"They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
These words were spoken by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in his unprecedented speech last week calling for the end and replacement of Israel’s democratically elected government.
How ironic is it then that the policy Schumer championed so much during his speech is precisely that.
The two reasons Schumer claimed Benjamin Netanyahu can no longer remain the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and must now be considered an “obstacle to peace” are his empowerment of parties to the right of the Likud and his current rejection of the Two-State Solution.
The Two-State Solution has been the policy of the US for decades, implicitly during the 90s and the period of the Oslo Accords, and explicitly since the early 2000s. Schumer, in basing all his hopes for peace on the Two-State Solution, is himself guilty of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
The idea of the Two-State Solution dates back to the 1930s and the Peel Commission, whose recommendation that mandatory Palestine be split into an Arab and a Jewish state, with the Jewish state being too small to be viable, was rejected by the Arab side. The 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have created an Arab state, was similarly rejected by the Arab side even as the Jewish side celebrated it.
The reason the Israeli government no longer accepts the Two-State Solution is because it is attempting to learn from past mistakes. Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert did all they could to create a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel, only for their offers to be met with more terrorism. Ariel Sharon, in what turned out to be a blunder of historic proportions, withdrew all Israeli civilians and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Rather than prove they were ready for or capable of responsible statehood and build a Mediterranean version of Singapore, Gazans elected Hamas, which deliberately turned Gaza into a failed state whose only purpose was to wage war on the Jews.
Without the Oslo Accords, the horrors of October 7 would not have happened.
Without the Disengagement, the horrors of October 7 would not have happened.
Israelis have learned this the hard way, which is why support for the Two-State Solution has dropped from about two thirds a decade ago to two thirds opposing this ‘solution’ today.
While he claims that it is Netanyahu who is “stuck in the past,” Schumer and all those who are pushing for a Two-State Solution now have learned nothing from this history. They are stuck in the 90s, living in a world before the campaign of suicide bombings, before the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon, and before thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel in an orgy of death and destruction.
The insanity of Schumer’s position can be seen in one of the few good parts of his speech, when he admitted that Hamas and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas are also “obstacles to peace” and the achievement of his beloved Two-State Solution, and need to be removed.
In other words, everyone is an obstacle to peace in Schumer’s world. How can a solution be viable if literally everyone is an obstacle to it?
Even the left in Israel has largely turned away from the Two State Solution. That is how 99 out of 120 MKs voted for a resolution condemning international attempts to force the creation of a Palestinian state.
Even if a left-wing government were established in Israel, Hamas destroyed, and Abbas replaced with a new leader who represented the Palestinian Arabs, it would still take time to rebuild the kind of trust necessary to begin to allow Israelis to consider the Two-State Solution again. And this is without taking into account the very serious problem that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs support the atrocities of October7.
Any peace will require not only the eradication of Hamas, but a complete change in the very culture of the Palestinian Authority, a change that will likely take decades even if handled perfectly.
By refusing to acknowledge this, by pushing the same policies that have failed again and again and have only resulted in thousands of deaths and will only result in thousands more if Israel does what he wants, Schumer proves that he is the one who is guilty of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
Advocating for a policy whose only possible result under the current circumstances would be more death and more war seems insane. But then again, if held to the standards of his own definition, Chuck Schumer would be deemed insane.
Gary Willigis a member of the Arutz Sheva news staff