U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is jet-setting around the Middle East trying to find answers for what will happen in the day after the Israel-Hamas war ends. He will not find them, for the simple reason that there is a crisis of confidence in the region when it comes to American leadership. Palestinians, Arabs, and many others have lost trust in the U.S. and its ability to be an honest broker and the leader of the free world. To us, it is clear that the U.S. has chosen a side in the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians—and it didn't choose us.
President Joe Biden has said that he is going to push for the two-state solution once the war is over, but for many Palestinians, U.S. promises lack credibility. In the fall of 2022, Biden told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the time was not right for peace talks, and we took him at his word.
When Abbas met this week with Secretary Blinken, they discussed Palestinian money—customs and taxes on products bought by Palestinians and imported through Israeli controlled borders. Israel collects these funds on behalf of the Palestinians, which is has been refusing to turn over to the Palestinians. Israel's far right extremist Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has refused to turn give the Palestinians our own money, claiming it could end up with Hamas. The U.S. has tried different ways to deal with the issue, including suggesting that Israel give the money to Norway, which can then give it back to Palestinians while ensuring that no money makes it to Hamas. This, too, Smotrich rejected.
In this context, Abbas asked Blinken how Palestinians are expected to believe that Washington will help with the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel; how will the U.S. convince Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories when it is unable to convince its ally to live up to international law and the Oslo Accords and turn over Palestinian money?
Blinken didn't have a convincing response. And yet, the answer is simple. The extreme skepticism among Palestinians of the U.S. can be addressed with a single decision that would be totally in line with current U.S. and international policy: President Biden should immediately and unequivocally recognize the state of Palestine along the 1967 borders.
It makes perfect sense. The U.S. and the world support the two-state solution. The U.S. and the world have since 1948 recognized Israel, as did the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993. Yet the U.S. along with many European countries have balked at recognizing Palestine—even though 139 U.N. member states have done so since 2012.
President Biden, who is fighting for his political future and his legacy right now domestically, could turn things around for himself and for the Palestinians by making a courageous, historic decision. And in fact, the decision involves not acting as the U.S. has historically: In the next session of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. should simply not object to a resolution recognizing the state of Palestine in the West Bank including east Jerusalem and Gaza, even though those areas are under Israeli occupation.
For the peace process to return to the right track, a new formula for peace talks must be implemented. What made the Oslo Accords a failure was the fact that an interim five-year solution agreed to in 1993 has become a thirty-year chaotic plan with no clear end in sight. Instead of the gradual approach of Oslo, what is needed today is clarity. A Palestinian state must be declared upfront. Legitimate Palestinian representatives of the state of Palestine could then begin immediate negotiations with Israeli representatives to resolve all issues between the two states, including security, settlers, economic issues, refugees, and Jerusalem.
President Biden doesn't need Israel to agree to such a sovereign U.S. decision, and he doesn't need Congress to agree. He simply needs to instruct his U.N. ambassador not to oppose such a resolution.
Instead of war and aggression and acts of violence against civilians on both sides, we need legitimate levelheaded leaders of Palestine and Israel to find reasonable solutions to this decades-old conflict. The U.S. can do a lot of help by following up on what it says day and night: that it supports the two-state solution.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said once it takes two to tango and for Palestinians and Israel to tango, the big U.S. brother must apply fairness and equity in its treatment of Palestinians and Israelis, in both words and deeds.
President Biden can end the fighting in the Middle East by simply recognizing the State of Palestine. He should take this historic step and end the carnage today.
Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is a columnist with Al-Monitor. Follow him on X @daoudkuttab and Threads @daoud.kuttab.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
