A Jewish settler walks near temporary homes in the unauthorized Jewish outpost of Migron near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Reuters
A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still possible. As part of my debate on this question with Robert Wright, who says "it's too late" as "there are just too many settlements," I offered some proposals on how to include the vast majority of settlers within a new Israeli border that would still allow for a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Wright was not convinced, arguing that there are practical and political barriers to implementing those proposals. I still think he's wrong, and here's why.
Wright's practical argument is that annexing 75 percent of the settlers would likely still leave over 100,000 settlers outside of Israel's new border, that their "uprooting" is not a "readily doable project," and thus the ideas for a two-state solution are not viable.
It's true that getting the 100,000-plus Israelis out of the West Bank would likely be the most practically and politically challenging element of an agreement to implement -- probably even more difficult than the inevitable compromises on Jerusalem. But it doesn't necessarily render a two-state solution impossible.
First of all, the remaining settlers will not all need to be "uprooted" or "extracted," as Wright writes. The majority of settlers are motivated by economic or quality-of-life concerns, since Israel subsidizes housing and amenities in the settlements, and could likely be convinced to relocate voluntarily with economic incentives. Though most of these "pragmatic" settlers are located in settlements that will likely be included within Israel's new borders (and thus will not need to be incentivized to move), many live in these outlying settlements as well.
For example, the settlement of Emmanuel, which will likely fall outside of Israel's new borders, is populated mostly by non-Zionist or anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox residents who live in the settlements strictly for practical reasons. As a city councilor from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party told the Oxford Research Group: READ MORE
