Palestine/Israel: 2-state solution vs. 1 binational state?

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Those who, rhetorically, support the “Two-state solution”, including the US and all major European countries, know only too well that such a solution has long since become outdated, to say the least. Israel, for decades, has managed to find ways to evade every single commitment it made towards that goal, including its commitments to the notorious Oslo Accords. In the practical sense, Israeli settlements expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem did not leave much land for a viable and sustainable future Palestinian State.

As of January this year, there are some 144 Israeli settlements, including 12 in East Jerusalem, occupied by more than 700,000 settlers recognised and funded by Israel as legal settlement expansion in what the Israelis, sometimes, call natural growth of settlements by building more housing units to accommodate more settlers.

On top of that, there are some 100 illegal settlement outposts that are initiated by few individual radical settlers erecting a tent somewhere on Palestinian private land, while lobbying the government to recognise the new project as a legal settlement eligible for public funding, services and protection. At the same time, Israel, in the first quarter of this year, demolished 290 Palestinian structures, including homes, particularly in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli settlement scheme is continuing unabated after it became a policy pledge of the current government.

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[...] even in the wildest imagination, and giving Israel the benefit of the doubt, a very serious and detrimental obstacle facing any re-launching Israeli-Palestinian negotiations remains to be the issue of land being grabbed by Israeli settlers. The current Israeli government is supporting settlement expansions. Netanyahu is in no position to take any drastic measures towards settlers as did his former predecessor, Ariel Sharon, back in 2005, when he decided to disengage from the Gaza Strip and dismantled all settlements there. Today’s Israel is hostage to settlers who have, over the years, become a political power to be reckoned with.

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All the talk about the “Two-state solution” is no longer sensible and everybody, including the US, knows this fact; the Hamas Al-Aqsa Flood operation has made the idea even more difficult. While the settlers changed the internal Israeli politics towards the idea of a “Two-state solution”, the Hamas attack has also changed the internal dynamics of the Palestinian struggle, rendering the idea impractical.

If the US is serious about peace, it should consider the other potential alternative, that is one state for both Israelis and Palestinians, along the model offered by apartheid free new South Africa. However, this is a bitter medicine which current Israel cannot swallow.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution for Israelis, Palestinians and their friends and allies abroad: In 2024, let’s leave destructive, failed ideas in the past, starting with the notion that the Palestinian people or the State of Israel are just temporary inconveniences that can or should go away.

Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of this toxic philosophy in recent days has been the outlandish statements from a number of Israeli officials about resettling Gazans outside of the Strip, including alleged talks with third countries on the actual execution of such a population transfer. Even Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken this up of late, reportedly discussing the idea with Likud members of Knesset in late December.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has sanitized population transfer as “out-of-the-box thinking.” Aside from being dangerous, such an idea isn’t actually new.

Some Israeli leaders were already fielding proposals euphemistically marketed as “voluntary migration” within days of the brutal Hamas terrorist attack that kicked off the ongoing war. Less than a week after Oct. 7, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry drafted a concept paper detailing policy options including moving Gazan Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. For years, extremists have been quietly working at piecemeal population transfer in the West Bank.

Before the war, resettlement was a popular idea among some right-wing Israeli academics, pundits, think tankers and, behind closed doors, government officials. Their worldview held that the Palestinians could be bribed and/or bullied out of nationhood and that the sovereignty of neighboring Arab states was artificial and flexible. We can easily draw a line from past calls to dump the Palestinians in the Sinai or Jordan and current talk of emigration. The conflict in Gaza has merely given a pretext.

Sure, Israel may have the power to coerce Palestinians to leave Gaza. But there is ample evidence to suggest that would not end the conflict, nor bring Israel a decisive victory.

The violent history of eliminationist rhetoric
Before the 1993 Oslo Accords, conflicts with Israel and rival Arab regimes saw the Palestinian Liberation Organization driven from Jordan to Lebanon to Tunisia.

