At a campaign rally in Las Vegas during the 2024 race, Joe Biden told the curious audience about a conversation he said he had three years earlier with former French president Francois Mitterrand. It might have sounded like a great story, except for one small problem: the late Mitterrand died in 1995. Unsurprisingly, many eyebrows were raised. A few days later, at a fundraising event in New York, Biden tried another story, this time about former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. But Kohl, a great friend of Israel, had passed away five years before the meeting Biden described.
Biden's cognitive weakness likely cost him a second term in office, but the Western leaders habit of speaking about the dead as if they were still among us did not disappear. And there is no doubt that the idea closest to their hearts is the two-state solution, which is as dead as Mitterrand and Kohl.
In the past week, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus published joint understandings about the future of the region, declaring their commitment to long-term peace based on a two-state agreement. Italian President Giorgia Meloni met with Mahmoud Abbas and made clear her republic's commitment to the two-state solution. French President Emmanuel Macron has already recognized a Palestinian state, even though no such state has been declared or established, and one that, at least according to him, will live in peace and security alongside Israel.
It is not that regional peace is unimportant to the Cypriot foreign minister or that France's assurances for our security are unwelcome. But much like Biden's audiences, it is hard to avoid stating the obvious: the two-state solution is dead. It has become an empty phrase people use to signal discomfort with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Yet even the most left-leaning part of the Zionist majority in Israel does not seriously believe that a Palestinian state with its own military, its own airport, an independent economy and access to the sea will be created between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The two-state solution resembles a unicorn, beautiful, heartwarming and entirely imaginary.
Israel cannot and will not relinquish control over the systems designed to protect its citizens and monitor the schemes of its enemies. Even the Oslo Accords, meant to be interim agreements on the way to a permanent settlement, promised the Palestinians internal policing within what Yitzhak Rabin insisted on defining as less than a state. The Palestinians, across their various factions, also understand that the train left the station long ago. In recent weeks I have met a wide range of Palestinian public figures, from social activists among Arab citizens of Israel to the most hostile spokespeople accusing Israel of genocide and calling it a colonialist entity. Surprisingly, they all acknowledge that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria and its responsibility for the entire security architecture between the river and the sea are facts on the ground. Perhaps, years ago, a Palestinian state might have been possible in the Gaza Strip, but everyone knows how that story ended.
The talk of the two-state solution is not harmless; it is simply unworkable. And unfortunately, this is no time to celebrate. I would be glad to say that since the two-state idea has outlived its historical role, we can ease our foot off the gas and raise a glass at a winery in Samaria. The opposite is true. While Macron, Meloni and Abdullah bin Zayed swear allegiance to the ideas of yesterday, a contingency plan is forming on the ground.
Until recently, the Israeli Left pushed for the two-state solution out of fear that reality would force us into a single binational state, while the Right invested enormous effort in proving that two states were not an acceptable alternative. Now that the bad alternative has disappeared, we are left de facto with one known option on the table. A sovereign Palestinian state will not be created. If we do not want to find ourselves within the next decade reluctantly granting citizenship to millions of Palestinians, we must quickly define the authorities, borders and status of Palestinian populated areas and apply Israeli sovereignty to everything else.
