The Two-State Solution: Why It Will Not Work (Part 2)

Israel Won't Accept It

Before we get started, a quick reminder that this is Part 2 of a four-part series.

If you missed Part 1, you can find it—along with all my previous posts—by visiting my archive. Just click the link below:

https://www.fromstuart.com/archive

Now let’s talk about the two-state solution and…

Why Israel Won’t Accept It

The international community continues to pressure Israel to accept a so-called two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But from Israel’s perspective, this proposal isn’t just unrealistic—it’s dangerous.

There are three core reasons Israel cannot, and will not, accept it:

• Ongoing and unresolved security threats

• Serious doubts about what a Palestinian state would actually become

• Historic, emotional, and biblical ties to the land itself

Let’s take these one at a time.

---

1. Ongoing Security Concerns

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists carried out a brutal, barbaric attack on Israel.

Nearly 1,200 people were murdered.
Women and girls were raped.
Babies were slaughtered.
More than 250 people were kidnapped.

This was not an isolated event. It was the latest—and most horrifying—expression of a long-standing commitment to Israel’s destruction.

What deeply alarms Israelis is that a large majority of Palestinians openly expressed support for this massacre. Should Israel respond to that kind of hostility by granting sovereignty to a state carved out of what the Bible calls Judea and Samaria—land historically and spiritually tied to the Jewish people?

For many Israelis, that would not merely be unwise.
It would feel suicidal.

History matters. Past behavior is often the best predictor of future behavior.

In Gaza, Palestinian leadership received billions of dollars in international aid. That money did not go toward building schools, hospitals, or economic infrastructure. Instead, it funded an enormous terror tunnel network—over 350 miles long—many of those tunnels running beneath schools, mosques, hospitals, and civilian homes.

Those tunnels were designed for one purpose: mass murder.
The world saw the result on October 7.

So Israelis ask a very simple question:

How can we entrust our survival to a “peace partner” that has demonstrated such intent?

There’s more.

A newly formed Palestinian state would almost certainly seek alliances with Israel’s enemies—Russia, China, and Iran. Would any sovereign nation knowingly allow hostile foreign powers to establish military footholds directly on its border?

Israel has already tried withdrawal once.

In 2005, Israel forcibly removed its own citizens from Gaza.
The result was not peace.
It was years of rocket fire, terrorism, and war.

Why should Israel believe the outcome would be any different in Judea and Samaria—territory even closer to its major population centers?

Palestinian leaders are not preparing their people for coexistence. They are preparing them for conflict. They refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

How do you make peace with those who deny your legitimacy?

A December 13, 2025 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 85% of West Bank Palestinians supported Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Children are routinely indoctrinated—in schools, mosques, television programs, and across social media—to hate Jews and reject Israel’s existence. Instead of teaching hope, reconciliation, or peace, Palestinian leadership glorifies martyrdom and violence.

This is not the preparation of a peaceful society.
It is the grooming of a generation for terror.

Would any nation willingly place such a threat directly on its border?

Israel understands that a full withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would almost certainly recreate the Gaza scenario—only worse, and closer. This is not paranoia.

It is painful experience.

---

2. Doubts About What a Palestinian State Would Become

Israel is a democracy. There is no credible evidence that a future Palestinian state would be one.

Under Hamas rule, human rights abuses are routine and severe. Women have virtually no rights. Gay people are murdered. Political opponents are silenced, tortured, or publicly executed. Groups like Hamas openly aspire not to democratic governance, but to an ISIS-style caliphate.

By contrast, Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) affirms democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and equality before the law for all citizens—Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

Every Israeli citizen has the right to vote, including the roughly 21% who are Muslim or Christian.

Israel remains the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Why would Israel support the creation of a corrupt, authoritarian, and potentially failed state right next door?

Gaza again provides the clearest example.

After Israel withdrew, Hamas was elected in 2007. There have been no meaningful elections since. What followed was not flourishing—but deep suffering for Palestinians themselves.

With Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and numerous tribal militias all competing for power, a new Palestinian state would likely collapse into violent civil war.

That would not bring dignity or freedom.
It would bring chaos.

---

3. A Deep and Unbreakable Attachment to the Land

Finally, there is the issue that is often least understood—and most deeply felt.

The Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel is ancient, spiritual, and enduring. Dividing the land—something attempted repeatedly over the last century—is profoundly painful.

There are 22 Arab states in the Middle East.
There is one small Jewish state.

For Jewish people—especially after centuries of persecution and in the face of rising global antisemitism—the Land of Israel is not just another piece of real estate.

It is refuge.
It is identity.
It is promise.

Through millennia of invasion, exile, and destruction—including the loss of both Temples in Jerusalem—the Jewish people never severed their connection to the land.

Despite slavery, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, and the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, God has, by His grace, brought the Jewish people back to their biblical homeland.

This connection goes beyond politics.
It goes beyond emotion.

It is covenantal.

Psalm 105:8–11

He has remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac. Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion of your inheritance,”

How could Israel give away what God has so clearly, graciously, and unconditionally given?

How dare it do so?

May it never be.

-Stuart