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Going back almost 30 years, on September 13, 1993, there was a tremendous amount of excitement in both the Israeli and the American Jewish populations. In a ceremony replete with lofty, inspiring speeches and the Marine Corps band band, Yasser Arafat, the grand-daddy of twentieth-century terrorism, airplane and bus hijackings, and school massacres, shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

This was the date of the signing of the Oslo Accords, a document that was predicated around the premise of “land for peace.”

However, this premise was summarily rejected by repeatedly generous offers to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on July 25, 2000, and by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on September 16, 2008.

And as the years ensued, the Israeli Jewish population has been subjected to repeated waves of terrorism, including a very recent wave of near-daily terrorism coming out of Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. Since September 13, 1993, at least 1,670 Israeli civilians have been murdered by suicide bombings, automobile rammings, knifings, shootings, and various other forms of terrorism.

As the Israeli people may very well be divided about the controversial issue of judicial reform, they are united in the notion that there is simply no one to talk to on the Palestinian side and that the two-state solution is nothing more than a lovely, comforting fairy tale.

However, most American Jews desperately cling to the notion that the Israelis have a reasonable negotiator on the Palestinian side, and that there will be a two-state solution.

Why have American Jews clung to the two-state solution, against the brutal reality that Israelis must confront? Where is the disconnect? Here to answer is Caroline Glick.

About the Speaker: Caroline B. Glick is senior contributing editor at JNS and a senior columnist at JNS and Newsweek. She is also a diplomatic commentator at Israel’s Channel 14. Glick also serves as senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and a lecturer at Israel’s
College of Statecraft in Jerusalem. Glick is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for
Peace in the Middle East and Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad. A widely sought-after lecturer, Glick has briefed policymakers from Washington to Canberra, military commanders in Israel and the U.S. and general audiences worldwide. She has received multiple awards for her journalism. As a captain in the IDF from 1994-1996, Glick was a core member of Israel’s negotiating team with the PLO and served as assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 1997-1998. She is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, and Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad. Glick lives in Efrat with her husband Shimon Suissa and their sons Yoav and Shilo.