The Fiction Of Two-Statehood
Since the start of this century alone, and since the Israeli government withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has fought four wars involving Gaza, with the most recent one culminating in an apparent ceasefire on May 21, 2021. The Oslo Accord, the U.S.-backed peace deal brokered more than a quarter-century ago between the Israelis and the Palestinians, was supposed to prevent these conflicts. Given that the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accord created the framework for the two-state solution, a solution which the global community — represented by the United Nations, the two 20th century superpowers the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (later Russia), and the European collective in the form of the E.U. — endorsed, the failure of this initiative may well signal the start of a breakdown of modern political systems. Importantly, failure to achieve peace through the two-state solution unmasks its flawed bases: the decadence of colonialism and nationalism, and the fragility of the foundation of the Western political order. In this context, the trigger of the recent Gaza war, the mass eviction of Sheikh Jarrah, becomes a notice — a warning about the outcome of a world order built on the irreconcilability of justice, nationalism, colonialism, and pluralism in the two-state scheme.
