The inherent violence in the two-state paradigm

Regardless of the Israeli election result, France will still pursue the two-state paradigm. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot completely missed the point with this statement. The Israeli elections did not factor in two-state politics. Neither did Zionist colonialism. Colonial expansion has one aim: to displace the indigenous population and replace it with settlers. Whoever triumphs at the polls, Israel is determined not to veer from that course.

“Our course is very clear, and our position remains unchanged,” Barrot told the French broadcaster France 2. “What we want is security for Israel, but also the prospect of two states living side-by-side – recognised, respected in their rights, and at peace.”

What France says it wants is contradictory. Two states living side by side does not eliminate colonialism; therefore, respect and recognition are unequal. Peace within a colonial context is impossible. What remains is Israel’s security, which Israel is determined to achieve by persisting in its security narrative. This, in turn, provides impunity for ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and genocide. Which part of the two-state paradigm does France want?

France, like the rest of the international community, can and will continue to pursue the obsolete paradigm. Israel has long departed from the defunct status quo. The Israeli elections so far show that a majority of voters have shifted away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, which will likely win 53 seats, while the Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, will likely secure a total of 19 seats in the Knesset. The bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, head of the Yashar party, is projected to win 48 seats.

Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot are adamantly opposed to two-state politics. France and the international community have no chance of diplomatic gains with either option. What France, like the rest of the world, refuses to concede is that the two-state paradigm enables colonialism. Only by departing from the colonial-serving international consensus can a challenge to Israel be truly presented.

So, when France says its position remains unchanged, while Israel will prioritise ongoing forced displacement and colonial expansion, the only dissonance is in the way France describes the two-state paradigm.

Decades of calling for two states living side by side in peace and security have achieved the total opposite, because while the hypothesis allows space for Israeli colonialism, it does not allow space for legitimate Palestinian anti-colonial resistance. If the two-state paradigm is discarded in favour of decolonisation, France can find cohesion between the words uttered and their meaning. There will be no two-state framework to use as a colonial shield for Israel’s impunity.

In the absence of decolonisation, France’s position, like that of the rest of the world in persistently advocating for the defunct two-state paradigm, supports all measures undertaken by the Israeli government to forcibly displace Palestinians from their land. It is the insistence on pretending that Israel is not a colonial entity that provides the space for world leaders to state that a paradigm based upon territorial appropriation can bring peace and equality.

If the two-state paradigm has achieved nothing but colonial expansion, forced displacement and genocide, then the status quo to which France and the international community adhere is replete with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.