Proponents of a unified state from the Jordan Valley west to the Mediterranean Sea advocate a single state comprising all the territory of historic Palestine, encompasing Israel (inside the Green Line), Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with citizenship and equal rights in the combined entity for all inhabitants of all the differentiated jurtisdictions with that territory, without regard to ethnicity or religion. While some advocate this solution for ideological reasons, others argue from a more-pragmatic position, based to the reality on the ground.
Although the one-state solution is increasingly debated in academic circles, thast option has remained outside the acclaimed international "consensus” and United Nations position. (See Two-state solution below.) The two-state solution was most recently agreed upon in principle by the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the November 2007 Annapolis Conference[1] and remained the conceptual basis for negotiations proposed by the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama in 2011, but admitted losing faith in its feasibility by the time he left office.[2] Interest in a one-state solution is growing, however, as the two-state approach fails to accomplish a final agreement.[3]
[1] White House, "Joint Understanding Read by President Bush at Annapolis Conference,” 27 November 2007, at:
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071127.html; Carol Migdalovitz, "Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: The Annapolis Conference” (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 7 December 2007), at: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22768.pdf.
[2]Louis Nelson, "Obama warns the chance for a two-state solution may be slipping away,” Politico (18 Janiary 2017), at: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/obama-israel-palestine-two-state-solution-233789.
[3] See Ali Abu Nimeh, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli Palestinian Impasse (New York: Metropolitain Books, 2006); Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, transl. by Tal Haran, The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Cherine Hussein, The Re-Emergence of the Single State Solution in Palestine/Israel (New York: Routledge, 2015); Ian Lustick, Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Mazen Qumsiyyeh, Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle (London & Sterling VA: Pluto Press, 2004); Virginia Tilley, The One State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
