30 YOUSEF MUNAYYER is a writer and scholar
who serves as Executive Director of the U.S.
Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The views
expressed here are his own.end to Israeli settlement building in the
occupied territories. That was three years
ago. And since then, Israel has continued
to build and expand settlements.
The arrival o U.S. President Donald
Trump in the White House put the
nal nail in the con. “I am looking at
two-state, and one-state, and I like the
one that both parties like,” Trump
explained in February 2017. Policy wonks
and seasoned diplomats rolled their eyes
at the reality- celebrity turned com-
mander in chie describing the options
as i they were dishes on a buet table.
But the remark indicated a genuine
shift: since the current phase o the
peace process began in the early 1990s,
no U.S. president had ever before
publicly suggested accepting a single state.
What Trump had in mind has become
clear in the years that have followed, as he
and his team have approved a right-wing
Israeli wish list aimed at a one-state
outcome—but one that will enshrine
Israeli dominance over Palestinian
subjects, not one that will grant the
parties equal rights.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, Israel has abandoned any
pretense o seeking a two-state solution,
and public support for the concept
among Israelis has steadily dwindled.
Palestinian leaders continue to seek a
separate state. But after years o¡ failure
and frustration, most Palestinians no
longer see that path as viable.
The simple truth is that over the
decades, the Israelis developed enough
power and cultivated enough support
from Washington to allow them to
occupy and hold the territories and to
create, in eect, a one-state reality o
their own devising. Netanyahu and
Trump are seeking not to change theThere Will Be a
One-State
Solution
But What Kind of State Will
It Be?Yousef Munayyer
F
or nearly three decades, the
so-called two-state solution has
dominated discussions o the
Israeli-Palestinian con¢ict. But the idea o
two states for two peoples in the territory
both occupy was always an illusion, and in
recent years, reality has set in. The two-
state solution is dead. And good riddance:
it never oered a realistic path forward.
The time has come for all interested
parties to instead consider the only
alternative with any chance o delivering
lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and
Palestinians in a single shared state.
It has been possible to see this
moment coming for quite a while. As
he tried to rescue what had become
known as “the peace process,” U.S.
Secretary o State John Kerry told
Congress that the two-state solution had
one to two years left before it would no
longer be viable. That was six years ago.
Resolution 2334, which the © Security
Council passed with U.S. consent in
late 2016, called for “salvaging the
two-state solution” by demanding a
number o steps, including an immediateTRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST06_Munayyer_pp3_Blues.indd 30 9/23/19 3:13 PM