Hamas' Two State Solution

Hamas head Khaled Meshal recently celebrated the new Palestinian Unity Agreement by giving a speech in which he said: 


"We will have one authority and one decision. We need to achieve the common goal: a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital, no settlers, and we will not give up the right of return."


He should have been a little more specific. When he said "no settlers" he meant no Israeli settlers. Palestinian settlers on the other hand are an absolute necessity. 

Khaled Meshal

Let's put this in perspective: under any peace deal, only a few thousand Israeli settlers would remain in a Palestinian state and at the very most 50,000 would decide to remain. That is 50,000 Jews among among roughly 2.5 million Palestinians. That would make Jews 2% of the West Bank and only 1.25% of the entire State of Palestine since there are no Jews left in Gaza. 


Now let's put that in a political context: to gain 1 seat in the Israeli Parliament - the Knesset - a party must win at least 2% of the vote. If Palestine were to adopt a similar law which is common in Parliamentary democracies (and should the State of Palestine actually become a democracy) even if every Jew voted for the same party (which is extremely unlikely to begin with) they would not even be able to get a single representative in the Palestinian Parliament.


Settlers pose no threat to demographic dominance of the Palestinians in their own state. Even if every settler were to stay in the new state, they would only be 17% of the population. This is much less than the current 20.4% of the Israeli population that is Palestinian, and that is before any Palestinian "refugees" are allowed to "return." After a few million Palestinians move to Israel, they would quickly become the majority, turning Israel into a de facto second Palestinian state.


This makes one wonder, when Meshal says he wants "a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders," which side of those borders does it want to be on? 


Meshal's idea of a two state solution is not one of Israel and Palestine, it is a Fatah State in the West Bank and a Hamas State in Israel and Gaza.