A two-state solution is finished, but Israel and Palestinians can still co-exist. Here’s how

Seventy-five years since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the failure to establish a sovereign Palestinian state (and a “corpus separatum” for Jerusalem) to accommodate, however imperfectly, the aspirations of each side has come home to roost.

The two-state approach as envisaged in the UN-proposed political compromise, and subsequently in the Oslo Accords, has been dead for decades. But neither side has had any desire to propose, let alone work to achieve, an alternative. Both have preferred to stare into a void.

Hamas militants launch devastating attacks on Israel.Credit: Getty; Bloomberg; Reuters

Hamas rocket attacks and assaults on civilian targets by both sides are utterly despicable. But they have changed the paradigm, for both sides. Israelis fear for their future. The risks of accelerated displacement of Palestinians, and the collapse of what little remains of the authority of the Palestinian leadership, are real.

Ascribing historical blame for missed opportunities for peace, and debating whether there is moral equivalence between the parties, is a waste of time. Both sides, Arab and Jewish, are victims of that essential failure.

In the absence of a Palestinian state, the fundamental conundrum is that of a Jewish minority ruling indefinitely over a Palestinian majority population between Jordan and the Mediterranean.

It has been all too convenient for Israelis and their Western supporters to pretend a viable two-state solution remains possible, while ignoring or dismissing the daily realities on the ground for Palestinians. The violence and indignities of occupation, and the multiple failures, respectively, of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to address the factors that have produced this latest trauma, are essentially of their own making.

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a building after it was struck by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza CityCredit: AP

They are not the result of Iranian, Turkish or other interference.

My best guess is that Hamas probably instigated this latest conflict to capture the historic opportunity presented by the declining authority of its rival, Fatah, the mainstay of the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas could read the writing on the wall for Fatah and Abbas. And that decline of the PA is linked directly to actions and behaviour of the Israeli government, as well as the refusal of Abbas to risk elections in the West Bank.

Nor is the “normalisation” of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries the answer to Israel’s dilemmas. In practice, except for the presence of embassies, Israel and the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, already have what passes in the region for “normal”, interests-based relations.

If anything, the imagery emanating from the Biden administration, and Israel, that formal “normalization” might be happening was apt to trigger additional Palestinian frustrations. As in the outbreak of the first intifada in late 1987, the Palestinians were once again at risk of being treated as marginal. Their interests were likely to be deemed expendable, as the US, the Saudis and others pursued their domestic and regional agendas.

Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem into Jordan will remain a fantasy of the extreme Right in Israel. Jordan is not Palestine.

Re-occupation of Gaza is not a viable political option either: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enough on his plate without placing conscripts routinely in the line of fire once again.

Punitive strikes, with their dire consequences for Palestinian civilians, have been shown to have limited effect on the calculations of Hamas and its external supporters. They also have negative effects on Arab leaders already concerned about the domestic imagery of their closer ties with Israel.

The critical issue now, for the future of Israel as a democratic state, and for the Palestinians, is to resolve the occupation through a new approach.

The economist John Maynard Keynes once observed that when the facts changed, he changed his mind. And the facts of the conflict have indeed changed, especially for Israel. There is now no possibility, even in the land of miracles, for Israelis to accept the perceived risks of living alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. Hamas has shown, to the acclamation of popular Arab audiences, that it is capable of striking fear into Israelis despite the utmost efforts of the Israeli Defence Force and its intelligence apparatus.

And in the absence of some sort of political recalibration between the various parties, Israelis, other than the ultra-Orthodox, face the unwelcome prospect of their children undertaking, indefinitely, the repression of Palestinians according to the pressures and agendas of the nationalist and religious right.

For the Palestinians, the prospects are even more dire. The economic lifelines for Gaza and the West Bank, including taxation revenue, worker permits and basic infrastructure including water and electricity, are in jeopardy.

Hamas represents values that are far removed from those of many upper-middle-class West Bank Palestinians, and those traditional supporters of the PLO accustomed to seeing themselves as relatively secular, educated and sophisticated.

The way forward, for now, has to be found between the parties themselves. However, I hope we may finally see a public recognition among Western governments, including Australia, that a new basis for relations between Israel and the Palestinians must be created by them. They have no alternative.

Supporting the Jewish identity of Israel should be no more or less important for Australia than the protection of the rights of Palestinians; and, for Australia, demonstrating and upholding our respect for international law.

Our focus, accordingly, should now be on encouraging and assisting Israel and the Palestinians to create, within a single, democratic framework – and through an arduous, but not impossible, process of bargaining and coalition-building across existing divides – a single political entity that provides for equality between Jews and Palestinians.

We should be consistent in applying abroad the values we support at home. And the two-state rhetoric so beloved of Western governments, including our own, should now be set aside.

Bob Bowker is a former Australian ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Syria. He was an adjunct professor at the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.