Many obstacles stand in the way of a two-state solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. At the moment, negotiations are a nonstarter for all parties.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has only a razor-thin majority in one of the most right-wing Knessets in Israeli history. President Barack Obama has tossed the ball to his successor. Recently, accounts have emerged of the U.S. administration giving up on there ever being two states and beginning to focus on what a one-state solution looks like. And then there’s the ongoing violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank that has been called “a leaderless intifada.” This violence has cemented additional layers of distrust of Palestinians to the ones Jewish Israelis already harbor. The hatred is calcifying.
During the five years I spent researching the conflict in Israel and Palestine for my recent book, “The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine,” it became increasingly clear that while talks over the past 25 years have focused on borders, settlements, Jerusalem, and the right of return of refugees, demographic changes may have made the idea of a two-state solution obsolete even before such a solution could be worked out.
