Should We Abandon the Two-State Solution?

ollowing Israel's full withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Hamas won the 2006 elections and subsequently transformed the territory into a heavily armed enclave. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a cross-border assault killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostages, using infrastructure built inside Gaza. Israeli military analysts and officials cite this as direct evidence that a Palestinian state in the West Bank would similarly become a forward operating base for terror groups, endangering central Israel and Ben Gurion Airport. The attack has fundamentally shifted Israeli public opinion against territorial concessions.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) maintains a 'Martyrs' und' that provides monthly stipends to Palestinians convicted of terrorism and to families of suicide bombers, with total annual payments estimated at $300 million. Israeli government reports and independent research (e.g., from NGO Monitor and the U.S. State Department) have documented that the PA scales these payments based on the severity of the crime, directly incentivizing violence against Israeli civilians. This ongoing practice, despite the PA's official recognition of Israel, undermines the credibility of the PA as a peace partner and constitutes a core argument that a two-state solution would institutionalize anti-Israel terror financing.

The United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League (2002 Arab Peace Initiative), and successive U.S. administrations have consistently affirmed that the two-state solution is the only viable path to end the conflict. The 2024 UN General Assembly resolutions and the 2023 Saudi-U.S. normalization discussions both condition regional peace on the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. International law scholars and diplomats argue that abandoning this framework would lead to a single binational state, which would either end Israel's Jewish democratic character or result in permanent apartheid, making the two-state solution a necessary, albeit imperfect, compromise.

Human rights organizations (Amnesty International, B'Tselem) and UN reports document that Israel's 'disengagement' from Gaza in 2005 was accompanied by a complete land, sea, and air blockade, controlling all border crossings, imports, exports, and even fishing zones. This turned Gaza into what many describe as an 'open-air prison' rather than a sovereign state. Scholars like Nathan Thrall and Sara Roy argue that the blockade and repeated military operations, not Palestinian governance failure, created the conditions that led to October 7. They contend that any Palestinian state without full sovereignty and territorial contiguity would similarly fail, and that the con side's 'one state' proposal is a recipe for permanent subjugation, not peace.