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The Ultimate Deal
Henry Siegman on the two-state solution
Reactions by the international commentariat to Trump and Netanyahu’s joint press conference on 15 February
focused largely on Trump’s pronouncements, specifically on what seemed
to be his abandonment of America’s long-standing bipartisan support for a
two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. ‘I’m looking at
two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like,’ he
said. ‘I can live with either one.’ Given his ignorance of international
affairs in general and the Middle East in particular, he probably had
no idea of the implications of what he was saying. He declared that
Palestinians will ‘have to acknowledge Israel, they’re going to have to
do that,’ entirely unaware that that is exactly what they have already
done, not once, but on three separate occasions: at the request of
Reagan and his secretary of state, George Shultz, in 1988; in 1993, in
the context of the Oslo Accords; and again in Gaza in 1998, with Bill
Clinton in attendance. Trump is probably also unaware that Netanyahu’s
government has never recognised the Palestinian right to national
self-determination and statehood in any part of Palestine, even though
this right has been affirmed repeatedly by the UN Security Council (e.g.
Resolution 242 in 1967 and Resolution 1515 in 2003) and by the
International Court of Justice (in 2004). https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/henry-siegman/the-ultimate-deal
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