{"id":6604,"date":"2009-02-10T16:18:53","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T23:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6604"},"modified":"2009-02-10T16:18:53","modified_gmt":"2009-02-10T23:38:41","slug":"what-if-the-two-state-solution-collapses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6604","title":{"rendered":"What if the two-state solution collapses?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A brace of pessimism from Stephen Walt<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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There are two trends at play that threaten to undermine the two-state option. The first is the continued expansion of Israel settlements in the land that is supposed to be reserved for the Palestinians. There are now about 290,000 settlers living in the West Bank. There are another 185,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. Most of the settlers are subsidized directly or indirectly by the Israeli government. It is increasingly hard to imagine Israel evicting nearly half a million people (about seven percent of its population) from their homes. Although in theory one can imagine a peace deal that keeps most of the settlers within Israel’s final borders (with the new Palestinian state receiving land of equal value as compensation), at some point the settlers’ efforts to “create facts” will make it practically impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state. <\/p>\n

The second trend is the growing extremism on both sides. Time is running out on a two-state solution, and its main opponents — the Likud Party and its allies in Israel and Hamas among the Palestinians — are becoming more popular. The rising popularity of Avigdor Lieberman’s overtly racist Yisrael Beiteinu<\/i> party is ample evidence of this trend. And it’s not as though Kadima or Labor have been pushing hard to bring it about. According to Gideon Rachman<\/a> of the Financial Times<\/i>: <\/p>\n

The result is that the next Israeli government, left to its own devices, is likely to opt for the status quo with the Palestinians – continued occupation of the West Bank, desultory peace talks, steadily expanding settlements and military force in response to Palestinian rockets or bombs. The long-term pursuit of a two-state solution will be brushed aside, with the argument that the Palestinians are too divided and dangerous to be negotiating partners.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One does not need to look far down the road to see the point where a two-state solution will no longer be a practical possibility. What will the United States do then? What will American policy be when it makes no sense to talk about a two-state solution, because Israel effectively controls all of what we used to call Mandate Palestine? What vision will President Obama and Secretary Clinton have for the Palestinians and for Israel when they can no longer invoke the two-state mantra? <\/p>\n

There are only three alternative options at that point.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As Walt lays it out, option one is ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the West Bank. That’s not a solution the US could support. Option two is an apartheid state: “allow the Palestinians limited autonomy in a set of disconnected enclaves, while it controlled access in-and-out, their water supplies, and the airspace above them.” Walt thinks that the US couldn’t support this option, although I’m not as sure as he is.<\/p>\n

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Which brings me to the third option. The Israeli government could maintain its physical control over “greater Israel” and grant the Palestinians full democratic rights within this territory. This option has been proposed by a handful of Israeli Jews and a growing number of Palestinians. But there are formidable objections to this outcome: it would mean abandoning the Zionist dream of an independent Jewish state and binational states of this sort do not have an encouraging track record, especially when the two parties have waged a bitter conflict across several generations. This is why I prefer the two-state alternative. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But the more times goes on, the less possible a two-state solution will be. For its part, the US needs to push Israel very hard to reverse course on the settlements. (That doesn’t mean that the Palestinians don’t need to be pushed, too; but the US isn’t the country best situated to push the Palestinians. We are the country best situated to push the Israeli government.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A brace of pessimism from Stephen Walt: There are two trends at play that threaten to undermine the two-state option. The first is the continued expansion of Israel settlements in the land that is supposed to be reserved for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}