Editing One-state solution (section)

===Against===
Critics{{which|date=March 2022}} argue that it would make Israeli Jews an ethnic minority<ref>a b Shenhav, 2006, p. 191.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/02/26/3091851/harvard-to-host-one-state-solution-confab |title=Harvard hosting confab on one-state solution &#124; JTA - Jewish & Israel News |access-date=18 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120301091251/http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/02/26/3091851/harvard-to-host-one-state-solution-confab |archive-date=1 March 2012}}</ref> in the only Jewish country.{{clarify|reason=The significance of this needs to be explained|date=April 2024}} The high [[total fertility rate]] among Palestinians accompanied by a return of [[Palestinian refugees]], would quickly render Jews a minority, according to [[Sergio DellaPergola]], an Israeli demographer and statistician.<ref>{{cite web|last=[[Sergio DellaPergola]] |title=Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects, Policy Implications |url=http://fc.retecivica.milano.it/rcmweb/rssweb/Israele/Aliyah |publisher=[[Shalom Hartman Institute]] |access-date=22 April 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160422221118/http://fc.retecivica.milano.it/rcmweb/rssweb/Israele/Aliyah%20e%20diaspora/Demografia%20e%20sviluppo/S03D0F4A4.0/Demography%20in%20IsraelPalesti.pdf |archive-date=22 April 2016}}{{Dubious |Dubious|date=September 2016}}</ref>

Critics{{which|date=March 2022}} have also argued that Jews, like any other nation, have the right to [[self-determination]], and that due to still existing [[antisemitism]], there is a need for a Jewish national home.<ref>{{cite web|author=Eli E. Hertz |url=http://www.mythsandfacts.com/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070102043649/http://www.mythsandfacts.com/Conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm |url-status=usurped |archive-date=2 January 2007 |title=Mandate For Palestine - The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights |publisher=Mythsandfacts.com |access-date=2016-04-12}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jcpa.org/text/Israel60_Gavison.pdf |title=The Right of Jews to Statehood |author=Prof. Ruth Gavison |website=Jcpa.org |access-date=2016-04-12}}</ref>

The [[Reut Institute]] expands on these concerns of many Israeli Jews and says that a one-state scenario without any institutional safeguards would negate Israel's status as a homeland for the Jewish people.<ref name=reut2004/> When proposed as a political solution by non-Israelis, the assumption is that the idea is probably being put forward by those who are politically motivated to harm Israel and, by extension, Israeli Jews.<ref name=reut2004/> They argue that the absorption of millions of Palestinians, along with a right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the generally high birthrate among Palestinians would quickly render Jews an ethnic minority and eliminate their rights to self-determination.<ref name=reut2004/>

Israeli historian and politician [[Shlomo Ben-Ami]], who served as Foreign Minister of Israel, dismissed the one-state solution as "[[ivory tower]] nonsense" and said that it creates a "South Africa situation without a South Africa solution."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tarnopolsky |first=Noga |date=3 August 2020 |title=Peter Beinart ignores an inconvenient truth: Israelis and Palestinians haven't given up on a two-state solution |url=https://www.jta.org/2020/08/03/opinion/peter-beinart-ignores-an-inconvenient-truth-israelis-and-palestinians-havent-given-up-on-a-two-state-solution}}</ref>

In an interview with [[Jeffrey Goldberg]], [[Hussein Ibish]] claimed that it is not realistic for Israel to be compelled to accept a binational solution with full right of return for refugees through international pressure or sanctions. According to Ibish, if a one state solution was to happen, it would come as a result of the status quo continuing, and the result would be a protracted civil war, with each intifada more violent than the last, and the conflict growing more and more religious in nature. Ibish speculated that in such a scenario, it could even go beyond an ethno-national war between Israelis and Palestinians into a religious war between Jews and Muslims, with Israeli Jews ending up under siege and relying on their nuclear weapons for protection.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/11/hussein-ibish-on-the-fantasy-world-of-one-staters/29425/|title=Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of One-Staters|first=Jeffrey|last=Goldberg|website=[[The Atlantic]]|date=3 November 2009}}</ref>

====Academia====
[[New Historian]] [[Benny Morris]] has argued that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Jeffrey |date=2009-05-21 |title=No Common Ground |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/books/review/Goldberg-t.html |url-status=live |url-access=limited |access-date=2023-05-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220403123017/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/books/review/Goldberg-t.html |archive-date=3 April 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Morris argues any such state would be an authoritarian, fundamentalist state with a persecuted Jewish minority, citing the racism and persecution minorities face throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and writing that "Western liberals [...] refuse to recognize that peoples, for good historical, cultural, and social reasons are different and behave differently in similar or identical sets of circumstances." He notes the differences between Israeli Jewish society, which remains largely Westernized and secular, and Palestinian society, which according to Morris is increasingly Islamic and fundamentalist. He pointed to [[Hamas]]' 2007 takeover of Gaza, during which [[Fatah]] prisoners were shot in the knees and thrown off buildings, and the regular [[honor killing]]s of women that permeate Palestinian and Israeli-Arab society, as evidence that Palestinian Muslims have no respect for Western values. He thus claimed that "the mindset and basic values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of binational statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds."

According to Morris, the goal of a "secular democratic Palestine" was invented to appeal to Westerners, and while a few supporters of the one-state solution may honestly believe in such an outcome, the realities of Palestinian society mean that "the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for the goal of a Muslim Arab–dominated polity to replace Israel." Morris argued that should a binational state ever emerge, many Israeli Jews would likely emigrate to escape the "stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Arab world and its treatment of minority populations", with only those incapable of finding new host countries to resettle in and Ultra-Orthodox Jews remaining behind.<ref name=morris>Morris, Benny: ''One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict''</ref>

Some argue that Jews would face the threat of [[genocide]]. Writing on ''[[Arutz Sheva]]'', [[Steven Plaut]] referred to the one-state solution as the "[[Rwandan genocide|Rwanda]] Solution", and wrote that the implementation of a one-state solution in which a Palestinian majority would rule over a Jewish minority would eventually lead to a "new [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]]".<ref>{{cite web | first=Steven | last=Plaut | url=http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2614#.Ujd8qcaUQUg | title=One State Solution vs Two-State Solution? | publisher=[[Arutz Sheva]] | date=3 March 2008 | accessdate=2013-12-17}}</ref> Morris argued that while the Palestinians would have few moral inhibitions over the destruction of Israeli-Jewish society through mass murder or expulsion, fear of international intervention would probably stymie such an outcome.<ref name=morris/>

Some critics{{which|date=March 2022}}<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/issue/two-state-solution |title=A Two-State Solution &#124; Israel Policy Forum |access-date=18 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120228194607/http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/issue/two-state-solution |archive-date=28 February 2012}}</ref> argue that unification cannot happen without damaging or destroying Israel's democracy. The vast majority of Israeli Jews as well as Israeli [[Druze]], some Israeli [[Bedouin]], many Israeli Christian Arabs and even some non-Bedouin Israeli Muslim Arabs fear the consequences of amalgamation with the mostly Muslim Palestinian population in the occupied territories, which they perceive as more religious and conservative. (All Israeli Druze men and small numbers of Bedouin men serve in the [[Israel Defense Forces]] and there are sometimes rifts between these groups and Palestinians).<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/17/israel |work=The Guardian |location=London |title=Tales of Tel Aviv |first=Linda |last=Grant |date=17 March 2004 |access-date=5 May 2010}}</ref> {{Failed verification|date=September 2017}} One poll found that, in a future Palestinian state, 23% of Palestinians want civil law only, 35% want both Islamic and civil law, and 38% want Islamic law only.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pcrd-pal.org/opinion_polls.php?pid%3D5 |title=Palestinian Center for Research & Cultural Dialogue |access-date=4 January 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727165917/http://www.pcrd-pal.org/opinion_polls.php?pid=5 |archive-date=27 July 2011}}</ref> This negative view of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza prompts some critics to argue that the existing level of rights and equality for all Israeli citizens would be put in jeopardy with unification.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3329865,00.html |title=One-state solution a pipedream |website=Ynetnews |date=20 June 1995 |access-date=12 April 2016|last1=Hanania |first1=Ray }}</ref> Benny Morris echoes these claims, arguing that Palestinian Muslims, who would become the ruling majority in any such state, are deeply religious and do not have any tradition of democratic governance.

In response to the common argument given by proponents of the one state solution that Israel's settlements have become so entrenched in the West Bank that a Palestinian state is effectively impossible, scholars such as [[Norman Finkelstein]] and [[Noam Chomsky]] have countered that it is far more unrealistic to expect Israel to accept a one-state solution that would spell the end of Zionism than it is to expect it to dismantle some settlements. [[Nathan Thrall]] has argued that Israel could implement a unilateral withdrawal at any time of its choosing and that the facts on the ground suggest that a single state is a remote possibility, writing that:
{{Blockquote|Israelis and Palestinians are now farther from a single state than they have been at any time since the occupation began in 1967. Walls and fences separate Israel from Gaza and more than 90% of the West Bank. Palestinians have a quasi-state in the occupied territories, with its own parliament, courts, intelligence services and foreign ministry. Israelis no longer shop in Nablus and Gaza the way they did before the Oslo accords. Palestinians no longer travel freely to Tel Aviv. And the supposed reason that partition is often claimed to be impossible – the difficulty of a probable relocation of more than 150,000 settlers – is grossly overstated: in the 1990s, Israel absorbed several times as many Russian immigrants, many of them far more difficult to integrate than settlers, who already have Israeli jobs, fully formed networks of family support and a command of Hebrew.<ref>{{cite news|last=Thrall|first=Nathan|title=Israel-Palestine: the real reason there's still no peace|date=16 May 2017 |work=The Guardian|issn=0261-3077|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/16/the-real-reason-the-israel-palestine-peace-process-always-fails|access-date=22 December 2019}}</ref>}}

[[Shaul Arieli]] has likewise argued that the settlement enterprise has failed to create the appropriate conditions to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state or to implement the annexation of the West Bank. He has noted that the settlers comprise only 13.5% of the West Bank's population and occupy 4% of its land, and that the settlement enterprise has failed to build up a viable local economic infrastructure. He noted that only about 400 settler households were engaged in agriculture, with the amount of settler-owned farmland comprising only 1.5% of the West Bank. In addition, he wrote that there are only two significant industrial zones in the West Bank settlements, with the vast majority of workers there Palestinian, and that the vast majority of settlers live near the border, in areas that can be annexed by Israel with relative ease in territorial exchanges, while still allowing for the formation of a viable Palestinian state. According to Arieli, 62% of the settler workforce commutes over the Green Line into Israel proper for work while another 25% works in the heavily subsidized education system of the settlements, with only a small percent working in agriculture and industry. About half of the settlements have populations fewer than 1,000 and only 15 have populations greater than 5,000. According to Arieli, the settlement movement has failed to create facts on the ground precluding an Israeli withdrawal, and it is possible to implement a land exchange that would see about 80% of the settlers stay in place, necessitating the evacuation of only about 30,000 settler households, in order to establish a viable and contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank.<ref>{{cite news|title=Look at the figures: Israel's settlement enterprise has failed|newspaper=Haaretz|url=https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-settlement-enterprise-has-failed-1.5402018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/some-inconvenient-facts-for-one-state-advocates/|title = Some inconvenient facts for one-state advocates}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Arieli |first=Shaul |date=26 February 2018 |title=The Israeli Settlement Movement Is Failing |url=https://forward.com/community/395245/the-israeli-settlement-movement-is-failing/ |website=The Forward}}</ref>

This sentiment has been echoed by Shany Mor, who argued that in 2020, the geographical distribution of settlers in the West Bank had not materially changed since 1993, and that a two-state solution is actually more feasible now than it was in the past due to the disentanglement of the Israeli and Palestinian economies in the 1990s. According to Mor, nearly all the population growth in the settlements between 2005 and 2020 was concentrated in the Haredi settlements of [[Beitar Illit]] and [[Modi'in Illit]], due to their high birth rates.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mor |first=Shany |date=17 September 2020 |title=Peter Beinart's Grotesque Utopia |url=https://en.idi.org.il/articles/32533 |access-date=2023-05-21 |website=en.idi.org.il |language=he}}</ref>

====Journalists====
One major argument against the one-state solution is that it would endanger the safety of the Jewish minority, because it would require assimilation with what critics fear would be an extremely hostile Muslim ruling majority.<ref name=reut2004/> In particular, [[Jeffrey Goldberg]] points to a 2000 ''[[Haaretz]]'' interview with [[Edward Said]], whom he describes as "one of the intellectual fathers of one-statism". When asked whether he thought a Jewish minority would be treated fairly in a binational state, Said replied that "it worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don't know."<ref name=Goldberg/>

