Some say the upcoming elections are mainly a lifeline to save Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal conviction. Others believe that on April 9, Israel’s citizens will choose between perpetuating the rule of a right-wing, clerical government and supplanting it with a centrist, liberal one. President Donald Trump’s much-touted “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians, which was supposed to prioritize resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, will instead merit a footnote in the annals of the 2019 election campaign, at most. Jewish politicians who roll around the word “peace” on their tongue, or mutter the letters o-c-c-u-p-a-t-i-o-n, are considered weird, at best, and dyed-in-the-wool leftists, at worst.
Internal Palestinian struggles are also contributing their share to the growing doubt by Israelis and Palestinians of the two-state blueprint. Calls for a unilateral annexation of the West Bank by the Israeli side and for a one-state solution between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River on the Palestinian side are filling the diplomatic vacuum. The result is identical: death, violence, suffering, theft and despair. But contrary to prevailing public and political discourse, such a fate is not predestined. There is a way out of it.