Between mayhem at the Gaza border and U.S.-Israeli triumphalism, it is becoming impossible to imagine a serious peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, let alone an agreement anytime soon. But none of this will distract Palestinians from their quest for liberation. And for Israelis, that means the conflict will never truly be over.
Many commentators have declared the two-state solution dead, while others cling to the concept stubbornly. From Israel’s side, the possibility looks beyond remote. Israel’s long-serving leader Benjamin Netanyahu has steadfastly thwarted a two-state solution for years. Nearly a decade ago, he gave one speech expressing hypothetical, circumscribed support for the concept. Since then, he has presided over halfhearted, failed negotiations. He has insisted that Jerusalem won’t be divided and that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. One of his current coalition partners, the Jewish Home party, is dead-set against the idea.
Nor will the Israeli public lead the charge. In a December 2017 joint Israeli-Palestinian survey I conducted with the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, just over half of Israelis — 52 percent — supported the broad notion of a two-state solution, a steady decline from more than 70 percent in 2010. That figure includes Arab Israeli respondents who support two states by 83 percent; among Israeli Jews, just 46 percent supports this solution. If you show respondents the details of the traditional two-state plan developed in the 2000s, support sinks to a minority on both sides.
When it comes to the land where a Palestinian state might be located, the picture becomes even more complicated. Israel directly controls 60 percent of the West Bank, including a thick perimeter connected by a series of lines that dissect the middle. This is Area C, where the Israeli military is responsible for both the security and civil affairs of the approximately 400,000 Israeli settlers (not including East Jerusalem) and between 200,000 and 400,000 Palestinians, according to combined data from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, United Nations agencies, and Palestinian sources. The latter are ruled under martial law; the remaining areas A and B are governed by the Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli army has ultimate sovereignty over the entire West Bank.
The idea of annexing the West Bank once would have been considered extremist and impractical. Today, incremental annexation starting with Area C is rapidly being legitimized in Israel. Naftali Bennett, the head of the Jewish Home party, is calling for the complete annexation of Area C. In 2017, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a law to legalize settlements on land expropriated from private Palestinian owners. Netanyahu’s Likud party passed a nonbinding but influential party resolution calling to annex settlement areas of the West Bank. And, in late May, a prominent member of Israel’s erstwhile dovish Labor Party published a controversial article arguing for the annexation of mostly the same territory.
If Area C becomes part of Israel, only the hollowed-out patches in between would be left over for a future Palestine. The prospect of living in state under these terms is losing support among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, too: Like Israeli Jews, just 46 percent of those Palestinians supported the two-state concept in the same December survey.
Finally, two-state experts now say that, at a minimum, more than 160,000 Jewish settlers (there is no genuine consensus on the number) would have to move for a future Palestine to have basic territorial contiguity. Israel moved just 8,500 people from Gaza in 2005; from then on, the Israeli right has devoted itself to preventing another so-called expulsion.
