Joe Biden showed up at the U.N. General Assembly on September 21 and delivered his prescription for ensuring Israel’s future. Robert Spencer wrote about his speech here, and a report on Biden’s “commitment to Israel’s security” is here: “Biden Says Two-State Solution Is ‘The Only Way’ to End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” i24 News, September 21, 2021:
President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a sovereign and democratic Palestinian state is the “best way” to ensure Israel’s future.
How likely is it that there will ever be a “democratic” Palestinian state? There are right now 22 Arab states. Not one of them is a true democracy, nor is ever likely to be one. As for the Palestinian Arabs, in particular, the savage repression by the Hamas rulers in Gaza, where dissidents routinely are beaten, imprisoned, or “disappeared,” is matched in the West Bank by the repressive rule of the P.A., which treats its own dissidents in similar fashion. The P.A. has held exactly one presidential election, back in 2005. The ruler of the P.A., Mahmoud Abbas, is wildly unpopular; he is known to be corrupt, with a family fortune of some $400 million. Still he clings to power. He is now entering the seventeenth year of his four-year term. If you dissent from his rule, you are likely to be beaten, imprisoned, or – as happened recently to a well-known dissident, Nizar Banat — even killed.
“We must seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East,” Biden said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
Why? Why must “we seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East”? Why the Middle East and not, say, for the people in Latin America, or Africa? After the costly fiascos — many trillions of dollars wasted — in Iraq and Afghanistan, where naive geostrategists had hoped to transplant democracy, are we now to take upon ourselves, or ask the world to take on with us, the hopeless task of turning the Middle East into Western Europe? What about a different set of goals that can, in fact, be achieved and that make sense? The first of these goals ought to be to prevent the unthinkable: “We must make sure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, even if that requires military action by us or our allies.” Second, we should reassure our closest ally: “We must make sure that Israel has the weapons to defend itself and the knowledge of our full support.” Third, to tell the Palestinian Arabs that our patience with them is running out: “We will from now on extend aid only to those who convincingly demonstrate that they neither support nor condone terrorism or antisemitism.” That means no more of those antisemitic schoolbooks that the P.A. keeps promising to replace. And it means an end to the “Pay-for-Slay” program that Mahmoud Abbas has sworn never to give up.
“The commitment of the United States to Israel’s security is without question and our support for an independent Jewish state is unequivocal,” he said.
Does Biden not realize that the “commitment of the United States to Israel’s security” seems not quite “without question” nor “our support for an independent Jewish state” seem “unequivocal,” given that the Bidenites are determined to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to the P.A., in direct violation of the Taylor Force Act? That is the law that was meant to prevent American aid from being given to the P.A. as long as it continued to supply generous stipends to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of terrorists who have been killed. The P.A.’s “Pay-For-Slay” program has not stopped; the Taylor Force Act remains on the books; yet Biden has already been lavishing money on the P.A. He’s violating the law, and no one is stopping him. And he is calling into question his own “commitment” to Israel’s security, by allowing a program that both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism against the Jewish state.
Nor is that all that Biden has done to undermine Israel. He now wants to move back to east Jerusalem the “consulate to the Palestinians” that had been folded into the Embassy when it was moved to Jerusalem by President Trump. This reopening of that consulate will help to legitimize the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem as the site of its future capital. And just as bad, Biden wants to allow the PLO, a recognized terror group, to reopen an office in Washington; it was one of the first things Biden called for, on January 28, when he had been in office for scarcely more than a week.
How do any of these moves — the renewal of aid without an end to “Pay-For-Slay,” the reopening of the “consulate to the Palestinians, the PLO office to be re-opened in Washington — demonstrate a “commitment of the United States to Israel’s security”?
“But I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state, living in peace alongside a viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state,” he said.
“We’re a long way from that goal at this moment but we should never allow ourselves to give up on the possibility of progress.”
What does that mean – “a two-state solution”? They come in all configurations. President Trump had a “two-state solution,” but Israel’s territory would have been far more ample in his version than what Mahmoud Abbas, and likely Joe Biden, have in mind. Biden has never spelled out what his “two-state solution” would look like. Would Israel be forced back within something like the 1949 armistice lines, which Abba Eban famously called “the lines of Auschwitz,” giving Israel only a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea? Would Biden support Israel if the Jewish state insisted that in order to have “secure [i.e.defensible] and recognized borders,” as allowed by U.N. Resolution 242, it had to hold onto the Jordan Valley, as well as the major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and the Golan (annexed in 1981)?
