In Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality, Iain Lustick adeptly explains and analyzes the failure of the two-state solution (TSS), or what he refers to as the two-state paradigm that has guided successive efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His argument is as straightforward as it is compelling: The two-state paradigm has failed and it can no longer emerge from negotiations, and partly by design, and partly by accident, there is today a one-state reality (OSR) between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and its name is Israel. Any future solution should be guided by the OSR that exists; recognition of this reality is necessary because as long as the two-state paradigm pervades, the necessary systematic work to secure Palestinian rights is avoided, or at best delayed. The book is timely, clearly written, meticulously researched, and the argument is carefully developed and supported by a trove of evidence.
The failure of the TSS is hardly i a new idea; the novelty, however, lies in the cogent articulation of why the TSS has failed and what actually exists today—the OSR. Departing from many works that advocate for a one-state solution, the focus of Lustick's analysis is the “what is” rather than “what should be.” Lustick dismantles a consensus empirically and theoretically, and this deconstruction is not guided by preferred outcomes, but rather by exacting reflections of realities on the ground and the incoherence between that reality and the “paradigmatic” policy consensus. The first three chapters examine why the TSS has failed. Lustick attributes this failure to three interconnected factors: Israel's maximalism and the flaw in Jabotinsky's “Iron Wall” strategy; what he refers to as “Holocaustia”; and the impact of the US pro-Israel lobby on successive US administrations.
Chapter 1 argues that the TSS failure is an outcome of unintended consequences related to how Zionism's strategic logic institutionalized an inability to determine and heed Arab willingness to compromise. In line with Jabotinsky's Iron Wall strategy, once Arab opposition was crushed, Arab rejectionists would moderate and become amenable to a negotiated settlement based on Zionism's limited concessions. Israel's successive military victories, however, only served to push “Jewish psychology and politics toward more extreme demands for the satisfaction of Zionist objectives” (p. 23) despite Arab moderation. According to Lustick, these were unintended outcomes of the Iron Wall strategy.
The next chapter, “The Cost of Holocaustia,” details how the Holocaust was constructed as a template for Jewish life everywhere, and accordingly all Jews, religious and secular, are threatened by neo-Nazi genocide. This moral existential panic guides Israel's politics, its foreign policy, and shapes the public policy domain. Although other constructions pervade related to how Zionist analysis of the Jewish condition was correct, how the Holocaust was used as a tool to gain support from the non-Jewish world, and, very importantly, as an object lesson in universal values, the construction of the Holocaust as a template for Jewish life dominates today. This template became politically ascendant in the 1980s and was consolidated in the 1990s, and the political outcome of the Holocaustia hegemony is most evident in the public policy domain whereby most Israeli Jews are unable to adequately empathize with the Palestinian Arabs so as to address their predicament and demands.
Chapter 3 elucidates how unyielding American protection has encouraged Israel's policies and shielded it from the consequences of its policy excesses. Holocaustia, combined with unintended outcomes of the Iron Wall strategy, and US foreign policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict have doomed any prospects for the TSS. Unlike any other recipient of US aid, Israel receives lump sums rather than installments, and it is not required to account for how this aid is used. Additionally, it receives military equipment at highly discounted prices. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) influence on US-Israeli policy cannot be underestimated. Although AIPAC does not directly fund electoral campaigns, it mobilizes and guides campaign funding to exert political pressure on legislators; those who do not comply are penalized by primary or electoral challengers supported by AIPAC. Beyond targeting politicians who do not toe a political line favorable to Israel, AIPAC-affiliated organizations make it increasingly difficult to criticize Israeli policies without fear of retribution, accusations of anti-Semitism, blacklisting of individuals, and institutional harassment. Moreover, the Israeli political establishment is fully assured that American support will not diminish regardless of the policies it adopts. Israel, as a result, has been incapable of grasping the effects of its policies, or recognizing any opportunities for peace which could have made the TSS solution a reality.
The last two chapters detail the different dimensions of the TSS failure and elucidate how the OSR that exists provides significant opportunities, especially if it steers the new emerging paradigm. Beyond failing as a policy option to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lustick argues that the TSS has failed as a paradigm—“... an array of concepts, assumptions, agendas, questions, commitments, and beliefs associated with a partitionist approach to the ‘problem of Palestine’” (p. 87). Following decades of failure, its advocates can only provide lists of reasons for its failure. Accompanying this paradigm collapse, however, is the unintended consequence of a OSR, and the promise it entails is a silver lining for Lustick. Although he is not explicitly advocating for a one-state solution, he comes pretty close. The OSR on the ground can serve as a paradigm to guide thought and action, and very importantly, it will shift the focus from blueprints to more transformative opportunities emerging from unintended developments and consequences.
