: Have We Arrived At The End Of The Two-State Solution?

After spending the past decade focused on the achievement of a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, the collapse of the US-backed “roadmap” and the rise of the meandering “separation fence” deep inside the West Bank are triggering an epiphany for pundits on both sides. Tom Friedman, Ehud Barak, various Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and a growing number of Palestinians on the ground, are starting to wonder if a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is becoming impossible, mainly because a viable and contiguous Palestinian state is becoming less likely with each new settlement and wall segment. Trouble is, high Palestinians birthrates will mean an Arab majority in the lands Israel controls by the year 2010, and unless the area is governed apartheid-style, a “one person, one vote” system will alter Israel’s Jewish character. Officially, the two-state solution is still the favored one on both sides, but that could change. “If the international community continues to remain unwilling to rein in Israeli settlement construction and expansion,” warned a PLO letter to the US last year, “irreversible facts on the ground and the de facto apartheid system such facts create will force Palestinian policy-makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two-state solution.” Already, nearly 30 percent of Palestinians support a one-state solution with equality for both Arabs and Israelis. “If Palestinians lose their dream to have an independent state,” argues Mohammed Dahleh, an Israeli Arab clerk for Israel’s Supreme Court, “we will say, ‘Don’t evacuate even a single West Bank settlement. Just give us the vote and let us be part of one community.'” The irony is that those on the Israeli right wing who are most opposed to a Palestinian state are pushing policies on the ground that – unless genocide, apartheid, or forced transfer are options – threaten the Jewish one as well.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.