President Trump has made a very controversial proposal to move the Palestinians out of Gaza and rebuild it under U.S. control. The idea was widely derided by those who for decades have been promoting a two-state solution in which the Palestinians would be given a state side-by-side with Israel.
This solution to the conflict in the Middle East not only seems naive - the Arab Muslims don't want a two-state solution, they want a one-state solution in which Israel is eliminated - but it's also been offered to the Palestinians five times since before the founding of Israel and the Palestinians rejected it each time.
The region named Palestine (it was named that by the Romans after their conquest of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as a way of insulting the Jews) was controlled by Turkey until WWI. It was a desert with a smattering of Arabs and Jews living an exiguous existence. After the war the British took control of the region, and in 1936 the Arabs rebelled against both the British and their Jewish neighbors.
The British formed a task force, the Peal Commission, to study the cause of the unrest and concluded that the best solution would be to establish two states in the region, one for the Arabs and one for the Jews.
The Brits' suggestion heavily favored the Arabs. The British offered them 80% of the disputed territory, the Jews the remaining 20%. Despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violence against the Jews.
According to the article linked above, in 1947, in the wake of the Holocaust, the British asked the newly-formed United Nations to find a solution. The UN decided that the best way to resolve the conflict was indeed to divide the land into two states. In November 1947, the UN voted on this "two-state solution." Again, the Jews accepted the offer and again the Arabs rejected it.
This time, however, the Arabs launched an all-out war against the tiny Jewish state. Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the attack against Israel. Nevertheless, Israel won the war and got on with the business of building their new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, became occupied territory. Occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan.
Then, 20 years later, in 1967, the Arabs led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish state. The 1967 conflict, known as the Six-Day War, ended in a stunning victory for Israel and a huge humiliation for the Arab countries. Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israel’s hands.
The government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The other half wanted to give it to the region’s Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there.
Neither initiative got very far. A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous three-NOs, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Again, a two-state solution was dismissed by the Arabs.
Another war ensued in 1973 and the Arabs lost again, but they were determined to keep attacking Israel. They showed noinclination to accepting a separate state for the Palestinians.
The fourth rejection came in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David, with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, to conclude a new two-state plan. The talks were mediated by President Bill Clinton. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, and 94% of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinian leader rejected the offer.
In the words of President Clinton, “Arafat was here 14 days and said no to everything.” Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more, on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlors.
Finally,in 2008, Israel tried for the fifth time. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. Like his predecessor, the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, turned the deal down.
The Israelis have done everything that could be reasonably expected of them, but the Arabs are recalcitrant. They don't really appear to want peace or a two-state solution. They want Israel out of the Middle East and until they are gone or exterminated there'll be more October 7ths whenever they feel strong enough to pull it off.
President Trump seems to be the only Western leader who recognizes this, and the only leader anywhere who has offered an alternative to the incessant conflict.
