There Will Be a One-State SolutionNovember/December 2019 31status quo but merely to ratify it. The
question, then, is not whether there
will be a single state but what kind o¡
state it should be. Will it be one that
cements de facto apartheid in which
Palestinians are denied basic rights? Or
will it be a state that recognizes Israelis
and Palestinians as equals under the
law? The latter is the goal that Palestin-
ians should adopt. The Americans and
the Israelis should also embrace it. But
̄rst they must realize that the status
quo will eventually prove unsustainable
and that partitioning the land will
never work—and that the only moral
path forward is to recognize the full
humanity o° both peoples.FACTS ON THE GROUND
Between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea live approximately 13
million people, all under the control o¡
the Israeli state. Roughly hal¡ o¡ them
are Palestinian Arabs, some three
million o¡ whom live under a militaryoccupation with no right to vote for the
government that rules them and around
two million o¡ whom live in Israel as
second-class citizens, discriminated
against based on their identity, owing to
Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Two
million more Palestinians live in the
besieged Gaza Strip, where the militant
group Hamas exercises local rule: an
open-air prison walled o from the
world by an Israeli blockade.
Meanwhile, between 500,000 and
700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live
among millions o ́ Palestinians in the
occupied West Bank. Protecting the
settlers and increasing their numbers
have been chie¡ priorities for Israel ever
since it captured territories from the
Arab states it defeated in the Six-Day
War o¡ 1967. In 1993, the Oslo accords
started a new phase o¡ the relationship,
based on a quid pro quo: Israel would
withdraw from parts o¡ the occupied
territories and abandon some settlements
in return for an end to PalestinianWaiting for a state: Palestinians at a checkpoint in Bethlehem, August 2010JEPPE SCHILDER
/ ALAMY
STOCK PHOTO