 "Netanyahu has now joined Trump to kill 2-state solution, here's how his stand evolved over years")
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now joined US President Donald Trump to kill the two-state solution to the Question of Palestine, but that was not always the case. For years, he acknowledged the claim of Palestinians to the land and backed a pathway to Palestinian statehood. In recent years, however, he has transformed into the staunch opponent of a Palestinian state — the transition coinciding with his political crisis that led him to embrace the far-right.
The two-state solution proposes to resolve the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict by having two states, the State of Israel for Jews and State of Palestine for Arabs, for two peoples laying claim to the land. At its core, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about who out of two communities rooted in the same place gets how much land for their state. Most of the international community, including the United States until Trump, has backed the two-state solution.
With Trump's proposal to relocate all Palestinians outside of Gaza , which Netanyahu has endorsed, the two-state solution stands dead. He first came to power in 1996 with the promise to expand settlements in West Bank, which are deemed illegal in international law.
Netanyahu went from supporting 2-state solution to killing it
In 1996, Netanyahu first became the Prime Minister of Israel with the promise of reversing the freeze on the expansion of Israeli settlements in West Bank — the settlements are considered a major irritant to the realisation of the two-state solution.
“This is the land of our forefathers and we claim it to the same degree that the other side claims it,” said Netanyahu at the time.
In 2009, when Netanyahu became the premier for the second time, he moderated his stance and backed the two-state solution on the condition that Palestinians recognise Israel as the nation-state of Jews. It was a stunning announcement by an Israeli right-wing leader who had a reputation of being a hawk.
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More Shorts“In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other,” said Netanyahu.
Such a stance lasted until 2015. In 2014, Netanyahu reiterated after meeting the then-US President Barack Obama that he remained “committed to a vision of peace of two states for two peoples based on mutual recognition and rock-solid security arrangements”.
In the run-up to the 2015 elections, Netanyahu’s Likud party moved further to the right and Netanyahu’s stance shifted as well. The party said that the 2009 speech regarding the two-state solution stood “null and void” and that his “entire political biography is a fight against the creation of a Palestinian state”.
When pressed by journalists, the Likud further said that ground realities in the region had changed since 2009 and Palestinian statehood was no longer feasible.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that in the situation that has been created in the Middle East, any area that will be cleared will be grabbed by radical Islam and the terror organisations supported by Iran. Therefore, there will be no withdrawals and no concessions. This thing is simply not relevant,” said Likud.
However, the Prime Minister’s Office distanced itself from the party’s stance and said that Netanyahu had “never stated such a thing”.
After 2015, Netanyahu pursued a dubious stand on Palestinian statehood and two-state solution. He maintained the Likud party’s stand that whatever space Israel vacates would be occupied by anti-Israel forces — such as Gaza that Israel vacated in 2005 and Hamas promptly took over it. He also said that a two-state solution that took care of Israel’s security needs was indeed on the table, and that he was not completely against a Palestinian state.
That was Netanyahu’s stated position until he met Trump this week. Now with a proposal that amounts to state-sponsored ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the two-state solution is essentially dead.
However, as recently as mid-2023, Netanyahu supported the two-state solution and had outlined his vision for a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu outlined Palestinian state not long ago
In 2023, Netanyahu said that a two-state solution was possible as long as some conditions were met.
In a conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman, Netanyahu set some fundamentals. One, Israel should have the overall security control of the two states. Two, the Palestinians should recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Three, the Palestinian state should be demilitarised so that any Islamist armed group could not control it and pose a threat to Israel.
In complete contradiction to Trump’s expulsion of Palestinians that he has now endorsed, Netanyahu at the time said that Israelis and Palestinians had to share the same land and that was a reality that could not be changed.
Unlike hardliner Arabs who are committed to the destruction of Israel, Netanyahu said that he does not “want to throw them out” and “they are going to be living here and we are going to be living here in an area”.
Outlining the “only practical solution,” Netanyahu said that the Palestinian state should have governance powers but not be armed in a manner that could threaten Israel — an indication to how Hamas has used Gaza to wage a perpetual war on Israel.
Netanyahu said, “Israel’s going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic space and so on. So security has to be in the hands of Israel. My view of how you solve this problem is a simple principle.
“The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel, which basically means that the responsibility for overall security remains with Israel.
“And from a practical point of view, we’ve seen that every time that Israel leaves a territory and takes its security forces out of an area, it immediately is overtaken by Hamas or Hezbollah or jihadist who basically are committed to the destruction of Israel and also bring misery to the Palestinians or Arab subjects.”
Why Netanyahu killed 2-state solution
Less than a year after outlining how a two-state solution can work out, Netanyahu announced that the Palestinian statehood was impossible.
“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan - and this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” said Netanyahu in January 2024, weeks after the October 7 attack of Hamas, adding later that he has stalled Palestinian statehood and would continue to do so.
Netanyahu further said, “My insistence is what has prevented —over the years— the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel. As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”
This was a remarkable turnaround for someone who was outlining how a Palestinian state could come up less than a year ago.
The turnaround was rooted in Netanyahu’s brand of politics that has placed political survival above everything over the years and has readily given up personal values to take up positions that advance his own position. The shrewd politician that he is, Netanyahu has fought through one existential crisis after another and has returned to power a record number of six times, ruling for more than 17 years in total.
As Israel moved rightward over the years, Netanyahu took note of the moderates across the spectrum standing against him and embraced far-right parties in a deal with the devil. Since 2022, when he formed a coalition government with these far-right parties, ideas that were once deemed fringe have become state policy, such as the judicial overhaul that polarised Israeli society like never before.
For more than a year, Netanyahu has faced two choices: to do the right thing and risk the collapse of his coalition or safeguard the coalition by appeasing the extremists. He has consistently safeguarded his coalition instead of doing the right thing.
Killing the two state-solution is the latest in the line of actions to save his skin in place of doing the right thing. First, he compromised the ceasefire deal that previous US President Joe Biden floated in May 2024 by inserting new demands despite endorsing the initial proposal initially.
The current deal agreed to by Hamas and Israel is nearly identical to the one that Biden floated. There are now indications that Netanyahu has decided to break the deal after the first phase to resume the war so that his extremist ally, Bezalel Smotrich, does not quit the alliance.
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