Here’s another way to look at the Arab war on Israel: there is no solution. Not one-state, not two-state, not an n-state solution. Biden needs to recognize that there is not a “problem” susceptible of a “solution,” but rather, a “situation” that must be “managed.” Just as the U.S. held the Soviet Union in check, through deterrence, during the Cold War, Israel can keep the Palestinians and other enemies in check, if the IDF is supplied with the necessary weaponry and retains control of territory it deems essential. That means no return to a nine-mile-wide waist for Israel. No giving up of the Jordan Valley, either, control of which is indispensable to preventing an invasion from the east. No return of the Golan to Syria, which if it ever got that territory back would use it just as it did before – as a site from which to rain fire down on Israeli farmers in the valley far below. No giving up of the major settlement blocs, where citizen-soldiers — Israel, remember, has universal military service — by their mere presence help to secure the West Bank.
Israel will then be able, through deterrence, to “live in peace” with or without the consent of the Palestinian Arabs, who have never given the slightest sign of being able to create a “viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state.” Instead, they now have two mini-states, both despotisms, whose corrupt leaders – in the P.A. and Hamas — are at each others’ throats, while they keep their own people in thrall, violently suppressing all dissent, while graspingly taking their cut from the foreign aid that has kept them going for decades. Neither Gaza nor the P.A.-ruled parts of the West Bank are “viable” in any sense; without constant large infusions of foreign aid — which may not always be forthcoming in the future — they remain economic basket cases. It’s impossible to imagine the P.A. and Hamas ever making peace with each other, or their leaders ever surrendering power through elections. Give Israel the weapons it needs to defend itself, including bunker busters for those nuclear facilities deep inside the mountain at Fordow, forget all that talk about a “two-state solution,” let deterrence do its work In keeping the peace between Israel and its enemies, and turn your attention elsewhere, please, Joe, to whatever needs to be done to deter China, Russia, North Korea.
Derek says
Two state solution – with the jihadis in Israel intact – is as silly a solution as the two state solution of the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan, a genocidal state has been created with a huge jihadi following cult left behind in India. It would be another badly concieved idea.
maria says
anitsemitic pro muslim bidet wants to destroy Israel. There has never been a “plestinina state” Arafat has suddenly started to use the word of palestina and palestinians whoa re arabs from Syria, Egypt and Jordan.
No palestinian state. They have Syria, Jordan, Egypt to go to
Walter Sieruk says
The whole idea of a “Sovereign and Democratic Palestinian State” is complete nonsense.
For it wouldn’t really be “Democratic” because those Arab/Muslim ,who are the people who call themselves “Palestinian ” are so totally brainwashed by their imams that they would ,simply, vote for anyone that their Muslim clerics tell them to vote for .
Furthermore , such a “state” wouldn’t actually be “sovereign” because that “mullah regime” of Iran would have much influence and say in such a “state.”
So Joe Biden supporting such an unworkable idea must be either an idiot or a villain.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden is a church member and therefore he might actually think that he’s a Christian yet his proposal and endorsing the idea of a “”Palestinian state” is in contrast to the Bible.
So either Biden must be so very ignorant of the Bible or he knows what the Bible teaches and he couldn’t care less.
For God has given all of that land to the Jewish people, including all of the Bank.In other words to the Jews by Divine Right. Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. 134:4.
In addition , the Jews should have all that land by historic rights.First Kings 4:20,21,24,25. 8:55,56.
That so even though he might feel that he’s a Christian, he’s only a so called “Christian.”
As Jesus taught “Not everyone who says to Me ‘Lord ,Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” Matthew 7:21. [N.K.J.V.]
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden favors a “two -state solution” for that area of the Middle East. This shows what a fool is he. For that’s no solution ,at all.
Jesus taught ” If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” Mark 3:24.
[N.K.J.V.]
Raja says
Walter,
May be you are right about Biden being a church member. Hillary, Bill Clinton, may be Obama were good in quoting scriptures. The elegance with with they used the scriptures would put Satan to shame.
Michael Copeland says
A democratic state?
Memo to Joe Biden:
Islamic placards:
Democracy go to Hell
Democracy is Hypocrisy
Muslims reject democracy and secularism!
Ban Democracy. Implement Islam!
