According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, National Security Advisor General Jim Jones was quoted in a classified foreign ministry cable as having told a European foreign minister that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Jones is quoted as saying: "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question" - meaning Israel will be forced into an expedited agreement on a Palestinian state.

This was not a simple off-the-cuff remark. At the AIPAC Policy Conference in May, Vice President Joe Biden advised Israel to commit to a two-state solution in order to broker a "peace" with the Palestinians, and in Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband declared that "Palestinian statelessness is the biggest recruiting sergeant for Islamic extremism around the world" while Tony Blair announced that by the Fall, the US, EU, UN and Russia would unveil a new framework for establishing a Palestinian state.

The problem with this insistence on a "two-state solution for two peoples" is that a Palestinian peace partner doesn’t exist and has never existed and no amount of rhetoric, Israeli concessions or pandering to Arab demands can make it so. The Palestinians cannot co-exist with each other let alone with Israel and refuse to forego violence or accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in their midst  – all part of the Islamic political ideology of supremacy over non-Muslims, the principles of which are embedded in Sharia law.

They propagate the myth that no Jewish kingdom ever existed in the land they call "Palestine", and that there was never a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – that is – the Jews are merely European invaders – foreign colonialists with no historical ties whatsoever to the land. (1) They have consistently used this myth as the basis for rejecting the concept of a Jewish state in the Middle East. "We do not recognize the State of Israel or its right to control any of the land of Palestine", said Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar. "Palestine is holy Islamic land. Our national problem is not related only to the West Bank, Gaza, and al-Quds (Jerusalem)...but to Palestine, all [the territory of] Palestine." By that he meant Israel proper or what he calls "the Zionist entity." So far as Hamas is concerned, the war against the Jews will continue until Israel as an independent Jewish state is vanquished.

Nor is "moderate" Fatah any different. In March, Muhammad Dahlan, a former chief of the PA’s secret police organizations defended Fatah from the charge, made by Hamas, that it had previously recognized Israel’s right to exist. "For the 1,000th time", Dahlan said, "I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Rather we are asking Hamas not to do so, because Fatah never recognized Israel’s right to exist."

As part of that strategy, in 1964, the Arabs created a fiction they called the "Palestinians" and blanketed the world successfully with the mantra that they were the Palestinians and Palestine (read "Israel") was theirs. PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein explained the strategy to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "The Palestinian people do not exist," he said. "The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. In reality, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak about the existence of a Palestinian people since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism."

It is not as if the Palestinians have never before been offered statehood. The history of the 20th  century is strewn with such opportunities - from the Arab rejection of the 1936-1937 Peel Commission Report on partition; to Haj Amin al-Husseini’s choice of war rather than a two-state solution in 1947; to the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel offered to exchange land in return for a permanent peace with its neighbors leading to the three No’s of the 1967 Khartoum Declaration – no negotiation, no recognition, no peace; to the Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon (2000) and Gaza (2005) that left genocidal terrorists on Israel’s northern and southern borders; to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer in 2000 of virtually everything the Arabs claimed they sought – a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees – all of which was rejected by Arafat who then brought on the Second Intifada and the murder of over a thousand Israelis; to the covenant of Hamas declaring endless war not only against "the Zionist entity" but against Jews everywhere; to polls conducted recently by a reputable Norwegian polling institute showing conclusively that a majority of Palestinians are not against a two-state solution provided both states are Muslim; to the Palestinian media and Palestinian textbooks that continue to promote a culture of martyrdom and hatred of Israel and Jews; to Palestinian "moderates" like Mahmoud Abbas who recently rejected any possibility that the Jews could or should be considered one of the "two peoples" in any proposed two-state solution and who also rejected Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert’s offer in December 2008 of 97% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, plus ‘the right of return’ and large-scale Palestinian immigration into Israel ……… all of which leads to the question how, in the face of such hatred and rejectionism, anyone could possibly believe that peace in the Middle East can be attained through the creation of a Palestinian state that even the Palestinians don’t want unless it is an Arab/Muslim state replacing Israel? The historical rejection of a Palestinian Arab state that does not encompass Israel reflects what much of Israeli public opinion has long felt at least since Oslo - that at critical moments, the Palestinians cannot make a decision in favor of a pragmatic political compromise.

One would think after all this, that the European Union and the US would have concluded that the concept of a two-state solution for two peoples is an Arab tactic designed to destroy Israel as a Jewish state incrementally rather than the panacea for an over-all Middle East "peace". Yet, pressure for a "two-state solution” is precisely what Prime Minister Netanyahu encountered in his May 18th meeting with President Obama.

The current administration misunderstands the nature of the problem in the Middle East. It is not that the Israelis don’t understand Obama. They understand him very well. Obama’s problem is that they don’t buy what he’s selling. Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs’ objective unless the state so created is an Arab/Muslim-dominated state in place of Israel. Time and again, a two-state solution for two peoples has been proposed and time and again, the Arabs have rejected it. It is not simply that they have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity (which, by the way, they have) but they remain more intent on annihilating the Jewish presence in Israel than fulfilling the responsibilities of statehood in their own separate state. Even if Israel removed every security barrier, eliminated all its West Bank checkpoints, agreed to return to the pre-1967 borders, removed every Israeli city, town and village from the West Bank (as it did in Gaza), offered a generous refugee "compensation package", and acceded to Palestinian demands that sections of Jerusalem be internationalized, does any sentient person actually believe that this would end the Arab-Israeli conflict? So why pressure Israel into what can only be described as a suicide pact with those committed to its destruction?

