Is a Two-State Solution (Israel and Palestine) an Acceptable Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

“That two-state “solution” has never been a solution at all. In fact, it’s just one of the many U.S. policies supposedly meant to support peace that has done just the opposite…

Israelis have agreed to a Palestinian state at least four times since 1947. The Palestinians have rejected it each time. The U.S. and Europe have responded each time by providing more economic aid to the Palestinians and pressuring Israel to make more concessions. That hasn’t worked…

Israel should continue to build and expand, and annex all the existing West Bank territories into Israel proper. Israeli citizenship, with all the rights and privileges it entails, should be offered to all its inhabitants. This is not a crazy idea, but a simple recipe that worked in Israel proper for generations and has produced too many Jewish and Arab success stories to count…

Arabs, Jews, and Christians are living relatively peacefully and much more prosperously in Israel proper and have been for years. It’s time for everyone living in the West Bank territories to enjoy the same rights and opportunities and not the time for anyone to insist on more racially and religiously segregated states.”

“Those who continue to portray a two-state solution as a possibility are – inadvertently or otherwise – providing Israel with cover to continue wiping Palestine off the map, because the point of no return seems to forever be on the horizon, and as long as that is the case, Israel can avoid blame for passing the point of no return…

There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way people view the conflict and ways to solve it. That involves acknowledging that Israel has created a one-state reality, and finding ways to make that state equitable rather than a vehicle for the apartheid system that exists today.

This is actually easier than with two states, because issues of separation – borders, settlements, East Jerusalem, resources – no longer become the insurmountable obstacles they currently are.

Nevertheless, the debate over the desirability of one state for both peoples is moot given that the two-state solution is no longer feasible.”

“I realize that for the past several years there has been both on the Democratic and Republican side the notion that we will be able to achieve Middle East peace by something called the two-state solution. I wanna be on record, and I know that this would not even be agreeable to some of you, because there are many Republicans who think that the two-state solution is in fact a solution. I consider it no solution whatsoever. There cannot be two states polling for the same piece of real estate especially when one of those states does not believe the other one even has a right to exist much less exist peacefully.

“Get over it, folks. Not happening. The time for a two-state solution passed in the previous millennium…

It’s highly unlikely Israel will uproot its settlers, especially considering the strength of support they can summon in election after election.

Not to mention, I do not believe Palestinians would accept the kind of state that’s condescendingly offered to them in any such conversation about two-state ‘solutions’. Any Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized, and who, really, would accept that—that’s not sovereignty, that’s (at best) autonomy, and if you’re going to be merely autonomous, why even uphold the fiction of statehood?

Think about it: If you had been militarily occupied and attacked for years by the same country, would you accept a ‘sovereign’ state which had no ability to defend itself? Palestinians, furthermore, don’t just have every reason to be wary of Israel’s intentions, and its powerful military, but of many of their neighbors’ as well…

We’ve left the two-state solution long behind. God forbid we leave the one-state behind, too.”

“I have listened for my whole professional life to a false dialogue. For years, policy makers and opinion leaders have argued over ‘solutions’ that are unreal or at last tangential: We keep chanting the dirge: one can almost put it to music — one state or two states. Neither is realistic and even if feasible would not solve the fundamental problem. But we seem to believe that, if we can say one or the other often enough, one of them might become acceptable. It is time to drop the nonsense and face the simple facts. They are:

In the ‘one state,’ the Arabs will be the subjugated minority with few rights and little or any security — they will be the ‘Jews’ of an Israeli Germany or an Israeli Imperial Russia, cooped up in ghettos, imprisoned, driven into exile or subjected to a final partition. They, their children and their grandchildren will sporadically resist. Their resistance will call forth more hatred and more reprisal. The cycle will continue.

In the ‘two states,’ those living in the truncated remnants of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) will be condemned to perpetual poverty and humiliation. They will have almost no usable agricultural land and virtually no water. They will be cut off from possible markets for what little they can produce. They can have no hope of manufacturing because their draw on electricity will be squeezed. Even the limited money they can earn will be closely controlled and often blocked by the Israeli Central Bank as it now is. They will have limited access to health facilities, educational institutions and even contact with one another, segregated as they are and will be by restricted zones, walls and standing security and military forces. They, their children and their grandchildren will sporadically resist or attempt to strike back.”

