The debate between Israel and Palestine is expanding, but the options are only shrinking.

Veteran Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, writing in Foreign Policy, once referred to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a “religion” as it is “driven by propositions that unite or adhere the believer to a compelling set of ideas that satisfy rationally or spiritually, but always forced “. And no principle is more central to faith than the two-state solution.

So it’s not surprising that journalist Peter Beinart’s essay in Jewish Currents magazine sparked such a reaction from the faithful last week. Beinart eloquently argues that progressive Jews should abandon the two-state solution paradigm and instead push for Jewish-Arab equality within a single state. He refers to Belgium and Northern Ireland as promising examples of “binational states” in which ethnic groups maintain a certain level of political autonomy while sharing a sovereign country.

Beinart’s argument is not new. It is largely based on the 2018 book Beyond the nation-state by historian Dmitry Shumsky. American Palestinian activist and scholar Yousef Munayyer made his own complete case of why a state is inevitable in Foreign Affairs last year. But it was still surprising to hear this case from Beinart, a prominent center-left but generally dominant voice in the United States debate on Israel, who has advocated for the two-state solution, especially in his 2012 book The crisis of Zionism. That someone like Beinart can now tolerate the idea of ​​a not just Jewish state is an indication of how fast the debate on this issue is changing. But while his new essay may have opened the Overton window a little bit for the American debate on Israeli-Palestinian issues, that doesn’t mean he’s going to change Israel-Palestine in the US. politicsAnd that is true even if a US administration less aligned with the Israeli right takes office next year.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of center-left J Street “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, told me via email: “‘a state’ is not a solution, it is the problem. The idea of ​​a democratic state with equal rights for all between Jordan and the Mediterranean it may well have appeal in academic and intellectual circles as an abstract idea worthy of discussion. But in our opinion as a real world solution, it is almost the only thing less convincing than reaching negotiated agreement to end the conflict by drawing a border that results in two viable and independent states. “

The 2020 Democratic Party platform is reportedly almost unchanged when it comes to Israel, despite mounting pressure from the left to condemn the occupation of the Palestinian territories or impose conditions on military aid. And it is not surprising that the party remains committed to a two-state solution.

In April, Antony Blinken, one of Joe Biden’s top foreign policy advisers, said, “Disconnecting a two-state solution is potentially disconnecting an Israel that is not only safe but is Jewish and democratic, for the future. That is not something that any of us who are ardent supporters of Israel would like to see. ” Even Senator Bernie Sanders, the former kibbutznik, who has done more than anyone to expand the scope of the US debate on Israel, has made it clear that he believes a one-state solution “would be the end of the State of Israel, and I support Israel’s right to exist. “

Palestinian leaders are also not ready to leave the two-state framework. At an online event hosted by the Arab Center on Wednesday, Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and veteran of the negotiations between Israel and Palestine, was a little cautious on the subject, saying “the two states the solution is not my position, it is my concession “. But, he continued, the current official position of the PLO is “with the two-state solution, we are with international law.” He also suggested that this could change if Israel moves forward with plans to annex large portions of Palestinian territory.

In fact, the most serious threat at the moment to the two-state paradigm comes not from essays in niche American Jewish publications, but from the current Israeli government and its facilitators in the Trump administration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that he will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state, or at least something akin to the traditional definition of a sovereign state under international law. Netanyahu was scheduled to announce plans for the annexation of much of the West Bank on July 1, but those plans now appear to be in the background. Netanyahu’s rival-turned-partner, Benny Gantz, has suggested that this is because the government is devoting all its attention to the resurgence of the coronavirus, but it also seems clear that the administration was unable to obtain full support from the Trump administration for its plan.

In his most discursive moments, Trump has suggested he could “live with” a one-state or two-state solution, but officially, the administration remains committed to two states, more or less. Shaul Arieli, a retired colonel in the Israel Defense Forces and leading expert on Israeli-Palestinian territorial affairs, points out in a future report from the Israel Policy Forum that the peace plan devised by Jared Kushner that the administration launched earlier this year uses “key terms that were common during the preceding diplomatic process,” including “two states.” “However, it interprets these terms in a way that contradicts everything discussed and agreed by the parties and the international community (led by the United States) before their publication.” In other words, the Trump-Kushner plan still calls itself a “two-state solution,” but it would leave Palestinians with limited administrative sovereignty over non-contiguous territory completely surrounded by Israel.

As a “peace plan,” the Trump-Kushner effort was killed on arrival, as Palestinian leaders, who have not engaged with the Trump administration since their decision to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, they didn’t even consider it. Arieli suggests that the true purpose of the plan was not to resolve the conflict, but “to formalize the existing situation, where there are two different legal systems in the same area on the basis of ethnic criteria, and to compound this by allowing an annexation that would create a reality of apartheid. “

Netanyahu’s annexation movement would have threatened the current situation, he would undoubtedly face an international backlash if not at the end of Palestinian security cooperation, which is why even many strident Israeli hawks in the United States opposed it. The fact that the Trump administration, which has given the Israeli government the green light on almost everything it has wanted to do, appears to have slowed down the Israeli plan, or at least stopped supporting it, indicates how difficult it is to challenge the paradigm of two states, even if it is simply a rhetorical framework rather than an actual political intention.

Proponents of a two-state solution have been warning for years that it is about to become impossible, raising the question of when it will be too late and what could end it.

Netanyahu’s annexation plan, which may have involved up to 30 percent of the West Bank, could have been a turning point. But even under the status quo, Beinart and others argue that the growth of Israeli settlements has already made two states unfeasible. “Two states could have been the beginning of a more durable solution. We will probably never know because, in the decades since the Palestinians accepted a West Bank-based state, Israel has made this impossible, ”he writes.

Others, like Arieli, claim that we have not yet reached a tipping point and that we will not do so anytime soon, that most of the growth of the Israeli Jewish population in the West Bank has occurred in a couple of large settlements near the separation boundary, which means most demographic problems. it can be solved by relatively small exchanges of land.

This is very optimistic. As Beinart suggests, a binational state between the Jordan River and the sea will resemble contemporary Northern Ireland, hardly a model of effective governance, rather than Yugoslavia in the early 1990s or Lebanon in the 1980s.

The two-state solution has persisted as a dominant paradigm largely because no one has had a better idea. Polls show that support in the region has fallen precipitously in the past decade, to 49 percent among Israelis and 43 percent among Palestinians, but that support for alternatives that include a binational democratic state, annexation without full rights to the Palestinians and the expulsion of the other even lower group poll.

Efforts need to be made to explore some of the less terrifying alternatives, as well as challenges to community orthodoxy in the peace process. But until there is political will to challenge the status quo, all solutions are equally academic.