One of the surprises in the weeks since October 7 is that two of the clearest voices on the matter are Bill and Hillary Clinton. To be sure, there is a personal reason behind this: Bill Clinton in particular resents Yasser Arafat for refusing to take the highly generous two-state deal Clinton helped broker at great length back in 1999 and 2000. Clinton managed to get Israel to agree to massive concessions, which Clinton describes in the short clip below (where it sounds like he is standing up to a pro-Hamas heckler): “I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza… between 96 and 97% of the West Bank, compensating land in Israel, you name it.”

It has long been rumored that Clinton curses Arafat for costing him (Clinton) a certain Nobel Peace Prize and a more substantial presidential lagacy if the deal had gone through. Instead Arafat launched the second Intifada. I suspect Israel may have offered such sweeping concessions to call Arafat’s bluff.

For all of his political skill, Clinton didn’t understand why Arafat couldn’t take this deal—or any deal with Israel—quite aside from pure Jew-hatred: If Arafat had made a deal with Israel, he would have been assassinated, just as Anwar Sadat was killed for making peace with Israel. This is why there can never be a two-state solution. The most radical Islamists don’t want it. We ought to take them seriously when they say “To the river to the sea.” There is never going to be a two-state solution, but not because Israel won’t agree to it.