I’m not trying to offend, I’m just trying to understand what grievances creating a Palestinian state addresses that aren’t already addressed.
I’m also not trying to delve more deeply (than necessary) into Palestinians’ grievances against Israel, as I’m cognizant of Israel displacing Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Israel’s heavy handed tactics in responding to Hamas (which really plays right into the hands of Hamas by damaging the reputation of Israel on a worldwide stage).
I’m also not entirely that I’m posting this in the right place, in which case I am willing to take that under advisement and post somewhere else. Thank you for your help.
Where exactly did the two state solution come from?
The basic idea comes the various partition plans that were mooted during the Mandate of Palestine, culminating in the 1947 UNSCOP plan which would have created two independent states, one Palestinian and one Jewish. This plan was accepted by the Jewish/Zionist organizations of Palestine but rejected by the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states resulting in the 1947-48 civil war and 1948 Israeli independence war.
The mantra-like phrase “two state solution” is more recent. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded to pursue effectively a “one-state” liberation policy but by 1974 adopted language that described more limited aims, if only for the time being. The United Nations General Assembly that same year adopted a resolution recognizing Palestinians’ rights to self-determination. Also that same year the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, a title that had previously also been claimed by Jordan.
US pursuit of the two-state solution while almost a platitude today was was much more controversial just about up to the limit of our 20 year rule. Carter was the first US president to express support for Palestinian statehood. The Reagan Plan would have created Palestinian autonomy within a kind of Jordanian supervised confederation.
In 1988, however, Jordan renounced its claims to Palestinian territory.
With the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, that peace negotiations would be building towards some kind of eventual two-state solution has been the basis of talks ever since.
Don’t Palestinians kind of already have their own state (or rather, a bunch of them like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc)?
No. Of the countries that have large Palestinian populations, only in Jordan (and, perhaps ironically, in Israel itself) have a large number of Palestinians actually been granted full citizenship.
In Lebanon, for example, Palestinians are stateless, and are effectively precluded from formal employment, property ownership, and other rights limited to Lebanese citizens.
So no, nowhere do these Palestinians “have their own state”, or any state, to which they are entitled to live, to work, to have political self-determination, etc.
Now, there’s a political argument that all of these states should do that. The reasons why they haven’t are various (in Lebanon, for example, the mere presence of the Palestinians was one of the primary causes of the Lebanese Civil War. Granting them citizenship would destroy the balance of the National Pact and the Taif Accords.) but are ultimately a separate question.