For the international community, a serious effort to advance the state-building project may also require diminishing the amount of political capital spent on trying to advance a negotiated peace that is currently not in the cards. Arguably, too much emphasis has been placed on trying to make deals to get the parties to the table, at the expense of deals that could have been reached to achieve progress on the ground. Even if both are critical, some degree of prioritization between state-building and negotiations is inevitable. In light of both sides’ constraints, now may be the time to favor small, tangible steps that can be achieved over the pursuit of laudable but presently unattainable outcomes. As part of the process of revitalizing the achievable, Israel and the international community should continue to explore interim options. Until now, those who have floated such ideas (for example, a Palestinian state with provisional borders, coordinated unilateralism, and so on) have been rebuffed in large part by the argument that the Palestinian side will never agree. But insufficient pressure has been brought to bear on the Palestinian side to properly evaluate the dangers of this kneejerk opposition. Crafting interim measures that deal adequately with Israeli and Palestinian concerns will not be easy, but given the current alternatives, it has been given too little consideration.

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