The president’s ‘one state’ comment may have been offhand, and the idea is a nonstarter in any case, but the two leaders did seem to agree in principle on a mechanism that would likely limit settlement activity.

One of the main goals of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s February 15 White House visit was to rejuvenate the U.S.-Israel relationship by putting aside the policy friction of the past several years. In that sense the summit was a success, with he and President Trump going out of their way to compliment each other. Yet the implications for U.S. policy on a core bilateral issue — the long-stalled peace process with the Palestinians — are less clear cut and merit a closer look.

“ONE STATE” IS NO FAVOR TO NETANYAHU

The moment that captured most of the post-summit headlines was Trump’s open acceptance of either a one-state or two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so long as both parties agree to it. This suggested that the U.S. government was walking back the two-state commitments it has embraced since 2001.

Trump’s statement may have been intended to help Netanyahu with domestic coalition politics at home, where right-wing factions have increasingly come to oppose the two-state model. Prior to the summit, for instance, Education Minister Naftali Bennett demanded that his rival Netanyahu avoid reaffirming support for that model. Yet Trump likely did Netanyahu no favors in mentioning a one-state scenario, since there is little chance the prime minister could ever accept such an outcome. Netanyahu knows that focusing on one state would only help Hamas and discredit the Palestinian Authority, while also making it more difficult for him to fend off Bennett’s repeated challenges to his authority. Therefore, he studiously avoided endorsing the one-state idea at his press conference with Trump, making clear that Israel does not want to annex 2.75 million West Bank Palestinians.

Even those to Netanyahu’s right understand the dangers of a one-state approach. In a little-noticed radio interview in Israel this week, Bennett ally Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked conceded that annexing the entire West Bank would lead to the “end of the Jewish state” — seemingly recognizing that the collapse of the Palestinian Authority would probably result in demands for “one person, one vote” by an Israeli Arab/Palestinian population that could nearly triple in size almost at once.

Read the full article in The Washington Institute.