Bruce Logan: Vote in line with 'dangerous fantasy' of two-state solution

Photo / Herald

Opinion

Concern and praise for New Zealand support of UN resolution against Israeli settlement of occupied lands

United Nations Security Council's resolution 2334, that Israel cease all construction in the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, assumes Israel is occupying land illegally. However, Israel regained the territory in its own self-defence.

Sustaining the UN's declaration is the long-standing belief in the evolving justice to the two-state solution; the idea of creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Until recently, the repeated rejection of peace offers from Israel, and Palestinian terrorism, has inhibited serious discussion of any other policy option.

Recent polls in Israel have steadily increased the support for Israeli law applying in all parts of Judea and Samaria. For 20 years now Israelis have been frustrated as government after government has made efforts to appease the unappeasable Palestinians.

Netanyahu has pointed out that a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel would have to be demilitarised, without control over its borders or airspace. Hardly a sovereign nation. He has also pointed out that the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought Israel neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for Iran-backed terrorists.

Every concession Israel has made has produced a dramatic rise in Palestinian terrorism; not a decrease. Most Arab nations and the Palestinians are resolutely unwilling to acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem or any right to any part of Israel.

In the world of real politics there never has been a two-state solution. The terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank want one Islamic state. So too does Isis. The "two-state solution" is a dangerous fantasy that allows for continuing funding of terrorists in the hope that the will of the Israelis will be worn down.

New Zealand has the opportunity to be forward-thinking and not kowtow to the Obama Administration, or UN groupthink. Foreign Minister Murray McCully would do well to consider the one-state solution to the apparent problem of Israel. It is, after all, the de facto situation.

From 1970 to 2013 the United States has presented at least nine different plans for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. All these were based on the two-state solution and all of them were failures.

Why does Mr McCully think that his country's present support for the Security Council's declaration is even partly wise?

Most Arab Israelis would rather live in a democratic Israel than a corrupt Palestinian state. New Zealand should seriously consider supporting the one-state solution. In doing so it would safeguard Israel's national and legal rights. That would go some way towards delegitimising Palestinian terrorism.

By adopting such a position New Zealand would be pointing out that it is possible to view the Middle East through something other than an Arab and Islamic lens. A lens that has, up until now, encouraged the view, within the UN, of Israel as the perpetual villain.