Reckoning With Israel’s ‘One-State Reality’

About this episode

The episode discusses the shift from a two-state solution to the current one-state reality in Israel and Palestine.

For decades, most discussions of Israel and Palestine were framed around the eventual creation of a two-state solution. That effort has been dead for years. What has emerged in its place is what the political scientists Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami call the “one-state reality.” Their book on this — edited with Michael Barnett and Nathan Brown — came out before Oct. 7, 2023. Since Oct. 7, that reality has become further entrenched: There’s been a record pace of settlement construction in the West Bank. Israel now occupies more than half the territory of Gaza. And Israel’s push into Lebanon has displaced more than a million people. So what does it mean to reckon with Israel’s one-state reality — to see the facts on the ground rather than the frames of the past? Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, College Park. Marc Lynch is the director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University. Lynch is the author, most recently, of “America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region.” Mentioned: “Israel’s One-State Reality” by Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami The…

People in this episode

Guests: Shibley Telhami, Marc Lynch

Topics covered

• Israel
• Palestine
• one-state solution
• settlement construction
• Middle East politics

Keywords

• one-state reality
• Israel
• Palestine
• settlements
• Middle East

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Maryland, College Park, George Washington University

Books & works: America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region, Israel’s One-State Reality, The One State Reality, Israel’s Religiously Divided Society, Summary of a Year of Terror, Expulsion, and Annexation — 2025 in the Settlements, Justice for Some

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