Two States

By Larry Gordon

The misunderstanding that spilled out of the news cycle last week was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of a broader agreement, had agreed to the establishment at some point of a Palestinian state somewhere in the vicinity of the State of Israel. Some news outlets in Israel called it “bombshell” news.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the aftermath of the coordinated effort to destroy the Iranian nuclear threat and defeat the danger posed by Iran, new pathways have opened up that can lead Israel and her Arab neighbors in a new diplomatic direction that can usher in an era of genuine peace.

There are more than just a few components to this potential new agreement between the U.S., Israel, and the Arab states that are planning to join the Abraham Accords that will hopefully herald a new dawn in the Middle East. This is a day we have all been waiting for for more than half a century. 

{IMG Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.jpg

{Caption Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu

First, let us address the idea that Israel agreed to a two-state solution with a “reformed” Palestinian Authority. Creating a reformed PA will most likely prove impossible for many years. It is important to note that in its current construction, Mahmoud Abbas is already in his 20th year of a four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority, an entity which was created to test the feasibility of the Palestinian people to govern and police themselves, at least to a reasonable extent.

The experiment has not been a complete failure, though the corruption that exists in the Abbas-governed areas has left the people in poverty while their leadership (especially Abbas and his family) have become billionaires. When the new agreement refers to a “reformed” Palestinian Authority, that is one of the aspects of the equation that has to be dealt with.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s senior aide, is in Washington, D.C. this week to hold talks on a budding Mid-East peace deal and the expansion of the Abraham Accords. If there was a sensible order to this process, the top priority now that Iran has been dealt with, should be the release of all the hostages, both living and those who deserve a dignified burial in the land they lived in and called home.

The second order of business should be the complete elimination of whatever is left of Hamas. The leaders of the terror group are asking the U.S. to have Israel sign an agreement that once they are exiled from Gaza that they will not be hunted down and killed as they deserve.

If I was doing Israel’s bidding, I would enthusiastically sign such an agreement, and then over time oversee a proper elimination of the Hamas leaders who masterminded the deaths of so many innocent people. At the end of the process, any terrorists who are left alive will complain to the U.S. and the UN that Israel has violated their agreement. Those accusations should certainly be carefully analyzed and investigated—after Treasury officials have a chance to examine their investment portfolios.

As for the future of Gaza, which now lies in ruins, the territory needs to be rebuilt. Many world leaders believe that the reconstruction of The Strip will take between 10 and 15 years. President Trump has submitted the idea that during this time, the 2 million or so Palestinians who used to call that piece of real estate home should be moved to either neighboring countries or at the very least to any country that will take them.

After that problem is dealt with, the next big step is the official expansion and strengthening of the Abraham Accords. It is speculated that this will include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Lebanon, which will join agreements that already include the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Although peace treaties have existed for many years with Egypt and Jordan, the story is that there are additional advantages for these countries to sign onto the new Accords.

The major obstacle to peace in the region is the Palestinians and this myth and fiction of a Palestinian state. In order to relieve some of the international pressure, Israel will have to agree to a formula or as Saudi Arabia insists, a “pathway” to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The political right, and indeed, significantly more than half of the people in Israel will be opposed to any such agreement or arrangement. But if you examine the terms carefully, you will understand that while there needs to be a “pathway” to a state, no one expects the process to ever reach a conclusion.

After the Six-Day War of 1967, the UN achieved an agreement that everyone involved in the war signed, which called for Israel to be recognized within “secure and recognized boundaries.” It is now 57 years later and there is no definitive agreement as to what “secure” really means. It’s still a part of the debate between Israel and some of her Arab neighbors, and an issue that is not unlike the need to create a pathway for a Palestinian state. And all involved know that this is where it begins and where it ends—on that pathway.

The talk that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has a “Jewish problem” is picking up momentum. One of the key symptoms is, in the words of Shakespeare, that the gentleman “doth protest too much, me thinks.”

A few days ago, I listened to one of Carlson’s podcasts with his guest, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. One of the key topics was the U.S. destruction by B-2 Spirit bombers of the Iranian nuclear threats at three locations, rendering their incessant threats to destroy Israel—as well as the U.S.—moot. Carlson and Green were and still are major supporters of President Trump. They haven’t changed their minds on this matter, but they have in no uncertain terms expressed their dissatisfaction with the U.S. for obliterating the Iranian nuclear threat.

While they understand that Iran is the country that funds and fuels terrorism around the world, they incredulously ask why, if there was no direct threat to the U.S., the U.S. military was involved in a matter that could have endangered American lives. For a few minutes on the podcast it sounded as if both Carlson and Greene were somewhat disappointed that there were no American casualties.

More than a few times, both Carlson and Greene stated that they support Israel and care for Israel, but Tucker expressed a clear dichotomy between the Biblical obligation to support and bless the Jewish people and supporting what Tucker referred to as “the secular state and government of Israel.” He made it clear that, in his estimation, nowhere in the Bible is there an edict that demands that non-Jews bless and support Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling coalition that includes a fair number of secularists and nationalists, with whom Carlson has a number of problems. For a moment there, Tucker was sounding like a spokesperson for Neturei Karta.

Let me add that I believe I have a deeper and more personal understanding of what Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green’s problem are with Israel at this juncture in history. Back in the 1980s and 90s, I was directing Jewish radio programming at a Christian-owned radio station here in New York. The owners were fundamentalist Christians and over time, I learned a great deal about them and their belief system as well as their perspective on me and my belief system.

I was in their employ for about five years, and while we got along well, over time they could not believe that no matter how long we talked about issues pertaining to the Bible, that they could never make any progress in getting me to move on from my faith in Hashem or adopt their heretical beliefs, since Judaism does not consider J____ to be a prophet, a messiah, or the son of G-d.

And that is probably what troubles Tucker Carlson about Israel and the Jewish people. That is, our rejection of his deity and his inability to understand or wrap his mind around why so many Americans and Conservative leaders like Mr. Trump love and support Israel while we do not accept what they believe to be religious truth.

While Tucker can appreciate what the Torah says and what Hashem said to Abraham, that “those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed,” he takes it an odd step further and insists that the Bible does not make a specific reference to the Netanyahu government.

Quite suddenly, with funding from his billionaire Qatari financiers, Tucker Carlson has become an expert on Biblical scripture, which has led unsurprisingly to an ideological shift since the beginning of 2025.

For her part, Congresswoman Greene, at Carlson’s prompting, wondered aloud about the power and influence that Israel enjoys in Congress. For his part, Tucker wanted to know why AIPAC is not registered as a foreign agent if they are doing the bidding of another country. The answer to that is that AIPAC is concerned with the U.S.-Israel relationship and for the most part how that relationship benefits the U.S.

As we have seen over the last five months, President Trump is committed to keeping the U.S. out of war and doing his utmost to settle conflicts around the world that he inherited from the inept administration that preceded him. The destruction of Iran’s nuclear abilities helped the U.S. as much as it did Israel and other countries around the world.

Carlson and Greene are extremely confused. They support Trump to the maximum, but they are confounded by the extraordinary U.S.-Israel connection and Israel’s superior Intelligence and military expertise troubles them. Their faith wrongly told them that it was not supposed to be that way. While they probably understand the words, Am Yisrael Chai, they just cannot absorb their true meaning. n

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