‘Walking it back” is the diplomatic phrase for changing your mind in politics. After Donald Trump appeared to overturn decades of settled US policy on Palestine and Israel by declaring “I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like”, his ambassador to the United Nations “walked it back”. The United States, clarified Nikki Haley, still supports a two-state solution, but Mr Trump was “thinking out of the box”. That hasn’t stopped the most extreme elements in Israeli society from declaring that a two-state solution of a viable Palestinian state and an Israeli state is now dead.
The truth is it has been moribund for some time, but most who had been following the politics were reluctant to declare it dead because there was nothing to replace it with. Make no mistake, those who believe a one-state solution would be easy, favourable to Israel or could be agreed behind the backs of the Palestinians will be making a serious, indeed deadly, miscalculation.
The only people who welcome a one-state solution fall into two camps, at the extreme ends of Palestinian and Israeli politics. Palestinians who welcome a one-state solution do so because, if this new state were a democracy, it would, in time, be majority Christian and Muslim, with Jewish citizens a minority. On the hand, the extreme right in Israel welcome a one-state solution because, in their imagining, this new state would be Israel, with no democracy for Palestinians, who would be relegated to second-class citizens, as black South Africans were under apartheid.
So there are challenges either way. Moreover, there is an inertia in the international community in favour of the two-state solution – decades of diplomacy, resolutions and politics have followed that basic idea. In the Arab world, too, the idea of a Palestinian state is strong. The basic injustice of the dispossession of the Palestinians must be redressed. Those Israeli leaders who think a one-state solution would simply institutionalise the displacement and discrimination that exists are naive: the words matter. Palestinians, and in particular their leadership, have accepted the endless occupation because of the light at the end of the tunnel. Remove that light and, as in the past, a conflagration would take its place.
The US therefore needs to think carefully about its next moves. Israel’s right-wing leaders don’t care how much fuel they pour on the fire. America should be more careful.