When it comes to media bias against Israel, often enough the problem isn’t simply in the content, but what is not in the content.
Take for example a puff piece published in the Guardian on 25 May, entitled “What else happened as coronavirus swept the globe.” The article, written by Michael Safi, brings together a variety of big stories from the last few months and attempts to repackage them so as to provide the Guardian with fresh content.
The final main item, entitled “The end of the two-state solution?” frames the impending partial annexation of areas in Samaria and in Judea, as the death knell for hopes of a peace resulting from a Palestinian state arising in coexistence alongside Israel.
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The Guardian’s writers have every right to their perspective – but theirs is not the only one. One held by many Israelis, and the driving force behind the current Israeli administration’s moves to annex these lands, is that the two-state solution is already long dead.
What Really Killed A Two-State Solution?
The peace process of the 1990s initially generated huge optimism in parts of Israeli society and much of the West, especially when it resulted in Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat ceremoniously signing the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993.
However, it’s often noted that the heady days of the mid-90s, when the hope that Israelis and Palestinians could finally move forward and make peace was pervasive, gave way to the shock and horror of the early 2000s, when wave after bloody wave of Palestinian terror left millions in Israel in utter despair.
Simplification that may be, but it neatly encapsulates the feeling in Israel after seemingly making so much headway in the pursuit of peace, only to be violently rebuffed. The prospect of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, once so tangible, faded into the ether and came to be treated by many as a dangerous, alluring mirage.
After thousands of attacks and attempted assaults, including the hurling of molotov cocktails, rock-throwing attacks, shootings, suicide bombings, stabbings and more – the vast majority of Israelis simply do not trust the Palestinian leadership to choose peace. As a result of the onslaught, Israeli has society shifted rightwards since the early 2000s and, with the exception Ehud Olmert in 2006, has repeatedly voted for leaders (Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu) whose election campaigns saw them touted as stout defenders of Israel who would put Israel’s security before ‘ill-advised’ peace gambits.
In this regard, the possibility of a two-state solution has been dead since the mid-2000s. There haven’t been serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians with a view to a two-state solution since 2008, when Ehud Olmert’s astonishingly generous offer to relinquish almost the entire West Bank, allow a sovereign Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, and relinquish Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the Old City, was rejected by PA president Mahmoud Abbas. Even Ariel Sharon’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was executed unilaterally, without coordinating with the PA, such was the level of distrust.
Unfortunately in the eyes of too many Guardian writers, the two-state solution is viable no matter how many attacks Israel sustains. In reality, however, without a genuine cessation of hostilities, the establishment of a Palestinian state is not something the Israeli government is able to countenance. To allow such an eventuality wouldn’t be a two-state solution, it would be an Israeli state dissolution.
Misleading Journalism
Whatever your perspectives on the wisdom of Israeli settlement construction and the upcoming declaration of Israeli sovereignty over these lands, you can find plenty of people, including Israelis, who agree and disagree with you. The problem here isn’t in documenting the annexation process or even in passing comment. The issue is that only perspective is deemed worthy of mention here, and literally years of terror attacks have been totally excised from the narrative.
To completely excise the Palestinians’ ongoing refusal to lay down arms and renounce terrorism from the item is to deny them agency and reduce the possibility of peace to being entirely in the hands of the Israelis. That’s highly misleading, and does readers a disservice.
It’s also worth mentioning that it isn’t at all clear whether a partial annexation would actually end hopes of a two-state solution – should Israel choose to annex only a limited proportion of the territories, it wouldn’t necessarily preclude the possibility of the remaining areas being incorporated into a single political entity. The point, however, is moot for the time being – unless the PA gives up its nasty habits of incitement to violence and funding Palestinian terrorism, the issue of renewed hostilities remains a question of when, not if.
