A Canadian helped design the 'two-state solution.' This Canadian says it remains the only answer in Israel

Former Canadian diplomat Norman Spector doesn’t have a reputation for wishful thinking. So when he proposes we talk about how the issues around terrorism, atrocities and hostages are being framed in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel, I know I’m in for a stiff shot of realpolitik. “By chance, I had the good fortune of being Canada’s first representative to the Palestinian Authority shortly after I landed in Israel as ambassador in 1992,”  Norman says, setting the context for our virtual conversation. “I have some fond as well as some scary memories of walking around Gaza back then,” he continues, “but these days, I mostly wonder how Israeli-Palestinian relations would have unfolded in the wake of the Oslo accords had Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated.” Appointed by then-prime minister Brian Mulroney as Canada’s ambassador in 1992, the year before the Oslo accords were signed, Norman had the good fortune of living in the Middle East during a period of peace. Reflecting back, Norman says he’s not sure the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, envisioned in the Oslo accords, ever had a chance after the Rabin assassination. Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist opposed to his peace efforts. “I think Rabin came to the conclusion that there was no alternative — and he had the credibility that allowed him to take a chance with Arafat whom Israelis did not trust,” Norman says. “After October 7,” he muses, “there is even less trust of Palestinians and there’s no Rabin in sight.” There is a faint hint of wistfulness in Norman’s tone; his assessment of the current situation is deeply unsettling. From October 7 on, we’ve seen growing division and polarization and hatred in our own country. Progressives have made Gaza their cause (no one more than Alberta’s own NDP MP, Heather McPherson) and conservatives hold loyal to Israel. Media outlets pick a lane and stick with it. Talking about Israel and the Palestinians has become so prickly, many refuse to wade into the conversation for fear of being attacked. The rhetoric is all part of the conflict, Norman accurately points out, “Folks chanting or spray painting ‘genocide’ are generally not in favour of two states, one Jewish, one Palestinian, between the river and the sea.” Having spent considerable time in the Middle East region myself over the past 40 years, I know how this blame game twists and turns. Public opinion in Canada is heavily influenced by the atrocities of war conveyed on our television screens and in our media. “In the first place of course one must blame Hamas — a fundamentalist organization that rejects a two-state solution — for launching an attack that has brought about so many deaths and so much misery to people living between the river and the sea,” Norman asserts. “And in the ensuing months,” he continues, “for not having put down their arms and perhaps gone into exile as Arafat did in the 1980s. “But,” he adds, “the Government of Israel, too, is to blame — beholden as it is to Jewish fundamentalists who are the ideological twins of their Muslim counterparts. “I still believe that the essence of the conflict (and the solution),” he reiterates, “is the existence of two states — one Jewish, one Palestinian — between the river and the sea as envisaged in the UN partition, which a Canadian was instrumental in developing and which Canada voted for in 1947.” (I’m embarrassed to admit I’d forgotten the role played by Lester B. Pearson, then a senior Canadian diplomat, in designing a two-state solution.) In the early 1990s, Norman’s appointment as ambassador to Israel raised eyebrows in the Arab world. As Norman explains in his 2003 book, Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast Peace Became America’s Fight, Canada’s Foreign Affairs ministry had never sent a Jew to serve in Tel Aviv; Mulroney wanted to break that barrier. Norman — who had been Mulroney’s chief of staff — won over the critics with his objective grasp of regional politics and ability to speak with the locals in both Hebrew and Arabic. Decades later, Norman — whose long career has included a stint as publisher of the Jerusalem Post — remains convinced there can be no real peace until both peoples elect governments that have campaigned on two states: one Jewish, one Palestinian. Calls for a ceasefire, while understandable, may make us feel more comfortable — but it’s only a pause, he reminds me. “It takes the horrible images off TV screens,” Norman says, “until the next time.” “My principal concern is the climate in Canada,” he writes, “and I wish our media and government had done a better job of explaining the true nature of the conflict, and that a ceasefire is not peace but a pause until the next war. “Had the Netanyahu government declared that Hamas is opposed to a Jewish state and denies the Jewish people’s right to self-determination on October 7,” Norman asserts, “that would have been the truth and framed the war differently. It didn’t because it too opposes two states. “Because the Netanyahu government itself refuses a two-state solution,” he elaborates, “it failed to make this the issue and instead its hasbara (explanation) focused on the atrocities and the hostages.” “Now no doubt the atrocities were atrocious and the fate of the hostages of real concern — but in the end this could not compete with the death and destruction we’ve seen in Gaza as conveyed on our TV screens and in our media,” he adds. The debate in Canada got off on the wrong foot, Norman suggests, focusing on whether Hamas was a terrorist organization, rather than talking about the real issue. “Both sides,” he suggests, “will have to decide that two states is the only solution. “Netanyahu simply does not believe that Palestinians are willing to live in peace with Israelis between the river and the sea,” is Norman’s opinion. And, he adds, “a ceasefire or a truce (hudna in Arabic) rather than peace is Hamas’s position because it does not imply recognition of a Jewish state between the river and the sea within any borders living beside a Palestinian state.”

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