I am finally coming round to a view about how to resolve the Israel-Palestine problem that I’ve enthused about and backed away from repeatedly for a while. Before revealing its details, though, I feel I should note various caveats.

First, it’s a loose view. If I could find a better one, I’d happily jump from one to the other. I don’t have any reason to promote this one if another makes more sense.

Second, I allow myself this view as an indulgence. I’m just a bystander: I wield no influence, and it matters little what I think. No one with any political power is desperate to know my opinion or is going to be swayed by what I say. 

Third, it’s clear to me—from having tested the idea on friends—that what I’m proposing is off the scale when it comes to mainstream ideas. Not only do I not expect to get applauded for it, I expect to get opposed and even condemned by anyone who bothers to take note.

Fourth, I’m aware that the view I’ve gravitated to is partly the product of my being Jewish, and that others will identify it as being attractive to me only because I am Jewish, and not because it has any objective merit. In fact, probably the opposite: that it is utterly unrealistic and I am only drawn to the madness of it because I am Jewish and therefore blind.

(I should say, though, that those with contrary views no doubt also hold them not because those views necessarily have objective merit, or greater objective merit than mine (though those who entertain them will insist that they do), but because they also come from a background that shapes their thinking (though they, again, will not agree that that’s the case).

So . . . my view reflects my growing thinking that there is no virtue in the so-called Two-State Solution, except to the extent that it is equally injurious to both sides. That is to say, its value lies not in the solution it misleadingly claims to represent but in its equity. 

Equity aside, what the Two-State Solution offers is the settling of a half state on each of the two parties—something neither party wants. It asks both sides to accept a compromise which fundamentally undermines each party’s own wish.  

The upshot of this is the view, entertained by the world, that to lock Israelis and Palestinians into a state of equal dissatisfaction is virtuous because neither side gets everything, and neither side can therefore claim victory. It requires both parties to act graciously about having a stalemate forced upon them—a fraud that’s mostly pleasing to those who don’t have a dog in the game.  

Peacemakers and intermediaries can point to examples elsewhere in the world where warring parties have eventually put aside their weapons, if not their grievances, and learned to live side by side—and that such a model has proved to be the best one available when two parties make claims to the same piece of land, or the right to rule it. 

One only has to look to Europe—theatre of tribal violence for........

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