The Trump administration appears to be easing away from long-standing U.S. support for Palestinian statehood as the preferred outcome of Middle East peace efforts, which may please some allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. But the alternatives are few, and each comes with daunting and combustible complications, including for Israel itself.
Here’s a look at the scenarios:
One state
For years this was the goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and for many Palestinians it is indeed the preferred option: a single democratic state, not defined as specifically Jewish or Arab, in the area of British colonial Palestine. Many prefer it anyway to the two-state notion whereby even if Israel gives up all the land it captured in 1967 it retains almost 80 percent of Palestine.
The problem is that almost no one in Israel is arguing for the true extension of full rights to Palestinians in the currently occupied territories because even with Gaza excluded it would leave Arabs constituting close to half the country’s population — and that is clearly the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state.
If the Palestinians formally drop the two-state strategy and demand incorporation into Israel it will put Israel in the awkward position of refusing to annex territories where it has been settling Jews for decades. Or it might annex the areas but continue to deny the Palestinians there Israeli citizenship, leading to an uproar among liberal Israelis. Down this path lie coercion efforts in the form of international sanctions on Israel or Palestinian violence.
Interim agreement
Many Israelis have concluded that a final peace agreement with the Palestinians is simply not possible because the Palestinians are asking for the moon as a result of a feeling that they hold the demographic cards. It is not just about territory: the Palestinians still in theory demand a “right of return” to Israel proper for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees living around the region and the world, which the vast majority of Jewish Israelis reject.
But perhaps a partial deal is possible whereby the Palestinians would not have to forego future claims but for now get their state on, say, 80 percent of the West Bank, with some sort of preferred access or new regime in the Old City of Jerusalem. Even the current nationalist Netanyahu government would probably accept such a thing, but the Palestinians have ruled it out, fearing the temporary would become permanent.
Jordanian option
Jordan took over the West Bank and east Jerusalem during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israel war that followed the British pullout, lost the areas to Israel in 1967 and then gave up all claims to them in favor of the Palestinians in the 1980s. But Jordan is a country with a majority Palestinian-descended population, and some Israelis still think that it can play a role in satisfying Palestinian national aspirations while resuming control over only a part of the West Bank.
But this would probably require a collapse of Hashemite rule, founded on Jordan’s Bedouin population, and as such is anathema to the Jordanian monarchy, which is beloved by many Israelis for making peace with them in 1994. Adding to the difficulties, the Palestinians reject it altogether as well.
Partial pullout
Under these vexing circumstances many Israelis conclude no peace is possible, but they still want to be rid of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. In the mid-2000s the government of Ehud Olmert planned a unilateral pullout from most of the territory, to follow the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. But those plans were upended when Gaza was taken over by Hamas militants and became a launching pad for rocket attacks on Israel.
Few want to see that scenario repeated with the West Bank, which is much larger, very close to Israel’s main cities and genuinely important for Israel’s defense. Now talk grows of a pullout of settlers from some areas, to create a more convincing reality of partition, while the military stays for now.
Status quo
When the best that can be hoped for is the least bad option, the status quo looks attractive to some. But Israel is constantly changing the landscape by adding settlers — already there are some 350,000 Israelis in the West Bank and a quarter-million in East Jerusalem. This arrangement, brittle and loved by few, undermines Israel’s democratic credentials by leaving millions of people without a vote for the government that has ultimate control over their fate.
