Chris

Well for a start Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution. That slogan its cheerleaders and fellow travellers like chanting in nice safe places like London, you know, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” - that isn’t a clarion call for a two-state solution. It’s a call for Israel to be, as the Iranians less delicately put it, “wiped from the map”.

The Arabs in 1948 didn’t want a two-state solution either. They rejected the UN proposal even as Israel accepted it (though I caveat that observation by noting their reasons for doing so were not entirely unreasonable). Israel’s Arab neighbours didn’t want one in 1967 or 1973 either. And both of those conflicts have demonstrated to Israelis of all political persuasions that their territory is vulnerable, perhaps indefensible, on its pre 1967 borders. For all it is inflammatory and illegal by international law, their occupation and settlement of the West Bank has a clear internal logic.

Neither side wants a two-state solution is the fact nobody wants to admit out loud. Hamas and others believe that sooner or later their paymasters will be powerful enough to help them destroy Israel. Israel believes time is on its side, even if it takes another 100 years they will demographically neutralise and effectively absorb the West Bank. Gaza, which they have no particular interest in, actually has a lucrative potential future as a city state; they hope that sooner or later its inhabitants will see that and start building for it. Israel believes, as Golda Meir put it, that this can happen, when the day come that they “love their children more than they hate us.”