I met former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger– who recently died at the age of 100– in Jerusalem in 2012 at a conference put on by then President of Israel Shimon Peres. Kissinger received the Presidential Medal of Honour-Israel's Highest Civilain Honour. I remember Kissenger's heavily accented deep voice, when he said, "My parents would be more proud of this honour than any other distinctions that have come my way." It was not the first time I had heard him speak, as when I was a Jewish student many moons ago, I had attended a plenary in Toronto where Kissinger spoke.
It's interesting to see what Kissinger has said in regard to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war before he died, specifically his statements, which run counter to the Biden administration's push for a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza once Hamas is defeated. Biden has stated that under the unified leadership of a reformed Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian state living alongside Israel should come into being in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In an article published by Politico on Dec 2, 2023, the German born Kissinger-who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938– suggested dropping the notion of a two-state solution, and having the West Bank put under Jordanian control.
As Kissinger stated on Oct 18, "A formal peace doesn’t guarantee a lasting peace. The difficulty of the two-state solution is shown by the experience of Hamas. Gaza was made quasi-independent by [former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon in order to test the possibility of a two-state solution. It has led, in fact, to a much more complex situation. It has become so much worse in the last two years than it has been in 2005. So the two-state solution doesn’t guarantee that what we saw in the last weeks won’t happen again."
Kissinger also noted as reported by Politico, "I believe the West Bank should be put under Jordanian control rather than aim for a two-state solution which leaves one of the two territories determined to overthrow Israel. Egypt has moved closer to the Arab side, so Israel will have a very difficult time going forward."
Notwithstanding Kissinger's comments, it's hard to believe that Jordan would agree to control the Palestinians in the West Bank.It's not clear to me from the above comments what Kissenger foresaw as being the future of Gaza, albeit maybe he hoped it would be administered by Egypt. Egpyt, however, has pretty much made it clear it has no desire to rule Gaza.
In an interview with Politico following the October 7 attack in Israel, Kissinger also gave full support for Israel's war on Hamas, saying: “You can’t make concessions to people who have declared and demonstrated by their actions that they cannot make peace.”
In the remarks posted on his website on Oct 19 of this year Kissinger, who at age 20 became a US citizen and served in the Army's intelligence division until the end of the Second World War, said the United States must continue to support Israel and revitalize its role as a direct negotiator in the region.“The immediate question is whether the Jewish state can fulfill its aspirations for freedom in the face of these accumulated arms, both to the north and to the south,” Kissinger added, “and the seemingly implacable hostility to Israel of some Palestinians that produced this latest disaster.”
It must be said that Kissinger was always wary of American presidents who instinctively try to weild their power to try to end conflicts, as he maintined that giving into those instincts would likely to lead to more war. He called this “the paradox of peace.”
As Martin Indyk (who I have also met years ago at a conference in Israel examining the 1967 Six Day War ) wrote in the Washington Post, " Kissinger favored an incremental approach to peacemaking: a step-by-step process that would ameliorate conflict and buy time for the warring parties to come to terms with one another, learn to live together and, eventually, end their conflict."
Of course, Kissinger would have warned against the attempt by then President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to impose a far-reaching end-of-conflict deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, an attempt which failed. Instead, Arafat turned to the violence of the second intifada. The Left in Israel was undercut and the Right has been on ascendency in Israel ever since.
Indyk wrote in the Washington Post on Nov 30, He [Kissinger] would have been the first to warn against any attempt to end the conflict by imposing a two-state solution. Instead, he would have wanted a process that would begin by introducing Palestinian governance back into Gaza under a trusteeship in which Egypt and other Arab states would help maintain order. He would have had no objection to holding out the two-state solution as the eventual endpoint, as long as everyone understood it would need to be preceded by a process of building capabilities and confidence one step at a time."
Although Indyk, who himself has long been a proponent of a two state solution has written this above, I am not at all sure based on Kissinger's Oct 18 interview in which Kissinger said the West Bank should be put under the control of Jordan, whether Kissenger in fact thought near the end of his days that a " two-state solution" was the "eventual endpoint." It would appear from the report published by Politico on Dec 2, that Kissenger may well have moved away from this position.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in the city of Fuerth in Bavaria, not far from Nuremberg, on May 27, 1923, and was the son of a schoolteacher. On arriving to the U.S., Heinz changed his name to Henry.
