Obama and Kerry have set out a convincing scenario that, in the longer term, Israel will find itself shunned by the world. The Palestinian leadership will advance its cause at the UN, while conversely grassroots movements inside and outside Palestine will begin clamoring for a single state guaranteeing equality between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Israel's vehement and aggressive opposition on both fronts will only serve to damage its image -- and its relations with the US.
An unexpected voice backing the one-state solution emerged last week when Tareq Abbas, the Palestinian president's 48-year-old son, told the New York Times that a struggle for equal rights in a single state would be the "easier, peaceful way."
Bolstering Washington's argument that such pressures cannot be held in check for ever, a poll this month of US public opinion revealed a startling finding. Despite a US political climate committed to a two-state solution, nearly two-thirds of Americans back a single democratic state for Jews and Palestinians should a Palestinian state prove unfeasible. That view is shared by more than half of Israel's supporters in the US.
That would constitute a paradigm shift, a moment of reckoning that draws nearer by the day as the peace process again splutters into irrelevance.
A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