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel could ‘never, ever countenance’ a fully sovereign Palestinian state. The world should take him at his word. There never was a two-state solution, and there won’t be one in any foreseeable future. Instead, that so-called solution serves only to enable Israel’s continued oppression, empowering cynics and hard-liners and perpetuating a never-ending cycle of conflict. The only viable resolution is to unite Israel and the territories into a single state…

Israel justifies its mistreatment of Palestinians by claiming that Arabs are not its responsibility; whether they live within Israel or the occupied territories, they all ultimately belong in the unsettled West Bank and should be provided for by their own government — an attitude emphasized by Israel’s recent nationality law, which defines the country as an explicitly, perhaps exclusively Jewish state.

But in a unified Israel, Arabs would be the majority if afforded the same right to return that the Jewish diaspora has; there are 3 million registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. And demographic projections suggest Jews will soon be the minority even without considering the Palestinian diaspora. Accordingly, Palestinians would have much more leverage in a one-state scenario; their quest would then be for equitable power sharing and civil rights.”

“The next diplomatic formula that will replace the ‘two states for two peoples’ will be a civilian formula. All the people between the Jordan and the sea have the same right to equality, justice and freedom. In other words, there is a very reasonable chance that there will be only one state between the Jordan and the sea – neither ours nor theirs but a mutual one…

The conceptual framework will be agreed upon – a democratic state that belongs to all of its citizens. The practicable substance could be fertile ground for arguments and creativity. This is an opportunity worth taking, despite our grand experience of missing every opportunity and accusing everyone else except ourselves.”

“Efforts to ‘solve’ the situation by creating separate, ethnically homogenous states for the colonizing society, on the one hand, and for the victims of the colonization, on the other – along the lines of apartheid South Africa’s Bantustan system – have failed.

The remaining route to a just peace would be a historic agreement to dismantle this colonial reality; it would transform Israeli Jews from a settler-colonial garrison society, and Palestinians from a subjugated people, into citizens of a common state committed to protecting the rights of all. Painstaking work would be needed to reverse the gross inequalities that are the consequence of the purposeful dispossession of the Palestinians.”

“There is no use convincing the Jewish public to support the two-state solution, especially when over 500,000 settlers live beyond the Green Line and there is no guarantee that a Palestinian state will not be the source of terror against Israelis. The only way forward is to grant full equality to all…

Even if we assume that we can convince a large percentage of settlers to evacuate the West Bank, and assuming the Israeli economy will be able to deal with the price, and assuming that a state that was unable to take care of thousands of Gaza evacuees will be able to take care of hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Judea and Samaria, and assuming that both sides will agree to allow visits to each other’s holy sites, and assuming the Palestinians will be satisfied with a demilitarized 21 percent of their historic homeland, and assuming that they will agree to give up on the right of return, and assuming we find a solution that will reconnect Gaza and the West Bank, and assuming that the agreement will be accepted by the majority of Palestinians (and not just a handful of suits in Ramallah). Even if we assume all these to be true, after Oslo and the disengagement, who can guarantee that missiles won’t strike central Israel a month after an agreement is signed?”

“The Palestine Papers have given ultimate confirmation that Israel is not interested in an equitable two-state solution with the Palestinians. The secret documents reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt that even the most generous offers of land and security by the Palestinians in a two-state paradigm were rejected by Israel. During these negotiations, and in fact during the last twenty years of serious discussion of a two-state solution, Israel has doubled and redoubled efforts to create facts on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza which render a two-state solution impossible to implement.

Quite simply, Israel has created the one state. This state gives 80% of its citizens (the Jewish population) full democratic and civil rights. 20% of the citizens (Palestinian citizens of Israel) experience institutionalized discrimination in virtually all sectors of civil and political life. The remaining population in the West Bank lives in an apartheid like system of separate and unequal rights under full military occupation by Israel. The population of Gaza is surrounded by walls and predator drones which constantly monitor their movements while preventing the growth of a sovereign state.

