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Is This the End of the Two-State Solution?The consequences and possibilities of the civil war in Gaza.

By Shmuel Rosner
Posted Thursday, June 14, 2007, at 5:09 PM ET
Fighting in Gaza City. Click image to expand.

The United Nations has carried out approximately 60 "peace-keeping missions" since World War II. Only 14 of them were established before the end of the 1980s, and almost 50 started after the end of the Cold War. The trend is toward getting involved in trying to solve local conflicts. And now the world has one more problem on its hands: what to do with the Gaza Strip? Ideas are in short supply.

Two years ago, when Ariel Sharon decided to pull Israel out of Gaza, he failed miserably in one respect: Israel didn't get the security it wished for; the daily shelling of Israeli towns continued and even intensified. However, he did succeed in transforming Gaza from an Israeli headache into a Palestinian problem, thus making the prospect for a Palestinian state grimmer than ever.

Presumably, this has been a terrible week for the region's fragile peace camp, and even worse for Palestinian nationalists. With Hamas now controlling practically all of Gaza and the refugee camps surrounding it, any talk about a "Palestinian Authority" needs to be taken with a grain of salt: Which authority—the more moderate one controlling the West Bank or the radical one controlling Gaza?

The leadership in the West Bank seeks compromise; the one in Gaza confrontation. The West Bank is headed by a man the world is ready to do business with; Gaza has a radical leader at home and is controlled by an even more radical leader sitting in Damascus. The regime in the West Bank is supported and encouraged by Washington; the one in Gaza is shunned by both the United States and Israel. As a matter of fact, Hamas decided to confront moderate Fatah forces sooner rather than later, because it feared that international support would strengthen Fatah so much that it could not be defeated in the future.

And it is a dreadful spectacle. Shootings, executions, people thrown out of windows and off roofs, civilians caught in the line of fire. It is a civil war in all its ugliness, and it is not over yet. As is always the case with such wars, only two outcomes are possible: one camp winning and taking control, or a split. In Lebanon, the world wants to help the central government control the whole country, but in Iraq many scholars and politicians now suggest a division into three separate entities.

Thinking seriously about the Palestinian Authority, all the factors seem to point to the latter, Iraqi-style, option. Gaza is separated geographically from the West Bank, its culture and people are different, it is isolated and surrounded by Israel and Egypt. And most of all, no force in the world seems ready to try to wrestle it away from Hamas. It's too risky, too dangerous, and too costly.

It was June 24, 2002—almost five years ago—when President Bush called for "two states, living side by side in peace and security." In 10 days, he will make another speech on the same topic. But what will he say?

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Shmuel Rosner blogs daily at Rosner's Domain.
Photograph of Hamas militants by Abid Katib/Getty Images.
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