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Palestinian Support for Two-State Solution Seen Declining

(Strategic Assessment-Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Col. (ret.) Michael Milstein and Avi Issacharoff - Among the Palestinians in recent years there has been growing interest in the idea of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is in part linked to the growing connection between Palestinians in the West Bank and the Arab sector in Israel. It is also related to the collective sense that the Palestinian national movement is currently at an all-time low, with growing alienation between the public and the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza, the lack of public belief in their ability to achieve the goal of independence, and the sidelining of the Palestinian issue from the focus of the regional and international agenda. Consequently, there is a growing argument in the Palestinian discourse that all other strategies for realizing national objectives have been tried and failed. Moreover, the growing support for the idea of one state is fed by internal trends. Above all, there is the collective desire to retain a relatively stable standard of living in the West Bank, together with a widespread trend toward de-ideologization and depoliticization, reflecting exhaustion after many years of violent conflict driven by revolutionary fighting slogans, which ultimately failed to achieve any Palestinian national objectives. The lessons from the severe decline that engulfed Arab societies in the region following the Arab Spring revolutions has led to increased fear of sharing this fate. In addition, most of the younger Palestinian generation are concerned with personal fulfillment and development, and harbor suspicion and even alienation toward the sources of authority around them, including the Palestinian leadership. Col. (ret.) Michael Milstein is a former advisor on Palestinian affairs to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and former head of the Palestinian desk in the IDF Intelligence Research Division. Avi Issacharoff is a journalist specializing in Palestinian affairs who writes for the Times of Israel.
2019-01-31 00:00:00
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