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories form one state under complete Israeli control. Israeli negotiators with the cover of continued American aid and diplomatic assistance have taken every opportunity to stop an equitable two-state solution from coming into existence. Since we live in one state and the two-state solution is dead, why not pragmatically work towards bringing democracy to the residents of this unequal state?”

“Gaza and the West Bank may be separated from each other, but they are not separated from Israel. Given this reality, Gaza and the West Bank must inevitably become part of Israel; there can be no two-state solution. And Israel must leave behind its official Jewish identity to acknowledge its multiethnic, multireligious character by providing equal treatment for all… If Gaza and the West Bank were truly part of Israel, and Israel were truly a multiethnic, secular society, there would be progress toward peace.”

“If partition of this contested land was ever the just solution to the conflict, it ceased the moment one side refused. It was not a mere rejection: they launched repeated assaults to take it all by force. Returning Israel to its indefensible nine-mile waistline would once again place us in mortal danger, while rewarding the aggressor…

In Judea and Samaria there is ample room for many Jews, many Palestinians and peaceful coexistence… After 20 years of failed attempts to reach a two-state solution, isn’t it time we admit our failures and move on? The time has come to invest in new, innovative paths to peace that unite people through acts of mutual respect.”

“There is a conflict in the Middle East between two entities, and they’re both right, each in their own way. This is our only home, and therefore all kinds of solutions can be found. One could establish a system in one state in which Judea and Samaria are jointly held. The Jews would vote for a Jewish parliament and the Palestinians for an Arab parliament, and we would create a system in which life is shared. But these are things that will take time. Anyone who thinks that there are shortcuts is talking nonsense. As long as Islamic fundamentalism thinks that Jews are forbidden to settle in the Holy Land, we have a problem. It will not be resolved by an agreement, even if we obtain a promise from all the Arab states that it will be fine.

So if people say to me: Decide one state or division of the Land of Israel, I say that division is the bigger danger.”

“Anyone who went on our day trip [to the Shomron and a central mountain in the West Bank] realized the dangerous impossibility of establishing a Palestinian state overlooking the coastal plain and turning Israel into a narrow ribbon. A 15 mile wide ribbon. With Samaria, it becomes 70 miles wide.

I also show them the hostile Balata refugee camp on the mountain near Shechem (Nablus) overlooking the coast. They realize that a Palestinian Arab state not only doesn’t solve the demographic problem, it exacerbates it, brings 5 million ISIS members to our doorstep, three miles from Kfar Saba. Only someone who wants to see Israel destroyed could advocate that.”

“I believe in the one-state solution as the only just and functional settlement for the conflict. I think anyone who is more than five minutes on the ground in the West Bank realises there is no space there for an independent Palestinian state. And moreover, anyone who ponders a bit deeper about the reasons for the conflict understands that only such a political outfit could respond to all aspects of the conflict: the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948, the discrimination against the Palestinians in Israel and the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

“It’s beyond time to declare partition of the land both unworkable and unethical. Despite 20 years of this fiction, two decades of dreamers, cynics, Israel lobbyists, politicians, journalists, officials, liberal Zionists and pundits pronouncing the two-state solution the only game in town, it’s over. Finished. Israel killed it by pursuing its natural Zionist, expansionist tendencies. The result is that Israel has succeeded in conquering the West Bank but ended its chances of remaining a Jewish state… The only viable alternative, and one gaining increasing traction, is the one-state solution… A one-state equation isn’t about dismissing or ignoring Jewish history, but recognising the land is shared between two peoples and a soon-to-be minority Jewish population has no legal or ethical right to control a majority Arab people.

On its current path, despite some mainstream Israeli politicians advocating the illegal annexation of the West Bank to create an indefinite apartheid state, Israel will become increasingly ghettoised and militarised, convincing once-proud diaspora supporters to decide between their morality and Zionist loyalties. The time for a one-state solution has surely come.”

“The two-state solution is already dead. There is no place for the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria. Any attempt to establish a state there will be bad for the Palestinians. Like I said, most of them don’t want that…

The current situation is a mistake that must be corrected, and Israel must annex all of Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Authority has no good health-care system or policing system in all of Judea and Samaria. The whole idea of establishing a Palestinian state here is not realistic at all. It cannot sustain itself, and many of the Palestinian residents would like to leave the area. Their lives are terrible. There’s a lot of corruption here.”

