Going back almost 30 years, on Sept. 13, 1993, there was a tremendous amount of excitement in both the Israeli and the American Jewish populations. In a ceremony replete with lofty, inspiring speeches and the music of a Marine Corps band, Yasser Arafat, the grand-daddy of 20th-century terrorism, airplane and bus hijackings, and school massacres, shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
This was the date of the signing of the Oslo Accords, a document predicated upon the premise of “land for peace.”
However, this premise was proven false by the rejection of the repeated generous offers made to PLO head Arafat by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on July 25, 2000, and to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sept. 16, 2008.
And as the years ensued, the Israeli Jewish population has been subjected to repeated waves of terrorism, including a very recent wave of near-daily terrorism coming out of Judea and Samaria or the West Bank. Since Sept. 13, 1993, at least 1,670 Israeli civilians have been murdered by suicide bombings, vehicular assaults, stabbings, shootings and various other forms of terrorism.
Just as the Israeli people are divided on the controversial issue of judicial reform, they are united in the belief that there is simply no one to talk to on the Palestinian side and that the two-state solution is nothing more than a comforting fairy tale.
However, most American Jews desperately cling to the notion that the Israelis have a reasonable negotiator on the Palestinian side, and that there will be a two-state solution.
Why have American Jews clung to the two-state solution in the face of the brutal reality Israelis have had to confront? Where is the disconnect? Here to answer is Caroline Glick.
About the Speaker: Caroline B. Glick is a senior contributing editor at JNS and a senior columnist at JNS and Newsweek, and a diplomatic commentator at Israel’s Channel 14. She also serves as senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and as a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statecraft in Jerusalem.
She is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East and Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad, and has received multiple awards for her journalism.
She lives in Efrat with her husband, Shimon Suissa, and their sons Yoav and Shilo.