Kiriakou’s starting position on the one-state-versus-two-state argument is that the question is already settled by facts. “There already is one state,” he says. “How’s that working out for everybody? Not very well.” [1]
Why not two
A two-state solution, in his account, is unavailable partly for reasons on the Palestinian side. His example is the Palestinian Authority’s leadership. Mahmoud Abbas is, in a formulation Kiriakou says he always uses, “19 years into a four-year term” — and has “suddenly finds himself to be a billionaire despite the fact that his people are among the poorest in the world.” [1]
Elsewhere in the same broadcast he presses the point about elections: the Palestinian Authority does not make things easier for itself by refusing to hold one. [1]
The third state
The arithmetic Kiriakou says nobody wants to face is not two but three. “You’ve got the three-state solution, which nobody wants to talk about, because there’s really no connection between East Bank — sorry, East Bank, West Bank Palestinians and Gaza Palestinians.” [2]
His conclusion is bleak and evenly distributed: “So, what’s the solution? Even the Palestinians don’t have a proposed solution.” [2]
The underlying divisions are ones he had set out minutes earlier, after a conversation with a Jordanian embassy intern: that Palestinians in the diaspora are split by generation, by religion, by whether they descend from the refugees of 1948, and by Gulf money. [1]
The reinvasion
Against that background Kiriakou turned to the day’s news, the Israeli reinvasion of Gaza City, and asked what it was for. His own answer: “just so they can kill the people who managed to escape last time and blow up the tunnels that the Israelis were responsible for digging in the first place.” [2]
On the ceasefire deal then on the table — signed off by Hamas, covering the remaining living hostages and the bodies of the dead, with a Friday deadline — Kiriakou was categorical that the reinvasion was the answer to it. “No ceasefire. No way.” [3]
His explanation is Netanyahu’s personal position: so long as the war continues and he remains prime minister, he is not prosecuted for corruption. On the hostages, Kiriakou and his co-host agree the Israeli government does not care, and has made that clear from the beginning. [3]