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Dear editor:
I certainly agree with the headline of Bruce Ticker’s column. (Column: What a Crock!!!! Israel “Destroy(ed) the Two-State Solution” Boulder Jewish News 9/4/20025.) It’s Arab and Palestinian rejectionism which destroyed any solution to the conflict which left the nation-state of the Jews in existence.
Of course, the Arabs of Palestine could have had a state in the 1940’s if Arab leaders had helped them to get organized for the autonomy offered them by the UN Partition Proposal (for the 20% of Britain’s Palestine Mandate that had not been used to set up the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan).
And the Palestinians might have been able to set up a state shortly after the Six Day War, when Israel offered to withdraw from newly-liberated land in exchange for recognition and peace. But there is no evidence of Palestinian leaders having asked the Arab League to accept Israel’s offer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum_Resolution
Nor was the offer to which Bruce frequently refers (from left-wing Prime Minister Ehud Barak) the last one Palestinians turned down. The Palestinians also rejected a similar (but somewhat more generous) offer from centrist Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.
No Palestinian leader even attempted to discuss the details of a proposed demilitarized Palestinian state, outlined by right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar Ilan University.
And, of course, Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, rejected the Peace to Prosperity Plan even before right-wing President Donald J. Trump had revealed all of its details.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/peacetoprosperity
I think it’s time for reasonable people to accept some difficult facts. Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza did not see Hamas building a Singapore on the Mediterranean. It saw Hamas building a war machine, firing missiles at Israeli population centers, floating incendiary balloons over Israeli farms and nature reserves, and deliberately embedding war material among the Gazan populace to ensure that the IDF’s exemplary efforts to avoid hurting civilians would be less than 100% effective. Israelis who reject the establishment of a Palestinian state on Israel’s borders should not be criticized. They are simply being realistic. Hamas is not interested in co-existing with Israel and neither is the Palestinian Authority (its president says keeping the Martyrs’ Fund solvent is its primary fiscal responsibility). The Fund supplies lifelong stipends to Palestinians (and/or their families) for killing Jews.
Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA
