The One State Reality: What Is Israel/Palestine?

An unusually matter-of-fact, sober, and dispassionate exploration of the political institutions and arrangements governing the territory once ruled by the British in their Palestine Mandate, this book is a model of scholarly engagement with challenging political issues. The editors argue that the continued embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse obscures realities on the ground and promotes increasingly irresponsible wishful thinking on the part of policymakers in the United States and Europe. They present a powerful case for fresh and frank analysis. The volume brings together uniformly strong essays by a variety of scholars and experts that explore the religious arguments for Jewish control of the entire territory, the historical dynamics of settler colonialism, the complex rationales for limited and partial citizenship regimes, the Palestinian Authority as a mechanism of indirect rule, and the changing perspectives of the American Jewish community, Arab governments, and U.S. policymakers. Insisting that there is nothing to be gained in continuing to foster the illusion that a two-state solution is possible, the authors urge a candid and clear-eyed acknowledgment of reality: the existence of one state, Israel, governing the entire territory through multiple, separate, and unequal legal and administrative regimes.