A One State Solution?

With the peace process at seeming standstill, some academics and policy analysts have revived calls for a single state. (VOA News)

And indeed, some push for such a plan, involving giving Israeli citizenship and equal rights to all the Palestinians in the West Bank, is coming from Israeli right-wingers and settlers. (Ha’aretz)

In fact, even the Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) says “I would prefer for the Palestinians to be citizens of this country…rather than divide the land.” A single state in which there are equal rights for all citizens would be preferable to dividing the land. (Ha’aretz)

And a number of Palestinian officials have spoken in favor of abandoning the two-state plan and focusing instead on a fight for citizenship within a one-state framework. (Ha’aretz)

But Yossi Beilin is opposed: “a border, in an agreement, is a vital thing, and anyone who’s ready to give up on borders is really talking about the end of Zionism…no one on the right is really proposing to grant citizenship to all the Palestinians, and no one is ready to have a Palestinian prime minister or a Palestinian defense minister.” (Ha’aretz)