Conditionality

The two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict remains a polite fiction, urged mostly by European governments that have no intention of taking active steps to implement it. The US long ago gave up on even the fiction, preferring to make clear its support for a maximalist policy by Israel. The decision to bomb Iran in June was an endorsement of its client state's insistence that its area of authority is all of the Middle East, with only Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (currently) off-limits. So long as Israel remains America's regional proxy, which it will do regardless of who is in the White House, there is no possibility of its territorial integrity being called into question by a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. That the fiction of the two-state solution is once more in the news does not indicate some tectonic shift in the geopolitical plates, despite the breathless coverage in the media. The proposed recognition of a Palestinian state in September by France, the UK and others is merely the latest attempt to preserve the fiction with the minimum of effort and consequence.

The conditions outlined by Keir Starmer are obviously intended to give himself sufficient room for manoeuvre to once more renege on a promise, even if Isarel truculently refuses to oblige by agreeing to even a temporary ceasefire. But they are also intended to revive the value of the "card" of formal recognition, and thus of the two-state solution itself, after years in which it has dwindled to almost nothing. To switch metaphors, by solemnly reviving the carrot as the centrepiece of his strategy he hopes to avoid questions over why the UK government has not thought fit to deploy the sticks of sanctions and arms embargoes in the face of what even centrist commentators are now admitting amounts to genocide. I have no idea whether Starmer will find himself obliged to recognise a Palestinian state in September, or whether he will find a way of wriggling out of it (the absurd conditions laid on Hamas - disband, have no future role etc - might well do the trick), but I do know that his decision will amount to little either way so long as the material and political support that the UK offers to Israel continues.

Patrick Wintour in the Guardian referred to the emerging division "between the moderate and extremist visions for the future of Gaza and the West Bank once the war finally ends." But he immediately emphasised that the former is premised on the Palestinians submitting to foreign interference - "a radically reformed Palestinian Authority governing without Hamas" - which makes clear that what will be recognised is closer to the pre-1948 British mandate than an independent people. Critics who insisted that the right of statehood cannot be qualified were forgetting that such qualifications were central to the operation of British imperialism during the twentieth century and it appears that muscle memory has kicked in, even though the UK simply doesn't have the power to impose its will in the way it did 100 years ago. This is why Starmer's conditions have a slightly ridiculous air of pomposity about them: I found myself hearing the voice of Neville Chamberlain talking about having sent the German Chancellor a "final note" as the current Prime Minister stood at the lectern. 

The conference in New York this week, hosted jointly by France and Saudi Arabia, employed similar language, insisting that "a transitional administrative committee must be immediately established to operate in Gaza under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority". Given the corruption of the PA, this simply looks like a change of jailers for the people of Gaza and the West Bank. What is singularly lacking is any reference to the 1967 borders, which can be the only viable basis for a territorial settlement. According to Wintour, "The reality is that Israel in the wake of 7 October has moved further and further away from notions of a two-state solution." In fact, Israel had been steadily moving away from the idea since before the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Illegal settlements have been created with state support since 1967. Indeed, you could argue that the Accords lasting influence was to confirm that Israel had no interest in an equitable peace, seeing Palestine as "less than a state", in Rabin's words, and the Palestinian Authority as mere collaborators.

For Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's chief apologist for Israel, the problem remains Netanyahu ("Steadily, the Israeli public is coming to see the price of the pariah status that Netanyahu has all but cultivated.") If world opinion has (reluctantly) concluded that Israel has crossed a line, there is no recognition by Freedland that the actions of the government are a faithful reflection of the society that elected it. But while he ignores the reality of Israel he is happy to recyle Number 10's crude interpretation of Hamas: "That group is not interested, they say, in a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, living alongside Israel. Hamas is not in the two-state business, but rather seeks to rule over a single, jihadist state across the entire land, from the river to the sea." Freedland's understanding of the region, which accurately reflects British centrist opinion, is premised on the myth that most Israelis are liberal and secular, and that most Palestinians are religious fundamentalists who wish to wipe Israel off the map. It is this idea that informs the "moderate vision" that Wintour speaks of. 

Implicit in this vision are a number of assumptions: that the Palestinians must be actively policed to guarantee Israel's security (and not vice versa); that the Palestinian Authority must be answerable to Israel and the international community, rather than just the Palestinian people; and that Palestine must be "less than a state", lacking such accoutrements as an army or an independent foreign policy. It is a mindset that reflects the persistence of colonial thinking among Western governments in which certain peoples are deemed unfit for self-rule. Genocide never occurs out of the blue. It arises against a background narrative in which an entire "other" people is seen as a threat that must be expunged to guarantee the security of the nation. And in the context of Israel-Palestine, it is the "moderate" vision as much as the extremist that is responsible for that narrative. This was a genocide long-foretold because it is a narrative we have long been conditioned to.