Israel:  The Alternatives to a Two-State Solution

   Various sources report that Benjamin Netanyahu is still in favor of a two-state solution, tepidly.  For him that means: the longer it takes to come to pass the better.  Given the endless impasse in the road toward that two-state agreement, it becomes appropriate to consider what would be the case were that second state, the Palestinian one, never to come about.

   There are two possibilities.  The first is a true binational state.  It would give Palestinians more or less equal political roles: Netanyahu and Abbas (or their successors) colleagues, so to speak?  That is not likely to happen.  But if, however improbably, it were actually to come about, the differential in birthrates would at some time in the future convert Israel, the Jewish state, into an Arab state—with a Jewish minority.  That would be déjà vu all over again, since before the creation of Israel, that had been the case for Jews everywhere since ancient times.

   The population pressure would not be eliminated if the current “arrangement” drifted into a One State “solution” (scare quotes most appropriate!) dominated, as is the case now, by the Jewish component.  The Palestinians, as is the case now, would continue to chafe under such conditions and would be highly likely to combat it in various ways, violent and otherwise, rather than become resigned and take significant steps to improve their lot, economically and in other spheres of life.  Moreover, it might well be advantageous for them to put their victimhood front and center, since there are significant signs now that they are the recipients of sympathy from an ever larger portion of the rest of the world.  While this sympathy is unlikely to be converted into significant material advantages for the Palestinians, it will certainly increase markedly the world’s hostility toward the Jewish rulers of such a skew bi-national Israel.

   It is time for Netanyahu and other Jewish leaders who put obstacles in the way of that Two-State solution—especially by continuing the practice of “settlements” (scare quotes because that mild term masks the perniciousness of the practice)—to confront what would happen if the Two-State solution were not to bring to a conclusion the long-running strife in the Middle East.