Joseph Puder said as much in a recent article in FrontPageMagazine: "A widening majority of Israelis have come to realize that a paper agreement with the Palestinians is worthless, and that once Israel has withdrawn from the West Bank and the attacks against Israel renew, the world – including the US – will find excuses for Palestinian bad behavior. The Palestinians are certain to renege on key provisions of any agreement as they did under the Oslo Accords, and the Obama administration, intent on keeping the Arab and Muslim world happy, is unlikely to give Israel a green light to reoccupy the West Bank. One has to be a fool to believe that Mahmoud Abbas or any other Palestinian-Arab chieftain would settle for a demilitarized West Bank, or would seriously consider uprooting the terrorist infrastructure."

As an aside, the European Union’s 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for new members states: "Membership criteria require that the candidate country must have achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities." Clearly any Palestinian state established in the foreable future will not even remotely meet such criteria.

Furthermore, the linkage between the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and “progress” on the Iranian nuclear threat as suggested by US foreign policy officials is preposterous. Even a tacit acceptance by America and Israel of a nuclear-armed Iran will not be enough to persuade Tehran to accept a two-state solution that would allow Israel to exist as a Jewish state. The mullahs have built their reputations as radical Islamists in part on their anti-Americanism and in part on their insistence that no Jewish state should exist in "the heart of the Muslim world", so why abandon their raison d’etre when the only nation capable of threatening their power, the U.S., continues to dither through dialogue and ineffective economic sanctions? Even the Iranians mock these efforts as symptomatic of American decline and weakness.

Does the current administration actually believe that after years of deception, billions spent on developing a covert nuclear weapons program and threats to “wipe Israel off the map”, the Iranian mullahs are suddenly going to evolve into rational actors, accept American-led global liberalization, become less apocalyptic and less messianic by ending their efforts to bring on the hidden imam, Shi’ite Islam’s “end of times” figure of retribution, less inclined to establish their caliphate throughout the Middle East, and more prepared to turn their swords into plowshares once a Palestinian state has been established?

Does the current administration not see that if the Iranian regime continues to advance its nuclear program, it risks Iranian domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, threats to U.S.-allied Arab regimes, the emboldening of Muslim jihadists in the region, the creation of an existential threat to Israel, the destabilization of Iraq, the shutdown of the Israel-Palestinian peace process, and a regional nuclear-arms race? The Arabs know it and the Israelis know it, but the Obama administration continues to plough ahead with its failed policies oblivious to the facts on the ground.

Does the current administration actually believe that the moment a Palestinian state is created in Gaza and the West Bank, Syria will cease transferring terrorists to Iraq, cease its concealed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, reduce its ties with Iran and Korea and cease meddling in Lebanese affairs?

Does the current administration actually believe that stopping an Israeli family from building an addition to their home to accommodate their children in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, Ma’aleh Adumim, Efrat or Ariel is more important than stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or demanding that the Arabs stop inciting hatred of Jews and Israel in their schools, marketplaces, mosques and media, start dismantling their terrorist infrastructures, and recognize Irael’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East?

Does the current administration not recognize that the settlement and natural growth issues are peripheral matters with little relevance either to the Palestinians’ quality of life or to the ultimate disposition of territory in the West Bank? The fracas over this issue is not only undermining U.S.-Israeli relations, but the credibility of the Obama administration which is now seen by the vast majority of Israelis and a growing number of Americans as forcing Israel into making dangerous security and land concessions while pandering to Israel’s (and America’s) enemies. If Obama wants to retain the Jewish support he received in the last election, and restore a sense of trust among the Israeli people, then he must understand the reasons why the Israelis have shifted away from the “land for peace" concept. By forcing Israel to accept another terrorist state on its borders, he will not only fail to build his Arab coalition against Iran, but he will be fulfilling Iran’s mission in the Middle East.

History has already told us that making nice with genocidal fanatics will not convert them into apostles of peace, but that does not seem to phase this administration whose Middle East foreign policy appears to be ideologically inflexible and based more on wishful thinking than reality – the myth that all terrorists want is to be appeased, accepted and respected. Consequently, it is immune to rational argument and appears unmoved by objective facts that prove otherwise (such as the recent Fatah conference in Bethlehem that categorically rejected any accommodation with Israel), and expose as folly its single-minded devotion to the idea that Israel is responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East.

The reality Obama refuses to accept is that peace has never been up to the Israelis. It has always been up to Israel’s enemies. John Podhoretz notes in Commentary: “The goal of American foreign policy in the Middle East is now the creation of a Palestinian state. Very little will be expected of the Palestinians in the creation of that state; Hamas should renounce terror and recognize Israel, but a failure to do so will not kill the deal. Violence should be foresworn, but even that is of secondary importance to the state itself….A great deal, however, is expected of Israel." Obama’s insisting that the U.S. has the only solution to the conflict will never reassure the Israeli people on the right or the left that his policies are intended to benefit them.

The 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 77% of Palestinians do not believe they can live side-by-side with Israel as a Jewish state. That being the case, so long as fewer than two in ten Palestinians believe in Israel’s right to exist as a nation with a Jewish majority, there can be no successful peace based on a two-state solution. Israel cannot afford to take existential risks posed by a terror-based Palestinian state, all of whose leaders refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, made much the same point recently when he declared “…the maximum that any government of Israel will be ready to offer the Palestinians and still survive politically is much less than the minimum that any Palestinian leader can accept." That is reality.