The Two-State Delusion, by Padraig O’Malley

The obituary for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been written multiple times over the past two decades. From the moment the Oslo Accords were signed, observers have warned that the geographical basis for a two-state solution is being eroded by the construction of Israeli settlements, road networks, walls, buffer zones, electrified fences, and more. Yet Palestinian, Israeli, and other political leaders continue to affirm that a two-state solution is the only game in town.

At times rhetorical commitment to the two-state solution has slipped, as it did in the days preceding the March 2015 Israeli parliamentary elections, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a bid to prevent voters from abandoning his center-right Likud party for parties still further to the right, pledged that his government would not permit the creation of a Palestinian state. Yet since his reelection Netanyahu has returned to the rhetoric of a two-state solution, even as his government strengthens the settlement enterprise that renders such a solution unworkable.

In The Two-State Delusion, Padraig O’Malley, professor of peace and reconciliation at the University of Massa­chusetts, has penned a deeply skeptical study about the possibility of a two-state solution. O’Malley has extensive experience in the study of peace-building processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa and has now turned his attention to another purportedly intractable conflict.