Hostage Negotiations and Geopolitical Complexities

A two-state solution was first offered to Palestinian leaders as early as 1937. 

Israel offered two-state solutions again in 1947, 1967, 1978, 2000, 2001, and 2008. 

Palestinian leaders declined each and every such offer. They have proposed no alternatives. 

Their grievance, it should by now be clear, is not the absence of a nation-state called Palestine but rather the existence of a nation-state called Israel: the resurrected homeland of the Jewish people, a tiny island in an ocean of Arab and Muslim states. 

Yet within the foreign policy establishment in the U.S. and Europe, there has for generations been an unshakeable belief that there must be a two-state solution. President Trump has shaken that belief, changed the debate, and widened what’s known as the Overton Window, the range of policy proposals considered acceptable. 

To discuss, host Cliff May is joined by his FDD colleagues Jonathan Conricus and Rich Goldberg.