In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said out loud what many have been thinking for some time: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is among the impediments to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. U.S. policy toward a Netanyahu-led Israeli government needs to be reset to deal with this reality.
Netanyahu has a long history of opposition to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. While well-known as a high-profile ambassador to the United Nations, he became a political star by leading opposition to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, which outlined a path toward a two-state solution. He became prime minister in 1995, following a right-wing extremist’s assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an architect of the Oslo Accords.
He has made tactical adjustments, for example, under pressure from the Clinton and Obama administrations, but his opposition to a two-state solution has been consistent and is the basis of his current coalition government, which has right-wing extremists in key positions.
Israeli and Palestinian extremists share a view that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a zero-sum problem that can be resolved only by force. Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter of civilians in Israel reflected its vow to destroy Israel. Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite extremist group armed by Iran that periodically sends rockets into Israel, is similarly dedicated to destroying Israel.
Stepped-up attacks on Palestinians by extremist Israeli West Bank settlers in recent years reflect the Israeli side of the force coin. As do post-Oct. 7 statements by some members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet that have included calls for a nuclear attack on Gaza, a claim Israel’s military campaign was “rolling out” a “Gaza nakba 2023” and that the Gaza war was an opportunity to encourage the migration of Gaza’s residents.
Israeli and Palestinian extremists oppose a two-state solution, but we have seen that the lack of a solution produces periodic military and terrorist violence, followed by political inattention, followed by more violence. These cycles have brought Israel and the Palestinians no closer to a settlement. Thinking a continuation of this decades-long pattern will produce any different result is delusional.
President Biden, recognizing that continuing along a failed path is not good for either U.S. interests or those of Israel and the region, has become increasingly vocal in saying the only way to prevent more episodes of violence after Gaza is a two-state solution. Schumer added his voice to this call last week.
True to form, Netanyahu has denounced any effort to promote a two-state solution and said that will be his position as long as he is prime minister.
It is time to reset America’s relationship with a Netanyahu-led Israeli government. The U.S. has consistently and correctly supported the people of Israel in their efforts to build a democratic and secure state that shares our values. But Netanyahu does not share our values.
He has been trying to replace the secular democracy established by his predecessors and its elites with a theocratic and autocratic state. He has consistently undermined U.S. efforts for a two-state solution, as well as U.S. diplomacy to control Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has also become a blatant partisan in U.S. politics and declined to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion.
Hamas earned retribution for its Oct. 7 attack, but Netanyahu’s response has had more to do with Old Testament vengeance than finding a way out of a destructive cycle of violence — and only hurts longer-term U.S. interests in the region. In sum, Netanyahu has done little to earn a special relationship with the U.S. and should no longer be allowed to coast on the one he inherited.
The way to start the reset is with a clear message to Netanyahu and the Israeli military that future U.S. arms deliveries will be made only after there is a functioning system to ensure there is neither starvation, widespread malnutrition nor outbreaks of disease in Gaza. Further, no U.S. military or financial aid may be used to support any form of occupation of any part of Gaza or for West Bank settlements.
Additionally, the Biden administration should begin laying the groundwork with regional states for a conference in the first half of 2025 to address practical steps to realizing a two-state solution. The conference would address how to ensure security for Israel and a Palestinian state, how to rebuild Gaza, how to promote regional and bilateral trade and investment that would create incentives for peaceful cooperation, and what geographic trade-offs between the two states would facilitate long-term peace and justice.
Crimes have been committed on and after Oct. 7, but the biggest crime would be to miss the opportunity the Gaza crisis presents for negotiating a lasting settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue and its decades of violence. That settlement will only come in the form of a two-state solution.
The U.S. should work closely with any government, in Israel and the region, which will work with it toward a two-state solution. However, it should have a correct but distant relationship with any government, including Israel, that impedes or opposes achieving this goal.
Ken Brill is a retired foreign service officer who served as an ambassador in the Clinton and Bush administrations.