HOW ABOUT A TWO STATE SOLUTION WITH MEXICO?

Oh, wait, we already have that!

 

We hear ad nauseum, ad infinitum that Israel must agree to a two-state solution

with Palestine.  How have other two-state solutions worked out?

The Southern Border

Mexico, along with the Biden Administration, has allowed at least 7.2 million illegals to cross the border, an amount greater than population of 36 states. (Estimates run considerably higher.) Some traffic illegal drugs like fentanyl that kill over 100,000 young Americans every year, double the number of Americans killed in the ten-year Viet Nam War. (As an aside, George Floyd had fentanyl in his body when he died.)  The drug cartels rake in billions and can’t be controlled.  The trafficking of children as sexual slaves is horrifying. 

The outgoing President of Mexico, Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador has said fentanyl is not Mexico’s problem, it’s an American problem.   His approach to drug trafficking is to find “root causes.” El Presidente is probably cashing in on the drug trade and is frightened of the cartels. His handpicked successor, Claudia Scheinbaum, will likely follow his lead.

Recently released numbers are horrific.  As of October 3, 2024, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a Texas border lawmaker that 435,000 undocumented migrants with criminal convictions have been released by the agency to cities around the United States. Another 226,847 have pending criminal charges. 

 In the last few weeks, the new government secretary of Chilpancingo, Francisco Tapia, was shot to death.   Three days later, the newly elected mayor in southern Mexico, Mayor Alejandro Arcos, was beheaded, allegedly by the cartels.   In the run-up to Mexico's June 2 elections, an estimated thirty-seven candidates were killed, many of them seeking local office. In other cases, the relatives of candidates were murdered in apparent intimidation attempts.

Two-State solution sounds reasonable, but problems do not disappear because lines are drawn on a map.  Germany took the Alsace-Lorraine area from France in 1871; France took it back after World War I.  Germany took it back in 1940. France took it back in 1945. Each of those exchanges involved wars. Lines were drawn but hatred was visceral.   The two states hated and feared each other.

A DIVIDED GERMANY, KOREA, VIET NAM

After World War II, the Allied powers created the two-state solution of East and West Germany and East and West Berlin. The optics of this stark divide exemplified the Cold War. The Berlin Wall kept East Germans imprisoned in a land of empty shelves for thirty years.  One hundred and forty people were shot to death trying to escape to freedom.  That two-state solution didn’t work out all that well.

North and South Korea was a dandy two state solution: freedom, capitalism, and affluence in the south, misery, poverty, hunger, tyranny and darkness in the North.  The North’s attempt to overrun the south pulled the United States into a two-year war. American troops continue to have bases in South Korea as a warning to the north to not even think about it.  

Another post war two state arrangement, North and South Viet Nam, was disrupted by the attempt of the communist north to take over the south, leading a ten-year war. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died.

NORTHERN IRELAND

How about the two-state solution in Northern Ireland?

In 1921, the Irish successfully fought for independence and Ireland was partitioned into two countries: the Irish Free State, which was almost entirely Catholic, and the smaller Northern Ireland, which was mostly Protestant and under British rule. From the late sixties to the late nineties, Northern Ireland was scarred by deadly sectarian violence.  Car bombings, street violence, riots and revenge killings tore the country apart, resulting in 3,600 deaths and over 30,000 injuries.

Although the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland gets little notice in the media, it still goes on.  As recently as 2021, crowds of predominantly loyalist youths attacked lines of riot police officers and vehicles with bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs.  Eighteen were arrested almost ninety police officers were injured in sporadic violence in cities and smaller towns.

This two-state solution hasn’t work out all that well in Northern Ireland.

THE CIVIL WAR

After Abraham Lincoln was elected President, and southern states seceded, Army General Winfield Scott suggested a solution to the irrepressible conflict: “Wayward sisters depart in peace.” In other words, a two-state solution.

Would this have worked?  Not a chance.  From the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861, the slavery can had been kicked down the road time and time again. The wayward sisters might have left the Union, but the slavery issue was not going anywhere.  Dividing the union into two countries would never have cooled the passions of abolitionists. The underground railroad would keep chugging along.  The north would continue ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act, an action of defiance similar to today’s sanctuary cities. As early as the 1820s, sectional conflicts were bitter. The North and South almost came to blows over “the tariff of Abominations.  Secession was already on the table in 1832. 

On December 20, 1832, South Carolina declared, declared:

each state of the Union has the right…for the preservation of its liberties or vital interests, to secede peaceably from the Union [and that the South Carolina legislature] regards with indignation the menaces which are  directed against it, and the concentration of a standing army on our  borders that the state will repel force by force, and, relying upon the  blessings of God, will maintain its liberty at all hazards.”

The Wayward sisters were not going to depart in peace.

A TWO STATE SOLUTION WITH GAZA

Two - state solutions don’t work when neighboring countries share more than a border; they share a visceral hatred of each other.  In 2005 Israel withdrew all Jewish settlers in Gaza, allowing the terrorist group, Hamas, to control the Gaza strip.  The Israeli government had to physically remove settlers who refused to leave; Israel wanted nothing more to do with Gaza.  They said, in effect, “Wayward neighbors, leave us alone.”  Freed from Israeli control, Hama’s virtual reply was, “Thanks for leaving us alone; now we are going to kill all of you.” In this case lines on maps exacerbated the situation, culminating in October 7, 2023.

Useful idiots at our indoctrination centers, otherwise known as universities, mindlessly chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They don’t want a two-state solution; they want a one state solution; it’s called genocide. 

A TWO STATE SOLUTION WITH LEBANON

In 2006, The United Nations established a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel set after Israel’s 2000 withdrawal.   Since the October 7^th massacre, the terrorist organization, Hezbollah, lobbed over 8,000 rockets into Israel bypassing the buffer zone and forcing over 70,000 Israelis to become “refugees in their own land.”  Israel responded by wiping out the leadership of the terrorist organization.  

And so it goes. 

Why do two state solutions not work? 

1)    Tribalism.  The innate tendency to divide into us against them.  It’s arguably universal.  (I’ve written about this before.)

2)    The territorial imperative – the innate need to establish, maintain and defend territory.  It’s common among a wide range of animals – birds, apes, hippos, lions, house cats, saltwater crocodiles, geese and humans.

High fences make good neighbors, is a clever little aphorism from Robert Frost, but when the neighbors hate each other, when your neighbor, tribe, clan, or nation wants to enslave you, obliterate you, or take your resources or land, high fences will be breached.

Israel understands this; “peacemaking;” bureaucrats do not.

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