Ending the Israel and Palestine Conflict: A Two-State Solution

It has been seven years since the last major conflict between Israel and Palestine. The 2014 Gaza war lasted 50 days, and in its wake left the highest civilian death toll since the Six-Day war in 1967, with Palestinian civilians accounting for a majority of fatalities in the West Bank. 

For the past week, the world has watched as violence has escalated between Israel and Palestine. The recent conflict was triggered by a land dispute and the eviction of six Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Since the 1950s Palestinian families have been living in Sheikh Jarrah. However, Jewish settlers consider the East Jerusalem neighborhood their ancestral land, pointing to a 1970 Israeli law which allows Jews to reclaim land owned before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The Israeli law allows reclamation of land ownership but denies Palestinians the right to reclaim properties they vacated in the same war. 

The land dispute in East Jerusalem over Sheikh Jarrah, which is predominately Palestinian, was expected to see a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court on if settlers’ claim to the land was valid, the row over the evictions — which are illegal under international law because East Jerusalem is occupied territory — was delayed on Monday. A new hearing date in 30 days for the Sheikh Jarrah case was set to allow the attorney general to review the case. 

In the meantime, violence continues between Israel and Palestine, and the international community is begging for a cease-fire. On Tuesday, President Biden, on a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called for a cease-fire between Israel and Palestine. America’s call for a cease-fire is a step in the right direction, but President Biden must take it a step further. 

American and regional powers must call for both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to come to the table and resume peace talks. Since 2014, peace talks have been suspended and efforts to revive them have proved unsuccessful with successive US administrations failing to broker any definitive long-term treaty. 

The peace talk process was forged in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords. These accords established a timetable for the Middle East peace process and served as the first formal mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Biden, like his predecessors, have grappled with how to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine. Each administration has used a different approach to negotiations in order to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine, from intense direct negotiations with extensive U.S. involvement to minimal direct negotiations and the Secretary of State serving as a go-between. 

While solving the conflict and reaching an agreement is harder than managing it, forging a solution between Israel and Palestine in the form of a two state resolution is the only permanent way to achieve peace between both countries. 

The last administration which came close to achieving a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine was under President Obama in 2008. Despite his administration’s efforts, an agreement was unable to be reached due to the question of the return of Palestinians who left or were forced to leave their home within the new state of Israel during the 1947–1949 war and the future of Jerusalem. 

While the peace agreement seems elusive by many, there is an opportunity to usher in a new age of peace between Israel and Palestine by going back to the 1967 line. Often referred to as the Green Line, the pre-’67 border is the line of armistice agreed to in 1949 at the end of a war Israelis call the War of Independence. The armistice lines were meant to serve as temporary lines, originally drawn in green ink, hence the “Green Line,” until permanent lines could be determined in peace negotiations, which did not happen before the 1967 war.

In addition to reverting back to the ‘67 borders, Biden will need to get Israel to end settlement construction along the West Bank. The settlements, which have been deemed illegal by the U.N. Security Council, and are expanding at a rapid pace. Since 1993 the settlements have grown from 100,000 settlements to about 400,000 (not including East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip) and extend beyond the internationally agreed upon borders for Israel. As Israeli settlements continue to grow, settlers are also bringing violence against the Palestinian population, which will no doubt serve as a sticking point in the peace process.

To end the violence for good, the United States must bring both Israel and Palestine back to the table and provide assistance and reassurance in the negotiation process. The agreement sought, in addition to a two-state solution, will hinge on Israel’s willingness to abandon settlement construction in the West Bank. With a cease-fire in place, Biden must now convince both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to come to the table for peace talks.

While previous presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump) have failed at resolving the conflict and it may seem like a Sisyphean task, the cost of continued violence between Israel and Palestine is too high to consider it a lost cause. The world is watching and President Biden cannot afford to ignore this crisis.