“I think that that time [for a two-state solution] is gone. It went two years after the Oslo Accords were signed. And it’s very, very clear to me that a two-state solution just isn’t possible. Where are they going to have the second state? Who is going to remove all these Israeli settlements from Palestinian land, that encroach on more and more territory? Who is going to stop the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, which encroach on more and more Palestinian territory?…

The Israelis, by what they are doing, have themselves made a two-state solution impossible…

“Few would dispute the Palestinian entitlement to a state, but it simply cannot be achieved given the present reality. It was always folly to pursue the two-state solution in a context that militated against its ever happening. Today’s Israel-Palestine is demonstrably one state, impossible to divide. But it is a discriminatory state operating an apartheid-style system against the Palestinians with impunity. Gross economic inequality is one indicator of this system.

This situation demands a new Palestinian strategy, a Plan B that converts the Palestinian struggle for two states into one for equal rights within what is now a unitary state ruled by Israel. The first step in this plan requires a dismantlement of the PA as currently constituted, or at least a change of direction for the Palestinian leadership…

The PA’s new relationship with Israel should be restricted to pursuing the rights of its occupied people, including the right to political resistance. The PA should lead the campaign to prepare Palestinians for the abandonment of the two-state idea and the struggle for equal rights instead. Without a middleman to hide behind, the reality of Israel’s occupation will be exposed, and the logic of a civil rights struggle will be inarguable.”

“Life in Israel would be impossible with the West Bank serving as a ‘Palestinian State,’ basically a clone of Hamastan in Gaza. It is thus critical to do everything to prevent that from happening… Every accord or ‘deal’ that provides for any sort of ‘Palestinian’ state or sovereignty or entity operating outside Israeli control in the West Bank will produce the scenario of the previous point, mass terrorist aggression from ‘Palestine,’ making life in Israel impossible. It does not matter what would be written in any accord or treaty.”

“The two-state solution is dead. There is no longer any hope for peace or justice in this solution, if there ever was to begin with. There was a time when Israel could have accepted a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 armistice line, with minor and mutually agreed upon revisions of the final border, and thereby ‘secure’ its ‘gains’ from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war…

The siege must end. The occupation must end. The violence must end. The rejection of elementary legal and moral principles must end. Only a just solution can bring a permanent peace, and there is today only but one just solution.

The Arabs proposed it before Israel existed, only to have it rejected by the Zionists and their Western benefactors–a single, united, democratic state with a constitution and representative government that recognizes the equal rights of all and protects the rights of the minority.

That was the only truly just solution in 1948, and it remains the only truly just solution today.”

“A Palestinian state of the kind proposed in the two state solution is an existential threat to the state of Israel. Furthermore, it is a historical travesty to expel half a million Jews in order to create a 23rd Arab state. Given that at least four generations of Palestinians have been raised on incitement and hatred of Israel, a weakened Israel with its pre-1967 borders would be an invitation to more war, not a guarantee for peace. Practically, there is no room for two viable states in a territory the size of New Jersey. The logic of having 80% of Israel’s population living on the coastal lowlands with a Palestinian state occupying the strategic heights seems unfathomable. The two-state solution has been tried and failed many times. Israel must disabuse itself and the international community of its feasibility.”

“Americans understand that establishing a Palestinian state would simply result in but another terrorist state in the Middle East, which is the last thing America needs in its efforts to bring peace and security to the region. The American public has shown that it is completely against appeasing this Palestinian terror regime by offering any more concessions to it.”

“The two-state option has been eliminated as a practical solution in two senses. First and most graphically, Jewish settlements have carved Palestinian territory into a vestige too small to sustain a viable national society… Even if most settlers claimed they would leave in exchange for financial compensation (as some surveys indicated), this massive grid’s economic, political, and demographic weight rendered it a politically immovable object…

The second sense in which the two-state solution has died is that even if a Palestinian ‘state’ were declared in this dismembered enclave, it can bring only continuing instability. The resulting Palestinian statelet would be blocked off physically from the Israeli economy, its major cities would be cut off from each other, and its government would be unable to control the territory’s water resources, develop its agriculture, or manage its trade with neighboring states…