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Is the two-state solution for Israel, Palestine dead? Maybe. But what's
the alternative?

Tracy Wilkinson
Mon, February 13, 2023 at 5:00 AM PST·8 min read

Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel

Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinian statesman

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu give a joint press conference, on January 30, 2023 in Jerusalem. (Photo by DEBBIE HILL / POOL / AFP) (Photo by DEBBIE
HILL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over land,
rights and safety has entered a new phase, one plumbing new depths of
hatred and radical intransigence that the U.S. government no longer
seems in a position to resolve or even mitigate.

Now, an increasing number of experts are sounding the death knell for
the two-state solution.

Dennis Ross, the former special envoy who has negotiated Middle East
peace issues for both Republican and Democratic presidential
administrations, says Israelis and Palestinians have reached “the lowest ebb” he has ever seen.

“There’s a complete loss of hope on both sides,” Ross recently told a television interviewer.

Three of the administration’s most senior officials — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, CIA Director William Burns and White House national
security advisor Jake Sullivan — made urgent trips to the region in
recent days in a bid to deescalate rising violence and find common
ground on which to build peace. But they came away unable to offer any
reason to be less pessimistic than Ross.

They spoke of a “shrinking horizon” of possibility, bad governance on
both sides and the likelihood of major outbreaks of deadly fighting.

During Blinken's trip to the Middle East last month, the repeated mantra
from Israelis and Palestinians, and the left and right, was that the
two-state solution — the proposed creation of sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states that for decades had consensus support internationally
and locally — was dead.

Some in the new, far-right Israeli government — the most extreme and religiously conservative in the nation's history — want to see the
collapse of the Palestinian Authority, expulsion of many Palestinians
and confiscation of most West Bank land, where the Palestinian state
would have been created.

Many Palestinians see their government as weak and useless — President Mahmoud Abbas has overstayed his term by a decade and refused to hold
elections — and have watched as Jewish settlers have expanded their occupation. The heavily guarded settlements have effectively made the
creation of a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

Meanwhile, Abbas has lost control over a northern swath of the West
Bank, including cities such as Jenin and Nablus, giving rise to armed
militant groups, which in turn has led to regular, deadly incursions by
Israeli troops.

And yet the Biden administration, like most U.S. governments except for
that led by former President Trump, continues to promote the two-state
solution as the way to resolve the Middle East’s most stubborn and
complex conflict.

"The United States is committed to working toward our enduring goal of
ensuring that the Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of
freedom, security, opportunity, justice and dignity," Blinken said on
his last day in the Middle East after zipping through Cairo, Jerusalem
and Ramallah in late January. "The only way to achieve that goal is
through preserving and then realizing the vision of two states for two peoples."

U.S. officials “keep talking about their desire for a two-state
solution, but they do nothing to implement it,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian attorney who once advised the Palestinian Authority. Implementation, she said, would have to include blocking settlement
expansion along with the confiscations, demolitions, and evictions of Palestinians by Israel that have become routine.

“It is a fantasy,” Buttu said from her home in Haifa, Israel. “ ‘It will
happen, it will happen,’ they say. In reality, it is as dead as a dodo bird.”

Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Middle East special
envoy, said the administration cannot declare the two-state solution
dead because there is no viable alternative.

One oft-mentioned option is a single state of Israelis and Palestinians
with equal rights. Some polling of Palestinians has shown growing
support for the arrangement.

But the prospects for that happening are perhaps even dimmer than for
the two-state solution. What would such a state be called? Who would be
in charge of security?

It would be neither Israeli nor Palestinian and wouldn't satisfy the nationalist aspirations of either side. And because of higher birth
rates among Palestinians, Israeli Jews might be a minority in such a state.

"Once you have equal rights, it's not a Jewish state anymore," said
Indyk, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "What Israeli
prime minister is going to hand the keys over to the Palestinians?

"Neither side is ready for the other side to rule."

A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released last month found what
the pollsters called disturbing trends of intolerance and hatred
exacerbated by separation, collapsed diplomacy and dehumanization, with
each side less willing to recognize the other.

The survey was conducted by Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian
Center for Policy and Survey Research, and Dahlia Scheindlin, a fellow
at the Tel Aviv-based Century International, a liberal think tank, and sponsored in part by the U.S. Institute for Peace. They focused on
surveying a younger-than-usual cohort, Israelis and Palestinians aged 15
and older. The median age in Israel is 30, and is 21 in the Palestinian territories.

The poll showed support at an all-time low for the two-state solution:
20% among Israeli Jews aged 18-34 and around 30% for Palestinians in the
same age group. The survey also found that, for the first time, support
in Israel for a nondemocratic regime — unequal rights between Israelis
and Palestinians — is stronger than that for a two-state solution.

According to the poll, a majority on each side rejects the other's
historical connection to the land and believes that violence is the only
way to resolve the conflict.

"It's become a zero-sum game that has left room only for people with
maximalist positions, extremists on both sides," said Lucy
Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, director of the United States Institute of Peace’s program for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The new Israeli government is led by returning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who formed a coalition with some of the country's most
radical, anti-Arab parties that were once taboo in Israeli politics. The Cabinet, which is predominantly male with several ultra-Orthodox
officials, includes supporters of Meir Kahane, a radical rabbi branded a terrorist by the United States who was assassinated in 1990.

The Biden administration is hoping Netanyahu will curb some of his
colleagues' more radical, precedent-breaking tendencies as he tries to
further Israel's acceptance in the region among Arab and Gulf states.
Seizing more Palestinian-claimed land or excessive repression would
jeopardize such efforts.

"I've got my two hands on the steering wheel," Netanyahu has told
foreign media on several occasions, insisting he, not his allies, will
call the shots.

But Netanyahu also needs his Cabinet to support fundamental changes to
the judiciary that could dash his own trial on corruption charges. He
has denied that his challenge to the court system is self-motivated.

On the Palestinian side, youth militias have sprung up that carry out
attacks, particularly on settlers, and Abbas is said to be reluctant to
crack down on them.

The Palestinian Authority has also pursued an international campaign, attempting to carry its grievances to forums including the International Criminal Court to obtain judgments against Israel. The moves have
infuriated Israel, and have also been condemned by the U.S.

In his trip to the region, Blinken subtly chided both Netanyahu and
Abbas for straying from democracy, urging that free expression, civil
rights and "values" be respected in their respective countries.

At the same time, however, the Biden administration would like to keep
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off the top of its to-do list,
preferring to focus on China and Ukraine. U.S. officials acknowledge the dynamic in the Middle East is too volatile and the diplomatic distances
too great to make progress. And Blinken and other senior U.S. officials
have repeatedly told Israelis and Palestinians that it is incumbent on
them to resolve their own problems.



"You need leadership in three places, and you don’t have it," said
Daniel Kurtzer, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt.
"Israel thinks it can destroy the Palestinians’ violence infrastructure.
The Palestinians think they can stop Israeli settlement and confiscation
of land. Both have failed. There is no political outcome — just killing."

When CIA director Burns returned from his trip to the Middle East, he
gave a troubling assessment to a group of foreign service students at Georgetown University.

He warned of "even greater fragility, even greater violence" between
Israelis and Palestinians, saying conditions resembled the eve of the
second intifada. The Palestinian uprising that began in the year 2000
left nearly 5,000 people dead and is widely regarded as the end of the
peace process.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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