The two-state option is not dying.
The two-state option is dead.
It died at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.
It's just that the Arab side hasn't figured that out yet.
I do not recall (perhaps I was not paying attention in my childhood)
something called the TWO - STATE option-----before 1967
I recall the UAR the united arab republic-----and interviews just
prior to the war with representatives thereof and of various islamic
countries in which the statement "WE WILL NOT TOLERATE A
ZIONIST ENTITY IN OUR MIDST"-----was repeatedly eructated
from the mouths of greasy looking fat characters with rags
on their heads (well, I was young---that's how I remember it)
No one seemed to mention anything like "a state for us and
a zionist entity for you" My impression is that the "two state
solution" was never actually alive-------it was simply a stillborn
in 1967. Most stillborns are the result of BLIGHTED OVUM--
that is there was something wrong with the zygote (ie the sperm
and egg combo) from the very beginning
does anyone remember when "two state solution" became part
of the lexicon? was it before or after some arab muslims suddenly
became "palestinians"??
My own take on this - rightly or wrongly - is that a two-state solution is what the United Nations had in mind, when they originally authorized an Independent State of Israel and a partitioning of the former British Mandate Palestine in the late 1940s.
The Arab-Muslim neighbor-countries of the Palestinians ruled various pieces of the crazy patchwork of Arab-Palestinian lands and never collaborated to fashion a viable Arab-Palestinian state - retarding the forward progress of their Arab-Palestinian brethren.
Many Arab-Palestinians of the era wanted to return to their old homes (in those cases where the land still lay abandoned and had not yet been swept-up for re-titling and re-tasking) but the Arab-Palestinians lacked the governing structures to advocate for them.
These were the years (1948-1967) of repeated invitations to the peace-table on the part of the Israelis and of repeated rejections by the Arab-Palestinians' neighbor-rulers, and even of the more radical fringe of the Arab-Palestinian population itself, who continued to gullibly buy into the old 1948 Arab-neighbor promises to redeem all of Palestine for them.
And then came the 1967 Six Day War and that most remarkable long-odds win by the Israelis - the Golan was captured as a buttress against future assault by Syria, and, most importantly of all, Jerusalem was taken.
That was a game-changer, and the attitudes of the Israelis towards both the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors changed forever.
Until that point in time, the Israelis had been far more agreeable to supporting a two-state solution and sharing the regional resources in peace.
But, of course, once you've taken Jerusalem - after waiting for 1900 years since getting kicked out of it the last time - you're not likely to give it back again.
Jerusalem changed everything.
