In favor Today, the proponents for the one-state solution include Palestinian author
Ali Abunimah, Palestinian writer and political scientist Abdalhadi Alijla, Palestinian-American producer
Jamal Dajani, Palestinian lawyer
Michael Tarazi, American-Israeli anthropologist
Jeff Halper, Israeli writer Dan Gavron, Lebanese-American academic
Saree Makdisi, and Israeli journalist
Gideon Levy. In an
op-ed for
The New York Times in 2004, Tarazi opined that the expansion of the Israeli settler movement, especially in the West Bank, was a rationale for bi-nationalism and the increased infeasibility of the two-state alternative: "Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network, the same electricity grid and the same international borders... The one-state solution... neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character. For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing." Advocates of this solution push for a secular and democratic state while still maintaining a Jewish presence and culture in the region. They concede that this alternative will erode the dream of Jewish supremacy in terms of governance in the long run. Hamas co-founder
Mahmoud Al-Zahar has been cited saying he "did not rule out the possibility of having Jews, Muslims and Christians living under the sovereignty of an Islamic state." The
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for its part, rejects a two-state solution; its leader Khalid al-Batsh stated that "The idea cannot be accepted and we believe that the entire Palestine is Arab and Islamic land and belongs to the Palestinian nation." In 2003, Libyan leader
Muammar al-Gaddafi proposed a one-state solution known as the
Isratin proposal.
John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago argues that continued settlement expansion has made a two-state solution unlikely, leading toward a
de facto binational state. He contends that U.S. policy regarding Israeli settlements has contributed to this outcome and could create long-term demographic and political challenges for Israel.
The left Since 1999, interest has been renewed in bi-nationalism or a unitary democratic state. That year, Palestinian activist
Edward Said wrote, "[A]fter 50 years of Israeli history, classic Zionism has provided no solution to the Palestinian presence. I therefore see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way with equal rights for all citizens." In October 2003, New York University scholar
Tony Judt broke ground in his article, "Israel: The Alternative" in the
New York Review of Books, in which he argued that Israel is an "anachronism" in sustaining an ethnic identity for the state and that the two-state solution is fundamentally doomed and unworkable. The Judt article engendered considerable debate in the UK and the US, and
The New York Review of Books received more than 1,000 letters per week about the essay. A month later, political scientist
Virginia Tilley published "The One-State Solution" in the
London Review of Books (followed by a book with the same title in 2005), arguing that West Bank settlements had made a two-state solution impossible and that the international community must accept a one-state solution as the
de facto reality. Leftist journalists from Israel, such as
Haim Hanegbi and Daniel Gavron, have called for the public to "face the facts" and accept the binational solution. On the Palestinian side, similar voices have been raised. In 2013, professor
Ian Lustick wrote in
The New York Times that the "fantasy" of a two-state solution prevented people from working on solutions that might really work. Lustick argued that people who assume Israel will persist as a Zionist project should consider how quickly the Soviet, Pahlavi Iranian, apartheid South African, Baathist Iraqi and Yugoslavian states unraveled. Lustick concludes that while it may not arise without "painful stalemates", a one-state solution may be a way to eventual Palestinian independence. Lustick expanded on these arguments in his 2019 book
Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality and in a contribution to the 2023 multi-author book
The One State Reality: What Is Israel/Palestine?.
The Israeli right of the West Bank, controlled by Israel, in blue and red, December 2011 In recent years, some politicians and political commentators on the right have advocated for annexing the
West Bank and extending Israeli citizenship to its Palestinian residents while maintaining Israel's identity as a
Jewish state with recognized
minority rights. These proposals typically exclude the
Gaza Strip, due to its large and generally hostile Palestinian population and its lack of any Israeli settlements or permanent military presence. Prominent political figures who have supported some form of a one-state solution include former defense minister
Moshe Arens, former President
Reuven Rivlin and
Uri Ariel.
Likud MK
Tzipi Hotovely has argued that Jordan was originally intended as the Arab state in the British Mandate of Palestine and has called for Israel to annex the West Bank as part of the historic Land of Israel.
