New Yorker (“New Maps Show How Israel Has Thwarted Hopes for a Palestinian State“):
Last week, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an apparent effort to shore up support ahead of the upcoming Israeli elections, issued a tender offer for the construction of another twelve hundred units of settler housing in a location explicitly meant to divide the remaining Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank. The European Union and more than twenty governments, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, have urged Israel to immediately retract the tender, because the construction would “undermine the prospect of the two-state solution by driving a wedge through the West Bank.” The U.S. has not signed the statement. But the tender prompted even the Trump Administration to reiterate its opposition to the annexation of the West Bank, saying that “a stable West Bank keeps Israel secure.”
[…]
More than five hundred thousand Jewish settlers already reside among more than three million Palestinians in the West Bank, which has been designated as part of a future Palestinian state since the 1947 United Nations resolution that proposed the creation of the state of Israel. And the Israeli government’s support for those settlements has grown increasingly bold. During the eight years of the Obama Administration, Israel approved just three new settlements in the West Bank; since the start of 2023, roughly when the current Israeli government came to power, it has approved one hundred and four. It has authorized construction of more than fifty-eight thousand units of housing, and the total number of settlements and outposts has more than doubled over the same period, from about three hundred to about six hundred and forty. Violence against the Palestinians, meanwhile, has increased in tandem with the settlements, often perpetrated with the apparent protection or approval of the Israeli security forces. In 2016, the United Nations counted a hundred and seven settler attacks that damaged Palestinian property, caused Palestinian casualties, or both. Since 2023, the U.N. has documented more than fifty-three hundred—a rate of more than four a day. More than eleven hundred Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed either directly by settlers or by the Israeli security forces. (In the first seven months of 2026, there were at least one thousand three hundred and eighty settler attacks, a rate of more than six a day, and seventy-six Palestinians were killed.) Over the same three years, according to the U.N., demolitions and intimidation in the West Bank fully or partially displaced one hundred and seventeen Palestinian communities, uprooting over fifty-nine hundred Palestinians.
[…]
And since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli military has also devastated Gaza, taking over more than sixty-five per cent of its territory, damaging or destroying over ninety per cent of the homes. Almost all of Gaza’s two million residents now live crowded into tent camps in the remaining thirty-five per cent of the land. (The Israeli assault has killed more than seventy thousand Palestinians.)
“The conversation has gone from ‘What can we do to get to a two-state solution?’ to ‘What can be done to stop Israel from literally taking all of the land?’ ” [Frank] Lowenstein [President Obama’s special envoy for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, now a policy fellow at J Street] told me. His latest maps—compiled with his associate Liam Hamama, based on statements from the Israeli government and on data from the advocacy group Peace Now, the Palestinian administrative authority in the West Bank, and U.N. agencies—make clear that to envision any viable form of Palestinian self-rule would now require more than an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a halt to settlement growth. It would entail a major rollback of the existing settlements and outposts—evicting the Israeli Jews who established them. Lowenstein argued that a more immediate goal would be persuading Israel to give back at least some of the land to the Palestinians. But Israel’s current political climate makes such a proposal almost inconceivable in the short term.
[…]
In this context, talking about American support for a future two-state solution, as many politicians in both parties continue to do, is like musing about an alternative history. It is no longer relevant. Instead of allowing politicians only to repeat talking points about eventual Palestinian statehood, Lowenstein argued, Americans should ask candidates the more pertinent question: Will you press Israel, right now, to begin putting more land back in Palestinian hands? Likewise, he continued, voters should not accept “pro-Israel” as a meaningful description of a candidate’s views. With the settlements fast expanding the practical boundaries of the Jewish state, the relevant question is not “Do you support Israel?” The question is: Which Israel do you support? The internationally recognized Israel, with the borders that preceded its 1967 conquests? Or a vision of Greater Israel, in which it formally annexes those territories, and the Jewish half of the population either rules over or seeks to expel the half that is Palestinian?
I would argue that question, too, amounts to musing about an alternative history. There is no conceivable Israeli government that would order its citizens out of their homes in the West Bank. And, even if that were to happen, I seriously doubt compliance would be forthcoming.
Israel has demonstrated for the last four decades or so, going back to the First Intifada, that it cares little about world opinion. We’re closing in on two hundred UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel, with more than a dozen last year alone.
The United States Government has been unflinching in standing by its ally, using its veto power to stop attempts to condemn Israel in the Security Council. But that may be ending. Recent polling shows 60% of US adults (and 80% of Democrats!) have an unfavorable view of Israel. Attitudes are even worse among younger cohorts.
It’s quite probable that the next Democratic administration will be far less supportive of Israel than any since Truman recognized the then-fledgling state in 1948. It’s not inconceivable that U.S. military aid for Israel will be made conditional on reforms, or even suspended altogether. While that would certainly give any Israeli government pause, it’s unlikely to drive major policy change.
Like it or not, Israel is in the driver’s seat. They view Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as a threat and want to drive them out. They’re certainly not giving up Jerusalem. There is simply no conceivable path to a Palestinian state within Israeli borders.