Needless to reiterate, the strengths of the book are many, and Lustick's appeal to attend to the reality on the ground rather than preferred outcomes cannot be overstated. I have two key concerns, however, that might mitigate what is presented as logically seamless. First, it is an overstatement to say that the TSS was ever an established paradigm for Israel or the US. Relatedly, the outcomes that have transpired pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were never unintended or accidental. Second, I am not convinced by Lustick's interpretation of Israeli right-wing support for a one-state solution, and I am apprehensive about what this means for Palestinians, at least in the more immediate term. Certainly, there is a two-state industry which has guided the successive negotiation efforts and the Oslo process. The beneficiaries of the enterprise are numerous and their interests remain entrenched, but this never meant a viable sovereign Palestinian state from an American or Israeli establishment perspective. At best, the autonomous Palestinian entity would be demilitarized, without full control of borders, and would not necessarily ensure Palestinian self-determination. Although Lustick acknowledges that most of Israel's political establishment never accepted a TSS that would meet minimal Palestinian demands, it is important to recognize that this TSS was never on the table from the US perspective as well. The TSS paradigm was espoused and upheld by Israel's left-of-center parties and in American political discourse only. More explicit acknowledgment of this point might prevent future futile and time-consuming debates about whether the ideal solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be one state or two.
Very importantly, the outcomes that have transpired thus far were never unintended. The Iron Wall strategy referred to a settlement between the Zionist movement and the Arabs once the latter were defeated and a numeric and political minority between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Jabotinsky's logic was premised on the foundation that Palestine had to be converted from an Arab country to a Jewish majority. But to this day, that objective has not been realized: There are approximately fourteen million Jews and Palestinians in that territory, and roughly over half are Palestinian and the other half Jewish—Palestinians are still the numeric majority. So, although the Arabs have moderated, this is unlikely the moderation that Jabotinsky envisioned or the necessary precondition that must obtain. Lustick mentions in passing that Zionism from its inception never had a solution to the “Arab problem”, which is that Arabs exist and live in that same territory, and that is a more incisive assessment of where things stand today.
Regarding settlement expansion, every Israeli government since 1967 has supported the settlement enterprise. Once in government, Labor, Likud, and Kadima alike, as well as the other parties farther right on the political spectrum, have supported settler policies, and protected and shielded settlers from legal culpability regardless of their official discourse. Gush Emunim and the remainder of Israel's pro-settler community and the political establishment have never been two separate sides of the political aisle, regardless of which government was in power. There are approximately 750,000 Israeli Jewish settlers in the West Bank today, and that was not accidental or an unintended consequence of Jabotinsky's Iron Wall strategy.
Second, what the one-state solution means for Israel's right wing (maybe Reuven Rivlin, Israel's 10th president, aside) is considerably different from what this means for Palestinians and supporters of equal citizenship for all—at least in the immediate to medium term. “More Jews in the West Bank means fewer in the Galilee” (p. 131) does not translate to equal rights, and I worry about the consequences of this extrapolation. In some instances, it felt like Lustick was welcoming annexation. Annexation as envisioned by Israel's extremists will inevitably entail more expulsions, displacement, surveillance, compromised livelihoods, human rights violations, and daily violence against Palestinians. In addition to its contravention to international law and the normalization of Israel's recalcitrance to international norms, the immediate consequences of annexation for Palestinians in the West Bank will be devastating. Lustick admits that expanding citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will take decades of struggle and that an entirely different time frame is required—not months or years, but “decades and generations” (p. 162); this discussion needs to be married to guarantees for international protection for Palestinians and that Palestinian suffering is not further normalized.
These points do not take away from the cogent and powerful argument that Lustick develops so thoroughly and persuasively in Paradigm Lost. As a Palestinian, I read the book with tremendous curiosity, and I was most struck by the intellectual honesty of a seasoned scholar willing to change long-held political positions when presented with changing circumstances and realities on the ground. I also appreciated that the well-being of a people and their rights figured prominently in implying a possible solution. But given that the book lacks the how, the decisive question of our time, I wonder if it would have been more constructive to have remained more open or vague about future proposals. Perhaps the more effective approach would have been to at least acknowledge that future solutions may not be born out of the instruments and understandings that emerged in the same century that created this conflict. Regardless, this book is a thought-provoking must-read that will generate much-needed critical discussion and debate, forcing all interested parties to think creatively and in more concrete terms.
