BY JOHN MUSGRAVE
British foreign secretary, David Cameron, and US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, should be ashamed of themselves. The idea of a two-state solution is dead in the water and they know it.
The two-state solution might once have seemed a great idea, but it’s been tried and found wanting. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. The plan was to create a Palestinian Singapore on the Mediterranean coast. Israel was committed to this and more than happy to provide investment and guidance.
What happened next defeated the idea of a two-state solution. One year later in 2006, Hamas won the elections in Gaza. It immediately set about creating a fundamental Islamist state, throwing homosexuals off buildings and bullying women. Ominously it made Gaza itself into a base from which to launch attacks on Israel. A steady stream of rocket attacks and armed incursions ensued. The word ‘hamas’ in Hebrew means violence, cruelty and oppression
Hamas says it has one aim: the destruction of the State of Israel and the death or expulsion of the Jews. Far from decrying the impossibility of this post-7/10, supporters on the streets chant: ‘From the river to the sea Palestine shall be free…’ In effect they call for a fresh holocaust.
In the West Bank the Palestinian Authority, far from nurturing a peaceful and prosperous country, has also made it clear that it does not wish to coexist with Israel. The rulers of the West Bank are the linear inheritors of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah terrorist organisation. The word ‘fatah’ means conquest. Like most terror groups in the Middle East Fatah has moved from a socialist-nationalist viewpoint to embrace radical Islamism. The group funds attacks on Israelis and pays pensions to terrorists and their families. In short, Fatah wants to see the Children of the Promise eliminated. However this is not enough for the Islamists and Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinians, knows if he holds elections Hamas will win.
Two more facts need broader acceptance by the leaders of the West. First: After 7/10 no Israeli government will be elected on a promise of handing Gaza and the West Bank over to Hamas. Second: The rise of radical Islamism poses an existential threat to the West as much as to Israel. Look at the demos on our streets. Hamas and its allies are here now. As well as global terror, we see sporadic murders, knifings, shootings and the bullying of Jews and Israel supporters night and day.
Hamas stems from the Muslim Brotherhood – powerful in Egypt – founded in the 1920s after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Upset at Kemal Attaturk’s secularisation of the new Turkish Republic, the MB vowed to restore the caliphate – that is muslim dominance of the Mediterranean. This is the danger we all face, like it or not.
It is absurd for a non-elected official, Lord Cameron, to tell Israel, a flourishing democracy, to surrender its security. Blinken, the step-son of a holocaust survivor should know better. The future of the West is bound up with the survival of one state – Israel. What played out on October 7th is a foretaste for the West of Islamist ambitions for tumult and usurping. In that sense our future is inextricably linked to the survival of Israel. It is a sign of incomprehensible weakness to argue for a two-state solution. Never mind cast iron guarantees – iron rusts. The steel of Judaeo-Christian determination does not.
John Musgrave is a writer and, like this magazine, a steadfast supporter of Israel.