responsibility;
• that Palestinian leaders oppose only Israel, not Jews, and are not anti-Semitic
Trump’s plan raised another real issue: the hypocrisy of many of the Palestinians’ professed allies, particularly Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They will fight to the death of the last Palestinian. They will not welcome Gazans in their countries, even temporarily, even when they are under attack, even when thousands of lives could have been spared. The hypocrisy extends to European countries. Permit us to quote Mr. Kaufman:
“The scandal isn’t that displaced Palestinians now could be ‘transferred’ voluntarily out of Gaza; it’s that they have been forced to stay there — as Hamas’s shields during the war and among the ruins in its aftermath.”
Yes, laugh if you want. Trump has provided no workable plan for his skeletal proposal for Gaza. But he has changed the discourse. He has forced all parties to focus on the abject failures in Palestinian society and in international diplomacy going back 77 years.
That’s not a small accomplishment. We pray that something comes of it.
© IJN 2025
