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

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I agree, there will be no solution until the U.S.A. stops "standing with Israel" unconditionally.

Hopefully more and more Americans will have a crisis of conscience over this issue, given what has been happening in Gaza. Not until that happens can there be a real change in U.S. policy, or any real solution.

But I think it's worth thinking ahead to what should happen once the political climate here in the U.S.A. finally does shift away from unconditional support of Israel. IMO, we shouldn't just abandon Israel altogether and allow an anti-Jewish genocide to happen. But hopefully more and more Americans will understand the need to keep Israel on a much tighter leash, to say the least.

At that point, I think the U.S.A. should pressure Israel into a real solution.

But that real solution can't and shouldn't be some simplistic panacea imposed by a bunch of ignorant, arrogant, out-of-touch Americans. Let's not get burned again like we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Whatever the solution turns out to be, it will need to be very well-informed and carefully crafted, based on what the more reasonable people on both sides have to say, based on their knowledge of on-the-ground realities.

To that end, we should listen to what the more reasonable people on both sides have to say. And we should start listening to them now.

A state split into two parts with a hostile power in the middle is no state. Palestinians would never accept that.

Eqypt and most the Arab governments for that matter hates the Palestinians as much as the Israelis but they can not say so because of fear of the “Arab Street”. I do not know about this war but in other Israel-Hamas wars Egypt has worked quietly with Israel.

I thought that the main point of contention is the settlements in the West Bank. Surely, if that get's sorted then something can be worked out?

The issue is the same as it has been for a hundred years. You have two groups that want the same land and enough people on both sides willing to fight to the death for all of it to sabotage any peace deals. Usually in this type of situation they fight until one side wins decisively. What one hundred years of bloodshed has demonstrated is that no side has the ability to decisively defeat the other side. There is no reason to believe this can not go on like this for another 500 years.

We Americans have this belief that there is a solution for every problem, that any failure is the fault of not trying hard enough or not being smart enough or not being flexible enough. We like to say “if there is a will there is a way”. It is true enough times that the American approach was a key factor in us becoming a dominant superpower. Sometimes there are insolvable problems.

Hmm, I don't know. I'd think that the fact that this has been the most destructive in history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the most casualties on both sides, means that people on both sides should probably think again about their long-standing positions. Israelis should see that Netanyahu's policies hasn't worked after 7 October and Palestinians should be willing to make more compromises for the sake of peace after seeing how terrible war can get. This is probably the last chance for a two-state solution. If that fails, I don't think it'll be Palestine who will win in the end. Palestinian armed militia cannot defeat the Israeli military because they too strong, so at this point it'll either be a two-state solution or the Palestinian cause dies permanently and it may not even take the next 20 years for that to happen.

I agree. There will be no justice for the Palestinians in any form, be it a two-state solution or a single bi-national state, as long as the U.S.A. unconditionally "stands with Israel."

Hopefully more and more Americans will have a crisis of conscience over this, given what has happened in Gaza. And polls do show a lot less support for Israel among Gen Z than among older generations. That's a hopeful sign.

The question is what should happen once the U.S.A. finally does stop unconditionally "standing with Israel." I think it's worth thinking about that now, and listening to the more reasonable people on both sides.

If and whenever the U.S.A. decides to apply serious pressure to Israel, we should do so in a well-informed way, rather than necessarily pushing old, simplistic, failed formulas.

Don’t conflate dislike of Netanyahu for being anti war. Should do and doing are two different things. Outside of the settlers/religious fanatic type most Israeli's despise Netanyahu and blame him for 10/7 but at the same time want to see Hamas utterly destroyed and blame Hamas for the civilian deaths and think a two state solution and especially a one state solution is no solution at all but an invitation to suicide. There used to be a robust peace movement but there is no Israeli equivalent Jewish Voice for Peace currently. Also a War Cabinet of political rivals is running the war not Netanyahu alone and the other two guys are more hawkish then Netanyahu.

This is how the Palestinians might win. The west has so far not really figured how to deal with asymmetrical opposition both peaceful and violent. Let the opposition disrupt they get emboldened and you look weak. React no matter how you do it our social media world you look like a monster. So the idea is that once the zoomers gain power in the west they cut Israel off completely. This would take generations. The first inkling this might work is that it has convinced the youngest generation to oppose Israel and it has forced the Biden administration to give lip service to telling Israel fight less mean. While that seems meaningless it might be a start. The next President from the democratic party will be a lot younger. If that person feels the need to be more tough on Israel to placate the progressive wing of the party that would be another indication the plan is on the right track.

