A House of Mirrors a Two State Solution !
As the United States President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu meet for the third time in less than a year, basking in the afterglow of the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, one is left wondering, after all the backslapping has receded into the background, what next?
One issue that never quite goes away, no matter who sits in the White House, is the establishment of a Palestinian State, drawing most American policy makers across the ideological divide to share the belief that a Palestinian State west of the Jordan River would remove the principal cause of violence in the Middle East. Never mind that the two-state solution has proven time and again to be one of the most irrational, unsuccessful policies the United States persists with and yet even Donald Trump, the most pro-Israel President of all time, entertains the possibility of a two-state solution. He raised the possibility of a Palestinian state in his first term as President back in 2016, and irregularly infers he has not changed his position on this issue. It is to be hoped that Trump will come to recognise, if he hasn’t already, that the fake Palestinian cause is a significant cause for the Middle East becoming less stable, more violent, more radicalised, and more hostile to American values and interests.
Back in Washington Binyamin Netanyahu must make it crystal clear Israel will not surrender to any proposition that would lead to a hostile Arab nationalist state being created out of Israel’s ‘Heartland’. Nor would it countenance any power sharing to accommodate sworn enemies of the Jewish State.
Should Trumps America succumb to its State Department’s long held view of a Palestinian state fracturing the existing State of Israel then it would find its policies for the region in a shambles without rhyme or reason.
In this scenario, Israel must forge an independent strategic thinking based on pre-emption rather than containment, echoing the Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syrian parties’ strategy of the last nine months.
Otherwise, Israel will be condemned to wander through a ‘House of Mirrors’ interminably.