Naftali Bennett, later Prime Minister and a figure in many
Likud-led coalitions, has proposed annexing Area C of the
West Bank, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank land and is currently under Israeli control as per the
Oslo Accords. Debates over the feasibility of annexation have often included discussions about Palestinian demographics. According to a
Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) study, the 2004 Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza stood at 2.5 million and not the 3.8 million claimed by the Palestinians. Some commentators, including journalist
Caroline Glick in her 2014 book
The Israeli Solution, have questioned the accuracy of population figures provided by the
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Glick argued that earlier surveys overestimated the Palestinian population by including people living abroad, double-counting Jerusalem residents, and projecting birthrates and immigration that did not materialize. Based on this critique, Glick contended that annexation would not significantly alter Israel’s Jewish majority and could provide a framework for protecting minority rights under a single political system rooted in Jewish values. However, the demographic data from the PCBS are generally supported by Israeli demographers backed by
Arnon Soffer and align closely with official Israeli estimates. In 2015,
Sergio DellaPergola reported 5,698,500 Arabs living in Israel and the Palestinian territories, compared to a core Jewish population of 6,103,200.
Against Critics argue that it would make Israeli Jews an ethnic minority in the territory of Israel, currently a
Jewish State legally defined as a "
nation-state of the Jewish people". The high
total fertility rate among Palestinians accompanied by a return of
Palestinian refugees, would quickly render Jews a minority, according to
Sergio DellaPergola, an Israeli demographer and statistician. Critics have also argued that Jews, like any other nation, have the right to
self-determination, and that due to still existing
antisemitism, there is a need for a Jewish national home. The
Reut Institute expands on these concerns of many Israeli Jews and says that a one-state scenario without any institutional safeguards would negate Israel's status as a homeland for the Jewish people. In an interview with
Jeffrey Goldberg,
Hussein Ibish claimed that it is not realistic for Israel to be compelled to accept a binational solution with full right of return for refugees through international pressure or sanctions. According to Ibish, if a one state solution was to happen, it would come as a result of the status quo continuing, and the result would be a protracted civil war, with each intifada more violent than the last, and the conflict growing more and more religious in nature. Ibish speculated that in such a scenario, it could even go beyond an ethno-national war between Israelis and Palestinians into a religious war between Jews and Muslims, with Israeli Jews ending up under siege and relying on their nuclear weapons for protection.
Academia Former
New Historian Benny Morris has argued that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East. Morris argues any such state would be an authoritarian, fundamentalist state with a persecuted Jewish minority, citing the racism and persecution minorities face throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and writing that "Western liberals [...] refuse to recognize that peoples, for good historical, cultural, and social reasons are different and behave differently in similar or identical sets of circumstances." He notes the differences between Israeli Jewish society, which remains largely Westernized and secular, and Palestinian society, which according to Morris is increasingly Islamic and fundamentalist. He pointed to
Hamas' 2007 takeover of Gaza, during which
Fatah prisoners were shot in the knees and thrown off buildings, and the regular
honor killings of women that permeate Palestinian and Israeli-Arab society, as evidence that Palestinian Muslims have no respect for Western values. He thus claimed that "the mindset and basic values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of binational statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds." According to Morris, the goal of a "secular democratic Palestine" was invented to appeal to Westerners, and while a few supporters of the one-state solution may honestly believe in such an outcome, the realities of Palestinian society mean that "the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for the goal of a Muslim Arab–dominated polity to replace Israel." Morris argued that should a binational state ever emerge, many Israeli Jews would likely emigrate to escape the "stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Arab world and its treatment of minority populations", with only those incapable of finding new host countries to resettle in and Ultra-Orthodox Jews remaining behind. Some argue that Jews would face the threat of
genocide. Writing on
Arutz Sheva,
Steven Plaut referred to the one-state solution as the "
Rwanda Solution", and wrote that the implementation of a one-state solution in which a Palestinian majority would rule over a Jewish minority would eventually lead to a "new
Holocaust". Morris argued that while the Palestinians would have few moral inhibitions over the destruction of Israeli-Jewish society through mass murder or expulsion, fear of international intervention would probably stymie such an outcome. argue that unification cannot happen without damaging or destroying Israel's democracy. The vast majority of Israeli Jews as well as Israeli
Druze, some Israeli
Bedouin, many Israeli Christian Arabs and even some non-Bedouin Israeli Muslim Arabs fear the consequences of amalgamation with the mostly Muslim Palestinian population in the occupied territories, which they perceive as more religious and conservative. (All Israeli Druze men and small numbers of Bedouin men serve in the
Israel Defense Forces and there are sometimes rifts between these groups and Palestinians). One poll found that, in a future Palestinian state, 23% of Palestinians want civil law only, 35% want both Islamic and civil law, and 38% want Islamic law only. This negative view of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza prompts some critics to argue that the existing level of rights and equality for all Israeli citizens would be put in jeopardy with unification. Benny Morris echoes these claims, arguing that Palestinian Muslims, who would become the ruling majority in any such state, are deeply religious and do not have any tradition of democratic governance. In response to the common argument given by proponents of the one state solution that Israel's settlements have become so entrenched in the West Bank that a Palestinian state is effectively impossible, scholars such as
Norman Finkelstein and
Noam Chomsky have countered that it is far more unrealistic to expect Israel to accept a one-state solution that would spell the end of Zionism than it is to expect it to dismantle some settlements.
