COMMENTARY
by Evelyn Gordon
June 1, 2014

The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East
By Caroline B. Glick
Crown Forum, 352 pages

Devotees of the two-state solution will surely dismiss Caroline Glick’s The Israeli Solution out of hand. They shouldn’t. Whether or not one agrees with Glick’s conclusions, it’s hard to dispute her premise: The two-state solution has failed repeatedly for more than 80 years, starting with serial British partition plans in the 1930s. Each time, it has foundered on the same obstacle: Arab rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist within any borders. And there’s no reason to think this will change anytime soon. So anyone who truly considers the status quo unsustainable needs to explore alternative solutions.

Glick, a longtime columnist for the Jerusalem Post, spends almost half the book detailing the two-state solution’s repeated failures, in her trademark take-no-prisoners style. Then she presents her solution: Israel should apply Israeli law to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and grant its Palestinian inhabitants permanent residency, with the right to become citizens if they so desire.

Many of her arguments in support of this plan were once widely accepted both in Israel and the West: Judea and Samaria are the Jewish people’s religious and historical heartland. Israel has a better legal claim to them than anyone else does, Palestinians included. These areas are essential for defense against both terrorism and invasion. And, for those who care about Palestinian self-determination (which Glick doesn’t much), there’s also the fact that a Palestinian-majority state already exists in 80 percent of the original Palestine Mandate; it’s called Jordan. Since Israel has shamefully allowed these arguments to be forgotten during two decades of peace-processing, Glick’s recap is necessary and important, but not groundbreaking.

The crux of the book, therefore, is to refute the two main objections to a one-state solution: the demographic and the diplomatic……

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