The potential flaw in the plan is that it assumes the Israeli Jews will eventually lose the will to fight like America in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Israeli Jews might be just as willing absorb year after year decade after decade of deprivation and brutal punishment as the Palestinians have demonstrated.

Well, Hamas looks like it's on the way out. It might still exist but its military capabilities appear to be getting crushed. That plan you're talking about won't work because people are living in Israel and it's not just a military occupation like Vietnam or Afghanistan, Israelis have no where to go to.

Regarding the two-state solution, doesn't Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's other partner in premiership tentatively argue for more Palestinian autonomy?:



https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-swears-to-not-sit-with-netanyahu-promises-broad-unity-government/


I know that most Israeli's, even those who are critical of Netanyahu understandably want the end of Hamas but I don't think that not being anti the current war necessarily means being anti-peace in the future or being against any future settlement with the Palestinians.

Also, while Gantz does not appear to want to call it two states, Israel's leftist Labor party has apparently been advocating for a two-state solution for a while:

https://news.yahoo.com/meet-knesset-member-revived-two-110000945.html

“The potential flaw in the plan is that it assumes the Israeli Jews will eventually lose the will to fight like America in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Israeli Jews might be just as willing absorb year after year decade after decade of deprivation and brutal punishment as the Palestinians have demonstrated.”

The nowhere to go was a reason why I mentioned the Israelis might be willing to fight to the death. In fairness unlike the Palestinians, America and other western countries would probably be willing to take some in. OTOH they may think migrating to another country end up like so many other diaspora’s, persecution.

There has not been a relevant left especially as far a military policy goes since the second intifada. Ironically Israel started as a socialist country, that is what the kibbutz were all about. From what I read Netanyahu was instrumental creating the capitalist “startup nation” of today.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 30 Dec 2023, 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, the settlements are indeed illegal under international law. Whether it is actually feasible to remove all of them is another question.

I'm talking about facts on the ground, not legalities. Moving all the settlers would be legal, but it probably would be extremely bloody and logistically difficult -- if possible at all, given what a large voting bloc the settlers now constitute.

One of the reasons why the Israeli government has been so supportive of the settlements, in the first place, has been to create facts on the ground that would make a two-state solution impossible.


Moving only some of the settlers, e.g. those with the worst or most recent history of violence against Palestinians, might be more feasible than moving all of them. Moving even a few of the settlers would likely be bloody, but less so than trying to move all of them.


Hmm, it's my impression that Israelis still worry about the possibility of a future conventional war, even if things are currently okay between Israel and Jordan, but you never know when things might turn hostile for one reason or another, and/or when either West Bank Palestine itself or Jordan might get taken over by some Hamas-like entity, or perhaps by Hezbollah, or perhaps by Iran.

Given the geography, we are talking about an extreme military vulnerability. A hostile military power in the West Bank could easily slice Israel in half.

My partner lived in Israel for a while decades ago. According to him, the military vulnerability is so glaringly obvious that he can't imagine Israel ever surrendering control over the West Bank under any circumstances whatsoever.

That being the case, it's understandable why many Israelis are terrified of the idea of a truly independent Palestinian state.


Indeed the barrier would need to be moved to the border. Currently the barrier snakes around inside parts of the West Bank, in some places going quite deep into what is supposed to be Palestinian territory. (See map.) This is a major Palestinian grievance.


Lots of Israelis -- almost 50% of them -- want to annex the West Bank. (See 2020 Reuters News Story.) And indeed the policy of the Israeli government seems to be to give lip-service to the two-state solution while actually engaging in a creeping annexation of the West Bank, one part at a time. (See Foreign Policy (June 2023) and Wikipedia articles.) And, yes, one of the reasons for the annexation is military-strategic.


Indeed the violent ones should be sentenced to prison terms and then moved. Instead, the Israeli government has been protecting them.


However, the pro-settlement faction has long been dominant, and is ever more so these days.


A constitution would need to be approved by a majority but it is usually created by a much smaller group of people to whom that task has been delegated.

I don't see why a sufficiently well-designed bi-national state couldn't prevent internal "pogroms" -- or at least crack down on them promptly, before they get out of hand. The key here is that its constitution would need to be sufficiently well-designed, preferably by a team of both Palestinian and Israeli international human rights lawyers (such as Jonathan Kuttab on the Palestinian side).


