For decades, the idea of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has been a matter of international consensus. Today, regardless of the wave of international recognition of the State of Palestine, Western diplomats, behind closed doors, speak of its impossibility.
Nevertheless, the end of the Middle East Peace Process did not mean an end to this public paradigm, but, on the contrary, since the last round of meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2008, the international discourse has rarely changed.
Western obsession with the “two-state solution” was never translated into what actually matters to achieving it: concrete measures, including sanctions, to end the Israeli occupation.
Anything else, including “Palestinian reforms,” “people-to-people programmes,” and countless second-track initiatives, has only contributed to diverting the discussion from the long-overdue implementation of the Palestinian right to self-determination toward dynamics of equalisation between occupier and occupied.
Today, we can see the results of avoiding reality.
