The final nail in the Biden-UN two-state coffin

President Biden was told by Israel’s Knesset on 17 July and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 4 August that Israel would not agree to the creation of another Arab State between Israel and Jordan (“two-state solution”).

Biden heard the same message on 16 August from Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – persona non grata with the Biden Administration.

America had drafted its own two-state solution – adopted by the UN Security Council on 10 June in UN Security Council Resolution 2735: Unifying Gaza and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority (“Biden’s Solution”).

Smotrich’s message for Biden was measured and respectful:

"I want to believe and hope that the pressure exerted on us by our American friends to establish a Palestinian state simply stems from a lack of understanding of how much this endangers our existence, as the overwhelming majority of our people understand today, certainly after the 7th of October.

There isn’t a single sane Israeli who, after the 7th of October, is willing to multiply Gaza twenty-fold and place it on territory that geographically and topographically dominates most of Israel.

Apparently, from thousands of kilometres away, it is difficult for some Americans to understand this. To understand how small Israel is and how much Judea and Samaria [West Bank – ed.] are the cradle of our birth and a crucial strategic depth for Israel’s security.”

Biden would be hard put to oppose these reasons expressed by Smotrich in supporting what was after all Israel’s already-stated official position.

Biden’s Solution also did not recognise the rights vested in the Jewish People to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in at least part of Gaza and the West Bank under Articles 6 and 25 of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – preserved to this day by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Biden had also ignored the fact that Article 24 of the 1964 founding Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had provided:

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”

Wouldn’t the same position apply today if Israel and Jordan – the two successor states to the Mandate for Palestine currently sovereign in 94% of former Palestine – negotiated the allocation of sovereignty of the remaining 6% of former Palestine comprising Gaza and the West Bank - between their two respective States?

Why should there be any need for another new Arab state to be created between Israel and Jordan after the events of 7 October 2023 – especially as Israel and Jordan have shared a peace treaty since 1994 which provides in Article 3(1) and 3(2):

·       The international boundary between Israel and Jordan is delimited with reference to the boundary definition under the Mandate as is shown in Annex I (a), on the mapping materials attached thereto and co-ordinates specified therein.

·       The boundary, as set out in Annex I (a), is the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories that came under Israeli military government control in 1967.

Biden and the United Nations need to back the creation of a new international border between Israel and Jordan – in a genuine effort to begin ending this long-running conflict based on historic, geographic, demographic and legal facts – not fiction. Beginning to implement the 2022 Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution – the unification of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank – offers this opportunity.  

Biden’s Solution – and any other two-state solution – is dead and buried.