It seems to me that the biggest potential danger Israeli Jews face is not internal "pogroms," but rather the danger of Iran, or some other nearby country, doing to (much of) Israel (or maybe just the Tel Aviv metro area?) what Israel has been doing to Gaza. Currently Israel counts on its military superiority, backed by the U.S.A., plus the incompetence of neighboring Arab and Muslim governments. But Israel can't count on unconditional American support forever, and the neighboring governments are getting less incompetent. Even militias like Hezbollah have gotten much more professional over the years.

If a truly independent Palestinian state were created with its boundary along the green line, it too could conceivably be taken over by Islamist militants and attack Israel, just as Gaza has periodically been doing under the rule of Hamas. And, if that were to happen, Israel without the West Bank highlands would be much more militarily vulnerable.

For this reason, it seems to me that a sufficiently well-designed bi-national state that includes the militarily-strategic West Bank highlands would be much better for Israeli Jews' security than an exclusively Jewish Israeli state west of the Green Line. A bi-national state would be less likely to get attacked in the first place, and, if and when it does get attacked, would be much more militarily defensible.


Yes, the proposed bi-national state would need to do a much better job of protecting minorities than Weimar Germany did. To me this seems entirely possible, the only question is how.


Yes, it could -- if the two-state solution were feasible at all.


The UN is operating in terms of the already-existing legal framework. It is not the UN's job to think outside the box, even when outside-the-box thinking may be desperately needed.

If they are terrified of a truly independent state in which presumably they would be separated from the Palestinians by some sort of barrier why would they agree to one state where presumably Palestinians would be their neighbors and part of their government including the military?

To answer this question, let's first consider the shorter-term question of what it would take to get to the point where any kind of humane, just, and lasting solution is even possible, in the first place.

In my opinion, any lasting solution would need to be preceded by a lot of interfaith dialogue, among people of all the Abrahamic religions (mainly Jews, Muslims, and Christians, but also Druze, Bahai, and Samaritans), both in the "Holy Land" itself and in the U.S.A.

In order for serious interfaith dialogue on this issue to begin happening, we need American Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, to begin recognizing that Palestinians have legitimate grievances and stop demanding that anti-Zionism must be dismissed as "anti-semitism." This will likely happen only when (1) an organized pro-Palestinian movement among American Christians grows big enough to become a significant challenge to Christian Zionism, and/or (2) Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace attract enough young American Jews that the Jewish establishment has to begin taking them seriously.

In order for the dialogue to be meaningful on the American side, leaders of each religious group will need to be in contact with their Holy Land counterparts, e.g. pro-Palestinian American Christian leaders will need to be in contact with Palestinian Christians of their own respective denominations. And they should also be aware of what other people in the Holy Land, on both sides, are saying too. (Thanks to the Internet, this is now much easier than it was in past decades.)

Anyhow, it seems to me that the eventual product of serious interfaith dialogue would more likely be some form of bi-national state than "the two-state solution." (For reasons why, see the articles I linked earlier in this thread.)

And the very process of this interfaith dialogue would hopefully result in significant de-radicalization on both sides.

An important question then would be how best to preserve this de-radicalization.

It seems to me that this would be much easier in a single state, with a thoroughly integrated police force and a thoroughly integrated military, than in separate states, with separate militaries and the ability to build things like Hamas's tunnel network.

Ex-Israeli Advisor Explodes Israel's Official Narrative



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Even if American Zionists stopped being Zionists outsiders are not going convince Israelis to do that. As as I was arguing elsewhere the resultant American pressure or cutoff might convince them to make concessions. The Palestinian “radicals” would have a compelling argument that 10/7 worked. The Israeli zionists understand that and the slippery slope argument that if we compromise it makes it easier to for us to make further bigger compromises incentivizes the Americans to put further pressure on us.

Are you sure?

Are you aware of any reliable source of statistics on what percentage of American Jews have friends or relatives in Israel, and, conversely, what percentage of Israeli Jews (including the most recent immigrants) have friends or relatives in the U.S.A.?

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that this was a fairly large fraction.

If so, then if some rapidly growing number of (mostly young) American Jews were suddenly to have a crisis of conscience about Zionism, this would likely have at least some impact on Israeli society too.

Additionally, I am under the impression that there is growing awareness about the Nakba in Israel itself. Both the Israeli government and American Zionists used to deny that large numbers of Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948. But this is now not only acknowledged but documented in detail by at least some Israeli historians such as Noga Kadman. (See list of reviews here.) Of course, greater awareness doesn't necessarily mean greater caring, but hopefully it means that for at least some.

In politics as in life you can never be sure about anything.