Democracy and Freedom on Death Row – Islam is Coming
The message is clear enough.
somehistory says
Can he not see what has happened in afghanistan? mozlums who have been fighting for 20 years for control of the people….some with purple fingers in the past saying they wanted to freely elect those who rule over them…and now they have control, but it won’t include the common people electing who rules over them.
mozlums all read the same filth, all worship the same mass-murdering, raper of children, sack of maggot dung, sex-mad slave-trading thief, lying son of satan the devil, and have the same goals of taking over the earth and killing their enemies,( who happen to not want to serve satan the devil and submit to mozlums and their control-freak behavior).
There would be no “democratic” government…unless it is akin to what is happening in the U.S. with this idiot, liar and puppet of satan in control.
mozlums in control means no Jews or Christians or anyone else having any freedom…or life except under extortion, terror and constant threat of terror and death.
Charlie in NY says
“A peaceful and democratic Arab state of Palestine? Sign me up. I can wait for however long that might take. In the meantime, wean the Palestinians off the international welfare payments that do nothing but entrench and enrich their corrupt rulers and hangers on, make the Palestinians take responsibility for building up necessary institutions to achieve this democratic vision and leave me alone to build other relationships in the region,” says Israel.
Wellington says
If Joe Biden were smart, which he surely isn’t, stating that a DEMOCRATIC Palestinian state would be OK would be a way out of this mess because no way a free and democratic Palestinian state is ever going to happen. Indeed, had this occurred when the UN proposed its 1947 partition plan and which the Jews accepted but the Arabs did not, two states would have lived side by side in peace for some three quarters of a century now. But the Arab Muslim world wants no Israel at all and is also incapable of true democracy because true democracy requires liberty and Islam and liberty go together about as well as fish and peanut butter.
But Joe Biden isn’t smart, never has been, and now he has dementia. Thus he really means what he says about a democratic Palestinian state and which is really stupid or base or both. Stupidity and baseness, actually, characterizes almost everything Biden says and does—an accurate way of measuring this very deficient man.
Rarely says
“Democracy” means different things to different groups and peoples. All too often it is just legitimizing the “tyranny of the majority”. Without some sort of Bill of Rights that protects the minorities (i.e. those who don’t support the current governing party) and the population buying in on it the “tyranny of the majority” is virtually assured.
And that’s the best scenario since whoever gets power is most unlikely to ever willingly give it up. Demonstrated again and again and again and…
Why learn from history? It’s so much more attractive to play Pollyanna and then blame someone else when it all untangles as it most assuredly will.
It’s a major fault to presume that the rest of the World wants “democracy” as you define it and is willing to fight and die to obtain and retain it. Recent examples? Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan.
If I didn’t know better (nudge, nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean) I would think Joe was being played for a fool by people with a totally different agenda (the destruction of Israel perhaps?). It would even be worse if he actually knew what he was doing.
Wellington says
Democracy, Rarely, must be infused with a proper moral order or it is a shame version of democracy. Anyone averring that democracy merely means majority rule is demonstrating either their ignorance or their mendacity.
Imagine ten people stranded on a desert island and six are men and four women and the six men vote to do with the four women whatever they want. Well, you have majority rule but it is farcical democracy, not true democracy, precisely because of what I mentioned in the first paragraph. And no, this is not a relative matter. It is a matter where right and wrong are not relative concepts but absolute ones, arrived at either by way of a decent religious ethic (which the Islamic faith is incapable of) or a decent humanistic ethic.
I do agree with you that much of the world is not interested in Western style democracy, which is the only defensible democracy. Most of the world doesn’t work and one of the reasons is because of a woeful comprehension that democracy is indeed what Sir Winston Churchill said it was, i.e., the worst form of government with the exception of all the other forms of government.
gravenimage says
Joe Biden Speaks to UN General Assembly on Need for a ‘Sovereign and Democratic Palestinian State’
…………….
Yeah, good luck with the democratic part of that. A “Palestinian state” would never be more than a stepping stone to wiping out Israel. Doesn’t this fool realize that both Hamas and Fatah have the destruction of Isreal in their charters? And if he knew, would he care?
Don says
And who’s going to negotiate? John Kerry? Kamala Harris? Nobody – probably not even the Israelis – will negotiate anything under this piece of wood.
jim says
The two state solution may have worked for Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, but it does not work with Islam. We all know that. Only people who want to destroy Israel talk about the 2 state solution as a viable solution. All the people with common sense know it is just a ruse to get more land for the Muslims. It is like the 2 state solution of Taiwan and Red China. The first chance the Red Chinese have could be the end of Taiwan. The same with the 2 state solution. It just gives Hamas a bigger staging ground for the final invasion of Israeli land.