The Palestinian population endured significant humanitarian and political setbacks in 1948 and 1967. After the Six-Day War, in 1969, Israel actually negotiated a secret deal with Paraguay to pay 60,000 Gazans (about 15% of the Strip’s population) to move to the South American country. The plan attracted precious few volunteers. The Palestinians and their national cause, of course, remain.

The right’s obsession with defeating the very concept of Palestinian nationalism is not only delusional: It also contributed significantly to Israel’s weakness on Oct. 7. Netanyahu boasted for years that cash payments to Hamas were the key to keeping Palestinians divided and thus preventing a two-state solution. And on the day that Hamas terrorists flew, drove and even walked across a woefully underprotected border and murdered over a thousand Israelis, the bulk of the Israeli army’s strength was focused on guarding settlers on the other side of the country, as it had been for years.

In the wake of Hamas’s massive attacks, the Biden administration and others have taken flack for holding fast to some kind of two-state solution. Yet for decades, there has only been a one-state reality in which Israel is the dominant party, and it has gotten neither Israelis nor Palestinians any closer to lasting peace and security. Thus, the past three months have not been an indictment of hypothetical compromise: they illustrate the price of real maximalism.

Population transfer is as morally and strategically indefensible as many of the Israeli right’s other fantasies. Yet just because something is a bad idea does not mean it won’t be tried, and at a great human cost. The terrorist attacks of Oct. 7— motivated by the self-destructive belief that Israel can be toppled through wanton violence — are a tragic reminder of that fact.

For seven-and-a-half decades, attempts at bringing the Jewish state down through violence have likewise only brought ruin on those who have tried. Hamas knows this. Numerous Hamas leaders have conceded that the price for their fanatical designs would be paid in Palestinian blood. “Will we have to pay a price?” Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad asked rhetorically two weeks after Oct. 7. “Yes, and we are ready to pay it.”

A growing chorus of left-wing commentators are calling for one Palestine, from the river to the sea — even as Hamas’s attempts to achieve it go up in flames. Most in the West frame their arguments in terms of equal rights for all (contrary to the rhetoric coming from Middle Eastern capitals from Tehran to Beirut and Damascus), which sounds nice on paper. But Hamas’ merciless, execution-style killings of hundreds of Israeli civilians, its physical and psychological torture of thousands more, and the kidnapping of over 200 civilian hostages have completely discredited an already questionable idea. I cannot fathom how anyone could look at the events of Oct. 7 and earnestly say that a single state in all of former Mandatory Palestine would not be a recipe for civil war.

It was clear to anyone paying attention that there was never really a constituency in Gaza and the West Bank for a rainbow Palestine, but the popular international reaction to the Oct. 7 war raises doubts about whether Western progressive one-staters ever genuinely cared about the safety of Jews at all, in one-state proposals and otherwise.

Hamas’s useful idiots in American activist groups and on college campuses, who have spent the past few months cosplaying as revolutionaries, declaring all Israeli civilians legitimate military targets and tearing down and defacing missing posters, betray a fundamental ignorance of actual, successful revolutions.

Take South Africa, for example: the African National Congress did wage a violent struggle against apartheid. But in decades of struggle against white supremacist rule, its armed wing killed comparatively few civilians: The ANC’s non-combatant body count over a period of several years of attacks in the 1970s and 80s, as determined by the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, represents a fraction of Hamas murders from a single day.

The ANC’s Freedom Charter represented a public commitment to multiracial equality and democracy from the outset. There is no equivalent document among the various militant factions seeking to redeem all of Palestine, only the repeatedly-disproven conception of Israel as an artificial colonial entity that can be broken down and expelled once and for all like the brittle white-minority regimes in Africa.

As the Gaza conflict drags into 2024, we need to take the blinders off.

Palestinians and Israelis are not ephemeral. They are human beings, whose nations and communities constitute permanent facts on the ground. They will not be transferred or terrorized into submission.

