It’s my opinion that the biggest obstacle to any viable long lasting peace solution between representatives of Israel and Palestine is the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who can be described as a smarter version of Donald Trump, a self-serving politician who’d do anything to maintain power, including catering to the extreme right-wing faction of his coalition while attempting to institute major judicial changes, etc.

If POTUS Biden wants to change the current Israeli-Palestine conflict dynamic, he’ll have to stand up to the Israeli’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has managed a tenuous, tumultuous hold on power for over 12 years despite him having been criminally indicted and with high unpopularity numbers by promising Israelis that he was the strongman who could keep them safe from violence. He and his right-wing coalition have justified their hardline stances against any possibility for a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians would be allowed to live side by side within their own pre-determined territorial boundaries with this promise. No, he has never wanted a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live together with equal status.   

It’s my belief that what the Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing cohorts have really been desiring the relocation of Palestinians to other lands outside of the West Bank and Gaza.

See:Why Israel hasn’t annexed the West Bank – Vox

Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank – Foreign Policy

It’s my opinion that the US shouldn’t wait for an independent investigation to be conducted by the international community and /or by our own US intelligence agencies. We need answers NOW to the following questions instead of waiting for Israel to first, complete its military action against HAMAS.

The US should continue to focus on the return to Israel of all hostages and to push for conflict pauses. This current conflict cannot be allowed to escalate. In short, the US cannot sit on the sidelines, counting on the current Israeli governing party to do what’s right on behalf of its own citizens.

Questions:

Could the Israeli-Hamas war be the pretext for having Palestinians relocate outside of GAZA?

How is it that Hamas, designated as a terrorist group could successfully attack Israeli citizens, killing and injuring thousands while taking over 200 hostages on October 7, 2023, when the Israeli Intelligence infrastructure had over a year’s notice of this detailed 40-page plan of an attack by HAMAS, termed “Jericho?”

How is it that Israeli soldiers had been collecting and sharing intel within weeks of the October 7 attack about how HAMAS had been conducting war-like military maneuvers and training that were ignored by decision makers?

Why did it take the Israeli military from 7 to over 40 hours to respond to initial attack by HAMAS?

How is it that HAMAS had data that allowed them to successfully attack targets that were not publicly known?

How is it that many in the Netanyahu camp have been able to claim that they discounted timely intelligence because they believed HAMAS exaggerated its capabilities? What intelligence did they have that would allow for this debacle?

Note: Why was PM Netanyahu forced to delete an October 2023 social media commentary where he blamed Hamas attack on intelligence failures?

See: After Fury, Netanyahu Deletes, Apologizes for Post Blaming Security Chiefs for HAMAS Attacks/ Haaretz

The following article provides some historical context…

As per Chris McGreal of the November 6, 2023 Guardian report, The two-state solution has been a diplomatic failure. It’s also the still the best answer we’ve got.”

The two-state solution could do with a rebrand.

“The optimism that greeted the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians 3 decades ago has long since given way to eye rolling and grimaces among politicians and diplomats at any mention of the “peace process”. For years, they have been obliged to pay lip service to the vision while, in practice, many were resigned to the two-state solution as a a cover for inaction.”

“But now the two-state solution is showing its face in public again. In the wake of the Hamas cross-border attack from Gaza, and the Israeli assault on the Palestinian enclave in response, President Joe Biden is punting the peace process back on to the agenda. “When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution,” he said. “And that means a concentrated effort for all the parties – Israelis, Palestinians, regional partners, global leaders – to put us on a path toward peace.”

“The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, reiterated the point in Tel Aviv last week when he described two states for two peoples as “the best path, maybe the only path”.

“American and European politicians have all too often used a call for a return to the peace process as a get-out to avoid directly addressing the deepening of Israel’s oppressive rule in the occupied territories. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, has exploited this unwillingness to stand up to him as his governments worked to kill off the prospect of a viable Palestinian state by expanding settlements and tightening the grip of occupation.”

“The president is right to shift the focus on to two states for one overriding reason. It’s hard to see another outcome that will fly in the near term, and there’s an urgent need to establish the borders of an independent Palestine to block Israel’s grinding colonisation of the West Bank.”

“Netanyahu’s policies and the collapse of any meaningful peace process have driven debate about the creation of a single country of Israelis and Palestinians, a one-state solution. But even with a sharp decline in Israeli public support for an independent Palestine, only about one in 10 Jewish Israelis back a single state with equal rights for all. The creation of one country with roughly equal numbers of Jews and Arabs would remove the clear Jewish majority at the heart of the Zionist enterprise of self-determination, and the vast majority of Israelis are not going to accept that…”

“A genuinely sovereign Palestine would still be a vast improvement on decades of occupation and Israeli domination, and for the first time give Palestinians real government. Unresolved issues of how to divide Jerusalem, guarantees for Israeli security and what to do about Palestinian refugees in neighbouring countries are all difficult, but not insurmountable.”

“Then there’s Hamas, and allied groups such as Islamic Jihad, whose horrific cross-border attack from Gaza has had the, perhaps unintended, consequence of once again drawing the world’s attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But they have not been the principal obstacle to a two-state deal in the past, and it’s doubtful that Hamas has the power to veto an agreement if a credible Palestinian leader – such as the influential Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently imprisoned by Israel for terrorism – were to negotiate one.”

“One of Israel’s standard tactics is to blame the Palestinians for the failure of previous peace negotiations. That’s a convenient narrative about a complex process that, among other things, ignores the part many people believe Netanyahu and the Israeli right played in the 1995 assassination of the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo accords – the first big crisis of the peace process. Rabin’s widow, Leah, and others on the left accused Netanyahu, while leader of the opposition, of inciting the Jewish nationalist assassin after he led demonstrations at which the crowd chanted “death to Rabin”, and for marching at the head of a mock funeral procession for the prime minister.”

“But however the blame is parcelled out, no one forced Israel to more than quadruple the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories since the Oslo agreement was signed. In 1993, there were about 110,000 settlers in the West Bank outside of occupied East Jerusalem. Now there are nearly 500,000, and the government wants to double that number.”

“Settlement construction has exploited what was intended as a temporary administrative solution in the Oslo accords, which carved the West Bank into areas of control until a final peace agreement was reached. Israel has exploited its zone – about 60% of the West Bank known as Area C – to expand settlements, construct military bases and build roads that surround the areas under Palestinian administration. The result is a patchwork of cantons reminiscent of apartheid South Africa’s Bantustan system of black homelands.”

“The takeover has intensified recently with Israeli settlers forcing Palestinians off land in Area C, with the aid of the military and encouragement of far-right members of Netanyahu’s government.”

If the US wants to be an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue, then it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needs and requirements of both sides.”

“Still, the Hamas attack has probably doomed Netanyahu’s rule. Who and what comes after him remains an open question. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are blessed with visionary leaders at the moment. But perhaps the hubristic delusion that Israel can manage the occupation by caging the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank bantustans, and then largely ignoring them, will finally be disposed of.”

“The two-state solution, battered and disdained as it is, still looks like the only one on the table.”