By David K. Shipler
No matter who forms the next
Israeli government, whether Benjamin Netanyahu or Isaac Herzog, a bet on statehood
for the Palestinians is about as good as money in a Ukrainian bond. Netanyahu
has said, not on his watch, and Herzog has not said. Palestinian leaders,
especially in Hamas, have done nothing to make Israelis feel secure enough to
take the gamble. Conditions can always change, of course, but for the
foreseeable future, a two-state solution looks dead.
The idea didn’t last long. Thirty
years ago, hardly any Israeli Jews supported the creation of a Palestinian
state. The only Jewish-led political party to do so was the tiny Communist
Party, which garnered only a handful of seats in the Knesset and never joined a
governing coalition. Even liberal leaders of Peace Now, the movement that
campaigned against Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, would
not come out for a Palestinian state back then, for fear that they would be
discredited among the rest of the Jewish population.
A sea change in Israelis’ attitudes
accompanied the 1993 Oslo Accords, which won the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist and allowed Yasser Arafat
and other PLO leaders to come in from exile to set up an interim administration
in a patchwork of areas in the West Bank and Gaza. Serious negotiations were
launched with the ultimate goal of two states living peacefully side by side.
Public opinion polls showed a
sudden jump in the percentage of Israeli Jews supporting Palestinian statehood:
to 46.9 percent in 1994, fifteen months after the accords were signed.