An October 25-30 poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media & Communications Centre (JMCC) finds that the popularity of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is declining among Palestinians. Between April and October of 2021, support for a two-state solution decreased from 39 percent to 29 percent. While 29 percent still represents a plurality of Palestinians supporting this option, support is on the rise for a single binational state in which Israelis and Palestinians would enjoy equal rights (26 percent, up from 21 percent in April). At this point support is nearly equal for either of these two options and for the volunteered option of “a Palestinian state.”

The public is also divided when it comes to the best method for achieving the Palestinian people’s goals. Public support for armed resistance (33%) is nearly equal to the support for peaceful negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians (34%). While there is also significant support for nonviolent resistance (21%), one in 10 Palestinians remain unsure about the best method for achieving their goals (11%).

Geographic Differences in Opinion

However, the JMCC survey finds notable differences in the preferences of those living in the West Bank versus those in Gaza. In Gaza, pluralities of the public prefer the two-state solution (38%) and believe that peaceful negotiations with Israel are the best method for achieving their goals of ending the occupation and establishing a state (41%). By contrast, in the West Bank, a plurality prefers the binational one-state solution (30%), but West Bankers are more divided on the best method for achieving their goal. Approximately equal portions of West Bank residents favor armed resistance (32%) and peaceful negotiations (29%), with a slightly smaller but significant group favoring non-violent resistance (24%).

A separate July 25-27 survey of only Israeli citizens, conducted by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, finds that both the two-state (69%) and one-state (56%) solutions are seen as acceptable by Israeli Arabs. Similarly, eight in 10 supporters of Ra’am—the Arab party in Israel’s governing coalition—find both the two-state and one-state solutions acceptable (80% each). By contrast, the option seen as acceptable by the most Israeli Jews was the continuation of the status quo (42% acceptable).

For more analysis of public opinion surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, download the Chicago Council’s recent issue brief, “Americans Split on Military Aid to Israel, Say Political Status Quo Unacceptable.”

Support for the controversial solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict dropped sharply after the violent clashes between Jews and Arabs in Israel in May 2021.

The one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, once a nonstarter for most Israelis and Palestinians, is regaining popularity.

Some 33% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip support one state for both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). This marks an unusual rise in the popularity of the one-state solution, which only three months ago had the support of less than 24% of Palestinians. Such a state would include an almost equal number of Jews and Palestinians, who together would amount to a population of nearly 14 million citizens living in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

This change in Palestinian public opinion could have several reasons. Khalil Shikaki, director of PSR, explains that “after the clashes last May and June, and the escalation between Israel and Hamas, we noticed a sharp drop of support to the idea. What we see now could be the effect of time passing, and people going back to the stance they had before the escalation, which may have caused them to lose trust in the idea.”

“Supporters of the one-state solution are usually younger Palestinians, nationalist and secular. In the long run, one of the causes for this idea becoming popular is them losing trust in the possibility of the two-state solution. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case this time,” said Shikaki, who has been monitoring Palestinian public opinion for almost 30 years.

PLO member and former minister of prisoner affairs for the Palestinian Authority, Ashraf al-Ajrami, believes uncertainty about the viability of a two-state solution has led to the rise in support.

“I think Palestinians support the one-state solution because of their disappointment in the current situation,” Ajrami told The Media Line. “People don’t believe there is a situation in which the Israeli government will negotiate for a two-state solution.”

A vocal supporter of the two-state solution, Ajrami thinks the support for a single state stems from a misunderstanding of what it would mean in practice. “I think there is confusion, especially among young Palestinians. They believe they will have equal political rights, which is something the Israeli right wing would never agree to,” he said.

The numbers back Ajrami up. In a poll conducted in 2020 by Tel Aviv University and the PSR, 42% of Israeli right-wing voters openly supported “an apartheid state” as a solution to the conflict, while only 13% supported one democratic state, with equal rights for all.

A surprising advocate for a single democratic state as a solution to the conflict is David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, and one of the leaders of the settler movement in Israel. “This is where things are headed, whether we like it or not. The two-state solution is dead, and you can’t annex the West Bank and Jordan Valley without giving the Palestinians full civil equality. Anyone who says otherwise is in denial of reality,” he told The Media Line.

