Pros and cons of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine

“A lot of people like the one-state solution. Some people like the two-state solution. So we’ll have to see.”

That was Donald Trump this week when asked about the long-term future for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His 20-point peace plan in Gaza does not explicitly mention a two-state solution but does set out plans for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people”.

Over the decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a two-state solution has been mooted as the most viable path towards lasting peace. After recent moves by the UK, France and Australia, 157 of the 193 UN member nations now recognise a Palestinian state, though this remains a mainly “symbolic gesture”, without the backing of Israel and the US, said The Hill.

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Here are some of the arguments for and against a two-state solution.

Pro: best prospect of peace

The consensus within the international community has for decades been that a two-state solution is the best and “only possible road to peace between Israelis and Palestinians”, said Caroline De Gruyter, of the Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad, in an article published by Carnegie Europe in 2023.

It is the “most likely” solution “to yield a modicum of peace and justice”, said Erik Levitz in New York Magazine in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attacks by Hamas, and “remains far more conceivable” than the possibility of Israel opting for a one-state solution, which could spell the end of the majority Jewish state.

“The only way to address the legitimate aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians is through the two-state formula”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said last year, adding that “the denial of the right to statehood would indefinitely prolong the conflict, and a one-state solution – huge Palestinian populations inside that state without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity – would be inconceivable.”

Con: imbalance of power makes it impossible 

If a two-state solution was created along previously drawn lines it would still create “a deep injustice to the Palestinians in myriad ways”, said Chris McGreal in The Guardian two years ago. A sovereign new Palestine would “comprise only about 22% of historic Palestine”, despite Arabs making up “roughly half the population of the area now divided up as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza”.

The 1993 Oslo Accords “ignored the power imbalance” between the two sides, imposing bilateral negotiations “between a powerful state and a stateless people”, said Maha Nassar, from the University of Arizona, on The Conversation. Because of Israel’s greater “military, economic and diplomatic power”, the “prospects for a viable, independent Palestinian state were undermined”.

Pro: no viable alternative 

The prospect of a two-state solution remains “on the table if only for the lack of any viable alternative”, said Virginia Tech university professor Joel Peters on Carnegie Europe. The two sides have “paid lip service to its implementation” in the past and, for it to work, it would require a significant commitment from both sides, as well as from the international community, which would need “to hold Israel and the Palestinians accountable for their actions”.

“Only a political, two-state solution will help respond to the legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security. There is no alternative,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told a UN conference co-chaired with Saudi Arabia in July.

Con: demographic changes in West Bank make it harder to implement

The increasing “physical and demographic changes” in the West Bank because of Israeli settlements have made the idea of a two-state solution “that much harder to implement”, said Ben Scott on The Interpreter.

Incrementally, settlements have eaten into Palestinian territory so today as many as 750,000 Israeli settlers live in more than 250 settlements and outposts across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, said Al Jazeera.

The Israeli government recently approved 3,400 new housing units in an area known as E1. Construction will slice the West Bank in half and sever it from its nominal capital of East Jerusalem, a move that Israel’s hardline finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said “practically erases the two-state delusion and consolidates the Jewish people’s hold on the heart of the land of Israel”.

Pro: self-determination for both sides

While a two-state solution may not be perfect, a “genuinely sovereign Palestine would still be a vast improvement” on the current situation, said McGreal in The Guardian.

There is a “moral core to the two-state vision”, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox, namely “self-determination for two peoples”. It is this aspect that “makes two states not only more feasible than one but also in certain respects more desirable”. The “struggle for collective rights between two distinctive peoples” is more achievable in two states, even if it is “exceptionally difficult to imagine” both sides changing their current “national aspirations”.

Con: the push for one state instead

“In reality, the two-state solution is a little like the emperor’s new clothes in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. You pretend to see what does not exist,” said Ghada Karmi in the New Internationalist. “Though repeatedly cited as if it was a plausible outcome to the conflict, it has no chance of being realised on the ground”, meaning a “one-state solution remains the most logical route to end the conflict and build a just future for Palestinians and Israelis”.

The one-state solution does avoid some of the “daunting obstacles” that the two-state plan throws up, and it would also offer “unique forms of reparation for Palestinians” displaced during Israel’s creation, said Levitz in New York Magazine. Currently, the idea of a single democratic state seems “politically fantastical” but it remains, in theory, “appealingly simple to implement”.