‘The two-state solution is absolutely dead,’ leading Palestinian advocate says
The prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead, according to the leading Palestinian advocate in Australia, meaning Jewish and Arab residents will eventually need to live together on the land currently controlled by Israel.
The Albanese government angered Israel and pleased Palestinian supporters on Wednesday by voting in favour of a United Nations resolution demanding Israel end its presence in the occupied Palestinian territories as soon as possible and calling for the evacuation of all settlers from the West Bank and Gaza.
Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, said there was no realistic hope for a two-state solution.Credit: Justin McManus
Australia had abstained or voted against similar motions since 2001, making the shift a significant departure from its previous position.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia had changed its stance to help create momentum for a two-state solution, an outcome she has repeatedly promoted as the only way to achieve security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians.
Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, said establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel would be akin to partitioning South Africa as a way to end apartheid in the 1990s.
“The two-state solution is absolutely dead,” Mashni, whose organisation is the peak lobby group for Palestinian rights, told this masthead.
“The driving force behind the idea of a two-state solution in the West has been about protecting Israel as a Jewish democratic state.
“But at some point the world will see that there are no two states, that Israel itself doesn’t want it.
“What we’re left with is one land, two peoples and two laws, and that’s apartheid.”
He continued: “It was wrong in South Africa, and it is wrong in Palestine.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong pictured with Palestinian advocate Nasser Mashni in October 2023.Credit: Instagram
“We need to dismantle an apartheid regime and no one suggested the solution for apartheid in South Africa was separate black and white states.”
Mashni said Israel’s actions, including the dramatic expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, had made a two-state solution untenable.
He also pointed to the charter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, which explicitly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, and comments by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that he will advance legislation next year to annex the West Bank.
The resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will “ultimately be a matter of self-determination for the people who live there, not something the world can impose”, Mashni said.
Mashni’s comments clash with those of Wong and Australia’s UN ambassador James Larsen, who this week said a two-state solution remained the “only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples”.
Both Labor and the Coalition have long maintained support for a two-state solution with a negotiated settlement between the parties.
Mashni welcomed Australia’s change of position at the UN, saying it had advanced the Palestinian cause and put the nation in line with 95 per cent of the world’s population.
The Australian National Imams Council also applauded what it called a “welcome and long overdue” move, saying it “appears to be part of a gradual shift in response to Israel’s intransigent behaviour and disavowal of international law and legal institutions”.
The resolution passed with 157 nations in favour, seven abstaining and eight nations voting against.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin rejected the idea of a single state for Israelis and Palestinians, saying it would be a “recipe for a return to civil war and the Jews again becoming a defenceless minority”.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said a two-state solution remains the only hope for peace. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“The two-state solution remains the only way to fulfil the rights of Jews and Palestinians to live freely in their own homelands, preserve their distinct identities and determine their own future,” he said.
“Anti-Israel activists have always opposed it because it means recognising that Israel is permanent.”
Many Israelis regard the idea of a “one-state solution” as a call for the end of their nation’s distinctly Jewish character because Palestinians would likely outnumber Israelis in any unified nation, based on current demographic trends.
The most recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy Survey and Research in September found that 51 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza support a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, 19 per cent preferred a confederation between two states and 10 per cent backed the establishment of a single state with equality for both sides.
Former US president Bill Clinton has repeatedly blamed Yasser Arafat for the fact a Palestinian state does not exist, accusing the late Palestine Liberation Organisation leader of turning down the deal of a lifetime at the ill-fated Camp David peace summit in 2000.
“It would have given the Palestinians a state in 96 per cent of the West Bank and the remaining 4 per cent from Israel, and they got to choose where that 4 per cent in Israel was,” Clinton said in October.
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