While Elhayani preaches for improving the quality of life of Palestinians living under his council’s jurisdiction, his stance is quite controversial among other settler leaders. “I can tell you more or less who among my counterparts would support my views, and who won’t. It’s far from a consensus,” he said.

“The idea of a binational, Arab-Jewish state was first proposed back in the 1920s and was widely rejected by both sides,” according to historian Benny Morris, an expert on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “After the 1967 war, no one talked about it seriously, until the 1990s. But, even then, the one man who offered it seriously on the Palestinian side was asked by the PLO to stop advocating for it, and he did, very quickly.”

The official stance of the Palestinian Authority is still a complete rejection of the idea of one state for both peoples.

“Three years ago, I went to a convention discussing the one-state concept,” a member of the PA told The Media Line, on condition of anonymity. “There were people from all around the West Bank, and we talked about how this one democratic state might work. But there was absolutely no backup from above, and we never met again. The message was clear.”

Ajrami seems to take the same hard line as the rest of the PLO. “The leadership understands that the two-state solution is the only viable solution, supported by the international community.” He adds, however, that if the one-state solution becomes more popular, we might see Palestinian leaders supporting it publicly.

“If, a few years from now, it will be impossible to arrive at a two-state solution, the only way [forward] for Palestinians will be the one-state solution. This was the original plan of the PLO: one democratic state across all of historic Palestine, with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living as equals,” Ajrami said.

This doesn’t surprise Morris, who claims that one state “from the river to the sea,” the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, has always been the PLO’s real plan, though many say this slogan means a Palestinian state.

But Morris is far from believing that one state could ever be a peaceful solution. “There will always be extremists, from both sides, who would interfere. Either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad activists will carry out attacks, and destroy any chance for it to work,” he assesses.

No, it's just not physically possible for Palestine to function as an independent state this way.

See the maps of West Bank Areas A, B, and C on this page and at the bottom of this page. See also the Wikipedia article on Palestinian enclaves.

Areas A and B of the West Bank, currently under partial civil control of the Palestinian National Authority, consists of 165 isolated little "islands" in a sea of Israeli-controlled area C. Most of these "islands" are teeny tiny. And people have to go through Israeli checkpoints to leave or enter any of these teeny tiny areas.

As the Wikipedia article explains, "The enclaves are often compared to the nominally self-governing black homelands created in apartheid-era South Africa, and are thus referred to as bantustans."

And that's one of the big reasons why the conflict never really ends, although it sometimes dies down for a while.

Abunimah’s idea, on which he elaborates in his 2006 book, “One Country: A Bold Proposal To End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse,” is based on the notion that neither Israelis nor Palestinians are willing to cede the minimal amount of land to satisfy the demands of the opposite side. The two-state solution, he likes to say, is pure “political science fiction.”

Are you saying everything but brown and green is under Israeli control?

Yes, if you are referring to the map of the West Bank on this page.

For the past 10 years, the "two-state solution" has been the mantra of the United States, and of most countries involved in bringing a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But now, Netanyahu is calling for what he says is a fresh approach to peace with the Palestinians.

"The fresh approach that I suggest is pursuing a triple track toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians: a political track, a security track and an economic track," said the prime minister via satellite to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference in Washington.

Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of a two-state solution. In reality, the two-state option has been dead for a long time, and with all fairness it was not killed by Mr. Netanyahu. Several Israeli governments have contributed to its demise, including those who pretended to seek it the most, such as the last government of Ehud Olmert and the Kadima party. Israel has succeeded in creating "facts on the ground" with about 290,000 settlers living in the West Bank and another 185,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. It is increasingly hard to imagine Israel evicting nearly half a million people (about 7 percent of its population) from their homes. So, what will Prime Minister Netanyahu offer in terms of peace?

