The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has condemned Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The interesting part is that the United States abstained from the vote, which is why it passed. It is likely that President-elect Donald Trump, taking office in less than a month, will pursue a very different policy on Israel than recent administrations have. Neither the United Nations resolution nor Trump’s shift is of great significance. Over the years, throughout the world, UNSC resolutions have been met with indifference. It does not matter what the UNSC says. It matters what the permanent members of the UNSC do. In the case of Israel and Palestine, no one on either side can do very much of significance. As for public opinion, that is fairly well locked into place. There are four camps: those who are pro-Israeli, those who are pro-Palestinian, those who wring their hand and express pieties and those who couldn’t care less. Nothing that happened at the U.N. will change anyone’s mind.
There are now two realities. The first is that the Palestinians are weak. No great power or Arab state has an overriding interest in the creation of a Palestinian state. The Russians are indifferent and the Arabs are concerned about the radicalism of such a state. The Palestinians are also divided, split into the relatively secular West Bank and religious Gaza – the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas. Without unity among the Palestinians, no one can sign an agreement authoritatively or coordinate resistance to the Israelis.
The second reality is that it is impossible to create two states. The Israelis cannot give up the Jordan River line since it is their main defensive position. Nor can they accept a westward shift of the border toward the 1948 lines, as it would make the Israeli heartland (the Tel Aviv-Haifa-Jerusalem triangle) vulnerable to the kinds of rockets fired from Gaza.
The Palestinians can’t accept a state divided between Gaza and the West Bank, without any transport under their control. Nor can they accept Israeli control of the Jordan River line, as that would mean that they remain isolated except for Israel permitting movement – and would mean the Israeli army moving through Palestinian territory. Finally, such a geography would be economic insanity. Palestine would remain dependent on Israel, with its population employed in menial jobs in Israel, passing through Israeli checkpoints.
Therefore, the resolution on settlements and the entire settlement question completely miss the point. The Palestinian problem is that it has no meaningful Arab support, and its support in Europe or the United States consists of meaningless gestures. In fact, many see Israel as an ally against more immediate threats. The Palestinians’ only means of asserting their claims is the Intifada, which is far more painful to the Palestinians than the Israelis. The divisions among the Palestinians make the discussion pointless. The Israelis can’t abandon the Jordan River line without endangering Israeli survival should Arab states shift their strategy. Nor can they accept a movement of the border westward because Palestinian politics could readily move the Gaza problem to Tel Aviv.
Therefore, a two-state solution is impossible and it is inevitable that Israel will strengthen its position in the West Bank with settlements and other means. This is not because Israeli is strong. It is because the Arab world is in a dynamic moment. It does not know what will emerge, and in the end, the Arabs are potentially much stronger than Israel so it must act now, while it can.
The U.N. resolution, President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from the vote and Trump’s appointment of David Friedman as ambassador to Israel all have no impact because the reality is geopolitically locked in.
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