Imagining what might ensue with unification, some critics<ref>{{cite web |title=A Destructive "Solution" |work=Harvard Political Review |date=28 February 2012 |url=http://hpronline.org/harvard/a-destructive-solution/ |access-date=12 April 2016 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120303090836/http://hpronline.org/harvard/a-destructive-solution/ |archive-date=3 March 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> of the one-state model believe that rather than ending the Arab–Israeli conflict, it would result in large-scale ethnic violence and possibly civil war, pointing to violence during the British Mandate period, such as in [[1920 Nebi Musa riots|1920]], [[Jaffa riots|1921]], [[1929 Palestine riots|1929]], and [[1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine|1936–39]] as examples. In this view, violence between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is inevitable and can only be forestalled by partition. These critics also cite the 1937 [[Peel Commission]], which recommended partition as the only means of ending the conflict.<ref>{{cite news|title=Partition of Palestine|work=The Guardian|date=8 July 1937 |location=London |url= https://www.theguardian.com/israel/Story/0,,980135,00.html |access-date=5 May 2010}}</ref>{{original research inline|date=March 2022}} Critics also cite bi-national arrangements in [[Yugoslavia]], [[Lebanon]], [[Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnia]], [[Cyprus]], and [[Pakistan]], which failed and resulted in further internal conflicts. Similar criticisms appear in ''The Case for Peace''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dershowitz |first=Alan Morton |author-link=Alan Dershowitz |date=2006-04-01 |title=The case for peace: how the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved |journal=Choice Reviews Online |volume=43 |issue=8 |pages=43–4915–43-4915 |doi=10.5860/choice.43-4915 |doi-broken-date=1 February 2025 |issn=0009-4978}}</ref>

Left-wing Israeli journalist [[Amos Elon]] argued that while Israel's settlement policy was pushing things in the direction of a one-state solution, should it ever come to pass, "the end result is more likely to resemble [[Zimbabwe]] than post-apartheid South Africa".<ref>{{cite magazine |title= An Alternative Future: An Exchange by Amos Elon |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=4 December 2003 |last1=Bartov |first1=Omer |last2=Walzer |first2=Michael |last3=Foxman |first3=Abraham H. |last4=Judt |first4=Tony |last5=Elon |first5=Amos |url= http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/dec/04/an-alternative-future-an-exchange/?pagination=false|access-date=2016-04-12}}</ref> Echoing these sentiments, Palestinian-American journalist [[Ray Hanania]] wrote that the idea of a single state where Jews, Muslims, and Christians can live side by side is "fundamentally flawed." In addition to the fact that Israel would not support it, Hanania noted that the Arab and Muslim world don't practice it, writing "Exactly where do Jews and Christians live in the Islamic World today side-by-side with equality? We don't even live side-by-side with equality in the Palestinian Diaspora."<ref>{{Cite news |last= Hanania |first=Ray |title=One-state solution a pipedream |date= 19 November 2006 |website= Ynetnews |url= https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3329865,00.html}}</ref>

On the aftermath of any hypothetical implementation of a one-state solution, [[Gershom Gorenberg]] wrote: "Palestinians will demand the return of property lost in 1948 and perhaps the rebuilding of destroyed villages. Except for the drawing of borders, virtually every question that bedevils Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations will become a domestic problem setting the new political entity aflame.... Two nationalities who have desperately sought a political frame for cultural and social independence would wrestle over control of language, art, street names, and schools." Gorenberg wrote that in the best case, the new state would be paralyzed by endless arguments, and in the worst case, constant disagreements would erupt into violence.<ref name=Goldberg/>

Gorenberg wrote that in addition to many of the problems with the one-state solution described above, the hypothetical state would collapse economically, as the Israeli Jewish intelligentsia would in all likelihood emigrate, writing that "financing development in majority-Palestinian areas and bringing Palestinians into Israel's social welfare network would require Jews to pay higher taxes or receive fewer services. But the engine of the Israeli economy is high-tech, an entirely portable industry. Both individuals and companies will leave." As a result, the new binational state would be financially crippled.<ref name="Goldberg">{{Cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Jeffrey |date=2012-02-28 |title=Anti-Israel One-State Plan Gets Harvard Outlet: Jeffrey Goldberg |language=en |work=Bloomberg.com |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2012-02-28/anti-israel-one-state-fix-airs-at-harvard-commentary-by-jeffrey-goldberg |access-date=2023-05-21}}</ref>