TopBadger wrote: Mon Sep 22, 2025 7:33 pm
Given that a "two-
state solution" has been talked about for decades - It had to happen eventually.
Precisely because Palestine as a state is likely to be about as stable and effective a state as Haiti, many Palestinians and moderate Israelis think that an independent Palestine is not a plausible end condition, at least starting from being given independence out of the present occupied condition.
There are other two-state solutions than an independent Palestine. These including going back to the situation before 1967 when Gaza was part of Egypt and the West Bank was part of Jordan. But Egypt and Jordan have long been unwilling to take these places back. More trouble than they are worth, is how they see it. A refreshing contrast to those countries that refuse to give up their troublesome areas. Israel's decision to retain Gaza and the West Bank after the 1967 war has become a fateful one. It did return Sinai eventually, though it had only made some minor colonies there.
There is also a one-state solution. That Israel, Gaza and the West Bank should be integrated into one state of citizens with equal rights. Given Israel's fateful decision in 1967 to retain Gaza and the West Bank, then the one state solution seems rather to be what Israel chose. Of course people who see Israel as essentially a Jewish state - which includes every government Israel has had - hate the idea. But there are ways around the issue. It could potentially be a loose federation. In Malaysia and Nigeria there is sufficient local judicial independence that some of the federated states have laws aligned to their local religions. Bosnia and Herzegovina is an even looser federation, though there are some indications that country might fall apart. But maybe being that loose federation that eventually falls apart, when it is ready to do so, is the route to a feasible two-state solution.
The present government of Israel considers both the two-state solution - understood to mean an independent Palestine - and the one-state solution as completely unacceptable. They keep expanding their hold on the West Bank, some of them explicitly saying the more of the West Bank they take over the less feasible a two-state solution can every be. Whilst some Israelis might be willing to bargain land for peace, as they did with Sinai, in the case of the West Bank probably there are many Israelis who would not return what they have taken unless it was forcibly taken off them.
Which begs the question of what long-term solution anyone in control in Israel does consider acceptable. Some people these days, Smotrich for example, unapologetically and explicitly argue for ethnic cleansing and the departure of the Palestinians to somewhere else, not that there is anywhere else that will take them. Make it nasty enough to stay, and they hope they can be persuaded to leave. But most just keep quiet. Probably many find it convenient for conflict to continue, though preferably in the form of frozen conflict. They have done well out of frozen conflict. Of course the Armenians thought they were doing well out of frozen conflict, until it heated up again, the Russians who were supporting them abandoned them, and they lost.