Danny Burmawi (@dannyburmawi) is a Jordanian; CEO of Project Ex – transforming narratives on faith, politics, and culture and countering Islamic terrorism.
Danny has a message to the world regarding the failed ‘two-state solution’ idea. He claims that this “solution” is dead, stone cold dead.
Here is Danny’s cognitive explanation, with the writer’s additions, as to why those who still ride on the 2-state-solution idea, mostly used as a tool for pressure on Israel, simply refuse to acknowledge facts and reality on the ground.
On 26 October 1994, Jordan and Israel signed the peace treaty in a ceremony held in the Arava valley of Israel, north of Eilat and near the Jordanian border. Then Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali signed the treaty and then the President of Israel Ezer Weizman shook hands with King Hussein. And peace came upon the two rival nations.
Nevertheless, back in 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was ready to hand the Arabs, who renamed themselves “Palestinians” since 1964, a state on a silver platter, the loudest voice against such an idea was Knesset member Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu was attacked by the entire world. He was called a radical, the enemy of peace, a warmonger. Even inside Israel, many thought Netanyahu was an extremist, unyielding to a great idea.
But Should Netanyahu Have Been Seen as Radical?
Was Netanyahu wrong in his obstinate behavior?
Well Netanyahu’s argument was simple to comprehend: You don’t hand a state to people who openly declare that your country has no right to exist and that their ultimate goal is to wipe you off the map. That is not a “peace treaty” nor a “peace process,” rather, that is a consensus for national suicide.
Netanyahu understood the security risks of letting an Arab state, with a hostile population, to be established along the border of the state of Israel.
The “Palestinian” State
The idea was to establish a “Palestinian” state in Judea and Samaria, what Jordan named “West Bank” during its 19 years of illegal occupation of that region.
That state would leave Israel a mere 9 miles wide at its narrowest point, in the center of the country. That means an easy and possible invasion route, whether for terrorists to cross into Israel and cause mayhem or for a foe country to attack.
Agreeing to such a state would simply be a security nightmare. More so, it could take minutes to cut Israel in half and do what Hamas did on October 7, 2023, massacre people, wholesale.
Israel Fell Into the Same Trap a Few Times
But did Israel listen? Of course not.
Ehud Barak, former Israel chief of the general staff, served as the 10th prime minister of the State of Israel from 1999 to 2001 and the leader of the Labor Party between 1997 and 2001.
In 2000, while serving as the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak tried to sweeten the deal for the 2-state-solution on the table.
Between 11 and 24 July, 2000, under the auspices of then U.S. President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Barak and Arafat, the Chairman of the terrorist organization Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), met at Camp David in an effort to reach an agreement on permanent 2-state-solution status.
Barak offered Arafat a state again. Thankfully, and perhaps thank God, Arafat rejected the offer; he said NO!
And why did Arafat refuse the offer? Because he never wanted a state for his people. He wanted Israel gone one way or another.
Gaza To The Arabs
Ariel Sharon was an Israeli general and served as the 11th prime minister of the State of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
In 2005, Sharon tried another approach to the yearned-for 2-state-solution. He offered to test the Arabs with a “test run” in Gaza. Sharon expelled every single Israeli-Jew who lived in Gaza’s Gush Katif, a bloc of 17 Israeli communities in the southern Gaza Strip; 8,600 Israeli Jews were forcibly removed. The entire block was unraveled and destroyed including exhuming the dead and reburying them elsewhere.
Sharon ensured that Gaza was 100% Judenrein – cleansed* of Jews. *Judenfrei and *judenrein are Nazi terms with the aim to designate an area to be “cleansed” of Jews during the WWII Holocaust.
The Arabs have lost any and all excuses. No excuses were left for them. They had Gaza all to themselves to make it work, they could run a state, as the other state in the 2-state-solution. They had a chance to prove to the world that they were eager to see the 2-state-solution finally work.
So what did the people of Gaza do when they found themselves the sovereigns of the Gaza Strip?
Did they take this golden opportunity to create a thriving mini-state to prove to the world that they were ready for independence, ready to join the world’s member nations?
As we know now, the answer was no.
The people in Gaza turned Gaza into a terror hub, manned with terrorists who inflicted fear on the population. It became a place stocked with rockets and missiles to attack Israel at will. Gaza became a terror launching pad. They built schools and hospitals with other people’s money and used them as terrorist headquarters. The infrastructure materials they received as gifts from other countries were used to dig tunnels and labyrinths, the likes if which the world has not seen before.
The people of Gaza did not work on nation-building.
Since 2005, Gaza has been a rocket factory, an Islamo-jihadist training camp for young and old, and a terror tunnel network straight out of a horror movie. Billions (perhaps trillions?) of dollars in aid poured in and a large portion of it vanished into the banks of the terror group leaders.
For the first two years – 2005-to-2007 – the Fatah Party ruled the Gaza Strip and since 2007 it has been Hamas in control. Instead of building a future, they were intent on constantly building weapons to destroy Israel.
Who Thought Right?
Going back to the original question: who was right; the dreamers who kept on offering the Arabs a state, or Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned the dreamers that such a move would be a disaster?
The answer is clear; Netanyahu was right. The Arabs never cared about statehood. They only cared about destroying the Jewish state.
What Is the Conflict All About?
Sadly, this is the part most people don’t want to say out loud: this conflict was never about “land” or “occupation.” That was always a lie the Arabs used and still use for deception purposes and to advance their goal. There is no “resistance”; it is outright constant war.
Judea and Samaria and Gaza are just convenient excuses under a thin veneer. The real issue is Islamic jihad*.
*Jihad is an Arabic word that means “struggle” or “effort.” In Islam, it can refer to a variety of struggles, including personal, social, and military efforts.
Prime Minister Netanyahu understands this better than anyone. The people of Israel have been negotiating with these jihadists for decades. The jihadists do not want borders with Israel; they want to achieve annihilation of Israel. It’s not about compromise. It’s about erasing Israel from the map, as Iran, Hamas’s backer always threatens.
Therefore, the two-state solution isn’t “dying.” It’s already dead. It has been dead since the first time Israel tried to make peace with people who don’t believe in peace, do not want peace and only want to destroy Israel.