Mr. Netanyahu is coming to Washington to yell, "Iran...Iran, and not Palestine."

"Something significant is happening today in the Middle East," Netanyahu continued to tell the adoring crowd at the AIPAC conference by video-link. "For the first time in my lifetime, I believe for the first time in a century, Arabs and Jews see a common danger."

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Meanwhile, there is realization amongst Palestinians residing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that their dream of a state of their own has all but disappeared. More Palestinians have been vocal about a binational state that provides full democratic rights for citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. A movement that began amongst Palestinians with Israeli citizenship is now making its way to East Jerusalem and to the West Bank. It is called "Mousawa" which means equality....

Avi Shlaim is one of the great living historians: Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, he's a proud self-described Arab Jew, born in Baghdad in 1945. That heritage has deeply influenced him, and we talk about Zionism, the real history of Israel that is often erased, defying the attempt to start the clock on 7th October, the question of state terrorism, how there could have been a different approach to Hamas, genocide - and why a one state giving equal rights to all is the solution.

I don't see it happening. The Palestinians have been offered their own state multiple times with the only requirement being they have to recognize Israel's right to exist and they've refused every time.

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Grounded in a vision of mutual flourishing, we envision a world in which leaders and their communities claim the requisite drive, expertise, and relationships to effectively and relentlessly wage peace.

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We imagine, too, that our unique model of conflict transformation will be replicated elsewhere—helping bring stability, healing and reconciliation to communities around the world, including here in America.

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In ancient Greek, the word “telos” describes a unique purpose or goal that is rooted in a fundamental principle, towards which all intentions and energies are singularly focused. Our telos is the freedom, security, and dignity of every human being in the Holy Land.

While massive conflicts ravage the broader Middle East, we believe that resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains an essential moral and security imperative for the world.

We believe that any policy or outcome—whether one-state, two-states, multiple-states, or some other solution—must be measured by how well it maximizes dignity, freedom, and security for both Israelis and Palestinians in equal measure. And we welcome anyone into our fold who shares our values, including our commitment to support nonviolent means to end the conflict, regardless of politics.

Ultimately, Palestinians and Israelis bear responsibility for waging and sustaining peace. Yet resolution of this conflict is an urgent American interest. And peace will remain elusive without strong, bipartisan encouragement and assistance from Americans.

Unfortunately, while Americans – and especially Americans of faith – are among the most influential stakeholders in the region, most have never met either an Israeli or a Palestinian or seriously encountered both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives. On the contrary, important segments of American society, and often its Christian faith communities, persistently advocate for one-sided postures towards the conflict. Such advocacy educates the next generation in near complete isolation from the peoples and present realities of the region.

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In January 2009, Gregory Khalil and Todd Deatherage forged a most unlikely alliance.

Greg was then a California-born lawyer, partly of Palestinian Christian ancestry, a longtime Democrat, and a former advisor to Palestinian leaders on peace negotiations with Israel.

Todd is an evangelical Christian from Arkansas, a former Chief of Staff to a Republican U.S. Senator, and served in the George W. Bush Administration at the State Department.

After first meeting as political counterparts in 2004, the two became friends and discovered that they shared a common understanding of America’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

From their very different starting points, each man had come to believe that peace in the region was vital to America’s national security interests, that a sustainable solution to the conflict would never be achieved without strong, bipartisan support from the United States, and that such support would not materialize unless and until Americans – and especially American of faith – became truly committed to the security, freedom, and dignity of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Together, Greg and Todd saw a unique opportunity to make a global impact for peace by educating, inspiring, and equipping key American communities to actively pursue the common good for everyone in the Holy Land. In 2009, they left their former positions to launch the educational non-profit now known as the Telos Group.

Since 2009, Todd, Greg, and their colleagues have led a steady stream of high-touch, multi-narrative educational pilgrimages to the region and organized numerous speaking tours for Israeli, Palestinian and international leaders. At the same time, the Telos Group has become a leading organization of America’s emerging pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-American, pro-peace movement.