Trump and the failed two-state policy in Palestine.

Barack Obama gave Donald Trump a wonderful Christmas present: he encouraged the UN Security Council to condemn Israel for its policy of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Naturally, Obama knew that Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would be furious. And perhaps he thought that, with this, he would put Trump in a bind, as Trump has repeatedly stated that he is against the two-state solution, that is, one Palestinian and one Israeli, in the original Palestinian land.

Now consider this interesting point: while he opposes the two-state solution, Trump is indirectly in favor of the full integration of the two peoples into a single state. The Israeli prime minister might prefer a final solution for the Palestinians, but in current times this would not be tolerated, especially by the Russians, who are indirect allies of the Palestinians through Syria. Therefore, the only logical course of action is the one-state, two-nation policy, something that seems to be Trump's secret objective. This would bring peace to the Middle East.

The fact is that the two-state solution, conceived by Rabin and Arafat decades ago, has never worked. Israeli governments have never resisted the pressure from their fundamentalists in provoking the Palestinians with illegal settlements on their land. In fact, it is unlikely that it will ever work. The Israelis are arrogant and expansionist, and are anchored in an enviable military power, which they know how to use with their highly trained armed forces, or perhaps the best trained in the world.

During their formative period, states are expansionist by their very nature. Israel and Palestine are two territorial groups that want to take pieces from each other, ultimately by force, in their process of state affirmation. Indeed, Israel has taken several pieces from the Palestinians by force. In my doctoral studies, I examined simple models of complex systems in which states were represented by interacting squares. The force that moved the squares was the pursuit of expansion. Naturally, the system was unstable.

I was told that when Carlos Lacerda, as a reporter, was sent to Palestine to cover Israel's UN-sponsored declaration of independence in 1948, he wrote several articles concluding that there would never be peace in that region. History has shown that he was right, at least as long as the two-state solution lasts. Contrary to what hypocritical Israelis and superficial observers believe, only someone with the apparent brutality of Trump, proposing a single state, could thaw the situation in the Middle East.

Interestingly, even without knowing exactly what Trump has in mind, he doesn't have much room for choice, given the preliminary statement that he doesn't want two states. Netanyahu's reaction to the UN resolution, which mandates the construction of yet another settlement on the Palestinian side, is the greatest and most immediate evidence that the two-state solution doesn't work. If it doesn't work, another solution must be sought. What other solution would that be but the integration of the two peoples into a single nation, especially since they are all of ancient Abrahamic origin?

Israel would certainly have to resolve the democratic problem, that is, the issue of democracy related to demographics. The country is young, but it has a consolidated democracy. The Palestinians, with less of a democratic tradition, will have a larger population than the Israeli population if their diaspora is reversed. This is not an insoluble problem in terms of a negotiated Constitution, in which Israeli representation would have preeminence for a certain period of time in the future, until the populations are demographically balanced.