I have belonged to the Zionist left for nearly forty years.

I began as a teenager in Hashomer Hatzair. I believed that peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world would eventually come through territorial compromise and mutual recognition. Over the years, the proposed arrangements changed. There was binationalism, partition, two states, confederation, and various attempts to combine separation with cooperation.

I wanted these ideas to work. I still do.

I am also an Israeli citizen, I vote in elections to the World Zionist Congress, and Israel’s future is more than a subject of political debate for me. At some point, hope must answer to experience. I have reached the point where I can no longer claim that the policies I supported offer Israel a plausible path forward.

Those of us who advocated them should take some responsibility. We did not create the conflict, and we never had the power to resolve it alone. We did promote political programs with confidence, then repeatedly explained away the evidence that they were not working.

The two-state solution gradually became insulated from events. Negotiations collapsed, proposed agreements were rejected, terrorism continued, and Palestinian politics failed to produce a leadership both willing and able to conclude a durable peace with Israel. Each development became another obstacle on the road to two states. Almost nothing was allowed to raise the possibility that the road itself had disappeared.

The immediate objection is obvious: What about Netanyahu?

It is a fair question. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Right have spent years entrenching the conflict. Settlement expansion has made territorial compromise harder. Netanyahu........

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