A Laudable Alternative To A Two-State Solution

Title: One Jewish State; The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By: David Friedman
Humanix Books

David Friedman was a pleasant surprise as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the first Trump administration. Because he came to the job from a law practice in New York and not from the dark empty halls of the U.S. State Department or from a political career pleasing others, he was able to think of practical solutions to real problems rather than be another in a long line of highly degreed and “qualified” but worthless personae making U.S. policy towards Israel and the Middle East.

He urged Trump to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, participated in formulating the Abraham Accords, and otherwise distinguished himself as a champion of the U.S. and of Israel despite the shrill opposition of Trump’s and Israel’s opponents. Now he brings us a book urging a practical solution to the Israel-Arab conflict. The practical solution is not a so-called “two state solution.” Rather, Friedman proposes that both Israel and the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza would be better off if Israel incorporated those areas into Israel proper as part of one Jewish state.

The so-called “two state solution,” often proven a worthless fantasy, postulates that all that the hostile Arabs of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the surrounding Arab countries really want is self-government and self-determination. Having obtained self-determination in an imagined open, free, liberal, democratic Arab state, their hatred of Jews would magically subside or at least be under control and the Arab desire for the elimination of the State of Israel and the murder or expulsion of all the Jews in the Middle East would dissipate.

Unfortunately, Harris and Walz speak this nonsense about the Arab-Israel conflict as if they believe it. [Editor’s note: This review was written before the results of the presidential election.] It is nonsense because it has repeatedly been proven untrue. Every time the Arabs have been offered a state of their own, to live in peace next to a little Jewish state, they have refused. Beginning in 1948 with the U.N. partition plan and continuing even today, Jew-haters and Israel-haters march through Arab, Asian, European and American cities shouting that they do not want any Jewish state anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” they chant, meaning free of Jews.

The failed experiment of Gaza, which could have been a prosperous little Palestinian state, but was instead made an armed camp for attacks on Israel proves the point. Not only Hamas and Hezbollah but also a majority of the Arabs in the countries surrounding Israel say in poll after poll that they want to eliminate the Jewish state and kill or drive all the Jews out of the Middle East. All the evidence of the last 76 years is not that the Palestinians deeply desire their own state but that they don’t want Jews to have a state in the Middle East.

Friedman, as an observant Jew, brings to the table his deep and sincere belief that Hashem promised the Land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants and that Judea and Samaria are part of the heartland of Israel. This area includes Beit Lechem, Hebron, and many of the places mentioned in the biblical accounts. In having Israel incorporate Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Friedman argues, the standard of living of those Arabs and their quality of life, including their personal freedoms, would be substantially improved and they would enjoy a new prosperity like the Arab citizens of Israel who are the most prosperous Arabs of the Middle East (outside the oil-rich countries where elites take most of the wealth). A separate Palestinian state, however, is certain to be another poverty-ridden, kleptocratic, failed, despotic cesspool of Jew-hatred and a staging ground for attacks on Israel whose borders would be shrunk to create a palestinian state.

Friedman proposes that to incorporate Judea and Samaria into Israel requires that the Arabs there be given Israeli citizenship and a large amount of control over their local and municipal affairs but that they not be allowed to vote in national elections for the Knesset. To those who might protest that that would be undemocratic or racist or some such thing, Friedman replies that the United States has a very similar system regarding its territories, such as Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but do not vote for congressional representatives, U.S. senators or U.S. president and do vote for all local offices and policies so that their local policy preferences are enacted so long as those preferences are consistent with federal policy. If the U.S. can do that and it meets the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, how can it be worse when applied to Arabs in Judea and Samaria? Friedman is also clear in insisting that the Israeli Basic Law of Human Dignity would apply to the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. That law gives the citizens of Israel as many personal and political rights, perhaps more, as citizens of most European countries and is comparable to the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

There is, of course, much more to Friedman’s argument. He continues to laud Trump and to argue that Trump’s policies are better for Israel than those of Trump’s political opponents. He also recognizes that what he proposes goes against the interests of the chattering elites, the financial and political interests of a web of politicians, pundits, bureaucrats, and terrorists and others who are heavily invested in the failed and failing idea of a two-state solution.

Friedman should be given credit here, as with moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, for trying to arrive at a practical solution to the persistent problem of Judea and Samaria being ruled by the ineffective, corrupt, hated and hateful Palestinian Authority whose very creation was part of the failed 1980s and 1990s policy of trying to arrive at a “two state solution.” The only weakness of Friedman’s argument is that he hardly addresses the problem of how to de-radicalize the large number of Arabs, now going on five generations of them, who have been raised on Jew-hatred, hatred of Israel and the belief that there is no place in the Middle East for a little Jewish state.

Friedman’s book is worth reading as he brings an original insight to the problem of how to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.