Nathan Thrall has argued that Israel could implement a unilateral withdrawal at any time of its choosing and that the facts on the ground suggest that a single state is a remote possibility, writing that:
Shaul Arieli has argued that the settlement enterprise has failed to create the appropriate conditions to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state or to implement the annexation of the West Bank. He has noted that the settlers comprise only 13.5% of the West Bank's population and occupy 4% of its land, and that the settlement enterprise has failed to build up a viable local economic infrastructure. He noted that only about 400 settler households were engaged in agriculture, with the amount of settler-owned farmland comprising only 1.5% of the West Bank. In addition, he wrote that there are only two significant industrial zones in the West Bank settlements, with the vast majority of workers there Palestinian, and that the vast majority of settlers live near the border, in areas that can be annexed by Israel with relative ease in territorial exchanges, while still allowing for the formation of a viable Palestinian state. According to Arieli, 62% of the settler workforce commutes over the Green Line into Israel proper for work while another 25% works in the heavily subsidized education system of the settlements, with only a small percent working in agriculture and industry. About half of the settlements have populations fewer than 1,000 and only 15 have populations greater than 5,000. He also believes the settlement movement has failed to create facts on the ground precluding an Israeli withdrawal, and it is possible to implement a land exchange that would see about 80% of the settlers stay in place, necessitating the evacuation of only about 30,000 settler households, in order to establish a viable and contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. This sentiment has been echoed by Shany Mor, who argued that in 2020, the geographical distribution of settlers in the West Bank had not materially changed since 1993, and that a two-state solution is actually more feasible now than it was in the past due to the disentanglement of the Israeli and Palestinian economies in the 1990s. According to Mor, nearly all the population growth in the settlements between 2005 and 2020 was concentrated in the Haredi settlements of
Beitar Illit and
Modi'in Illit, due to their high birth rates.
Journalists One major argument against the one-state solution is that it would endanger the safety of the Jewish minority, because it would require assimilation with what critics fear would be an extremely hostile Muslim ruling majority. of the one-state model believe that rather than ending the Arab–Israeli conflict, it would result in large-scale
ethnic violence and possibly civil war, pointing to violence during the
British Mandate period, such as in
1920,
1921,
1929, and
1936–39 as examples. In this view, violence between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is inevitable and can only be forestalled by partition. These critics also cite the 1937
Peel Commission, which recommended partition as the only means of ending the conflict. Critics also cite bi-national arrangements in
Yugoslavia,
Lebanon,
Bosnia,
Cyprus, and
Pakistan, which failed and resulted in further internal conflicts. Similar criticisms appear in
The Case for Peace. Left-wing Israeli journalist
Amos Elon argued that while Israel's settlement policy was pushing things in the direction of a one-state solution, should it ever come to pass, "the end result is more likely to resemble
Zimbabwe than post-apartheid South Africa". Echoing these sentiments, Palestinian-American journalist
Ray Hanania wrote that the idea of a single state where Jews, Muslims, and Christians can live side by side is "fundamentally flawed." In addition to the fact that Israel would not support it, Hanania noted that the Arab and Muslim world don't practice it, writing "Exactly where do Jews and Christians live in the Islamic World today side-by-side with equality? We don't even live side-by-side with equality in the Palestinian Diaspora." Writing in
Haaretz, Nehemia Shtrasler wrote that a single state would not function properly because the Jewish and Arab inhabitants would ultimately be more loyal to their respective communities than to the state, which would be an artificial construct attempting to unite two communities with their own national consciousness. He wrote that such a state would likely be racked by terrorism and civil war. On the aftermath of any hypothetical implementation of a one-state solution,
Gershom Gorenberg wrote: "Palestinians will demand the return of property lost in 1948 and perhaps the rebuilding of destroyed villages. Except for the drawing of borders, virtually every question that bedevils Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations will become a domestic problem setting the new political entity aflame.... Two nationalities who have desperately sought a political frame for cultural and social independence would wrestle over control of language, art, street names, and schools." Gorenberg wrote that in the best case, the new state would be paralyzed by endless arguments, and in the worst case, constant disagreements would erupt into violence. ==Public opinion==