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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

(Continued from page 1)

A couple of days ago, meeting with the NBC News editorial board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised the 2002 speech. According to her interpretation, it was this speech, and Bush's vision, that deserve the credit for changing the minds of the "great bulk" of Israelis and Palestinians. Today, according to polls, most of them want to see a two-state solution. "People act as if it just kind of happened magically," Rice said, "Well, of course not. It happened because it's a policy that Bush articulated early and has pursued ever since."

But in this much-admired 2002 speech, Bush didn't just call for a two-state solution. He also set some conditions, among them that the Palestinian people would "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty." The Palestinians didn't follow the script. They elected a moderate president and a radical parliament. And if it wasn't always clear which can speak authoritatively for the "people," this week it's clear enough that each can speak for a fraction of the population, and no one can speak for them all.

"The American strategy has totally collapsed," Israeli officials said this week. First, they carried out an exercise in democracy, and that led to the election of Hamas. Then they abandoned democracy and tried to arm Fatah operatives in Gaza so they would fight Hamas. This approach didn't work out very well, either. The next step will be to isolate Gaza and hope to prevent the internal struggle from spilling into the West Bank.

It's no wonder that everyone involved in this issue is now madly seeking "new ideas." A state in the West Bank only, leaving Gaza to its fate? (Would that state be viable, and who would take care of Gaza?) A three-state solution? (Why give Hamas a base from which it could cause trouble?) A return to the Jordanian-Egyptian solution? (Let them deal with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. There's one problem: They aren't interested.) An international force? (Hamas promised to treat such a force as an "occupying power." Any volunteers?) Start talking to Hamas? (This won't solve the internal Palestinian problems.) Keep fighting for Gaza? (Fatah seems to be losing its appetite for conflict, and, even with the support it has received from the West, doesn't have enough muscle to stay in the fight.)

The one idea no one in his right mind is taking seriously this week is the old formula of the two-state solution that will solve, once and for all, and in a timely manner, the "Palestinian problem." The best people can hope for is a lengthy process in which a more moderate entity in the West Bank, established with the help and cooperation of Israel and the United States, will serve as a "shining example," as one diplomat chose to frame it, for those Palestinians left behind under Hamas' rule. This process started today, with the announcement by President Mahmoud Abbas—the moderate from the West Bank—that he is dissolving the unity government of Hamas and Fatah and declaring the government headed by Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh to be unconstitutional.

In 2004, in a lengthy interview with Ha'aretz, Ariel Sharon's aide Dov Weisglass uttered some words that provoked a great deal of criticism. In light of this week's events, they seem almost prophetic, even if not exactly in the way he intended them to be. The pullout plan, Weisglass said, "supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." As a result, he said, "you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state" until "the Palestinians turn into Finns."

This week, that seems a very long time in the future.

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Shmuel Rosner is a columnist based in Tel Aviv.
Photograph of Hamas militants by Abid Katib/Getty Images.
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