Abstract
This paper examines the viability of the two-state solution in light of Israeli policies that continue to reshape land, population, and sovereignty in Palestine. It addresses a central question: How have these policies, historically and up to the present, contributed to hollowing out the two-state solution by undermining the material and political conditions necessary for its realization? The paper argues that the crisis of the two-state solution extends beyond the failure of negotiations and reflects an ongoing settler-colonial process that systematically undermines the foundations of a sovereign Palestinian state, while the two-state solution continues to be presented as a deferred promise in international discourse.
Drawing on the concept of settler colonialism, particularly the logic of elimination, the paper employs a historical and analytical examination of political documents, academic literature, and human rights reports. It traces the transformations in the meaning and substance of the two-state solution, from partition proposals to Palestinian autonomy and the Oslo process. It examines the interconnected Israeli policies across five dimensions: control over land, geographic fragmentation, legal, administrative, and security structures, Israeli political positions, and institutional and economic strangulation. The paper also addresses the intensification of these policies following October 7, 2023, from the genocidal war and destruction of the conditions necessary for life in the Gaza Strip to the acceleration of settlement expansion, displacement, and annexation in the occupied West Bank. It further examines the limitations of international recognition of the State of Palestine in the absence of concrete measures to halt the erosion of the foundations of Palestinian statehood.
The paper concludes that the continued invocation of the two-state solution does not, in itself, indicate that the conditions necessary for its realization exist. Israeli control over land, borders, and resources, the isolation of Jerusalem, the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, and the erosion of Palestinian jurisdiction have produced a reality fundamentally incompatible with the sovereignty envisioned by this solution. Accordingly, restoring any meaningful prospect for the establishment of a Palestinian state requires confronting the colonial structures that obstruct its realization and linking political recognition to concrete measures that end occupation, settlement expansion, and annexation, while ensuring the Palestinian people's exercise of their right to self-determination.
The full paper is available in Arabic.
