An Israeli officer standing guard while Palestinian Muslims walk to attend Friday prayers, Jerusalem, February 2024
Ammar Awad / ReutersWe at Foreign Affairs have recently published a number of pieces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Gaza, the risk of regional escalation, and the viability of the two-state solution. To complement these articles, we decided to ask a broad pool of experts for their take. As with previous surveys, we approached dozens of authorities with specialized expertise relevant to the question at hand, together with leading generalists in the field. Participants were asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with a proposition and to rate their confidence level in their opinion. Their answers are below.
DEBATE STATEMENT
The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer viable.
Aaron David Miller
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Very confident if the three elements that have never been present align in any future negotiation: strong leaders who are...Read MoreAlia Brahimi
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council
It was always going to take a seismic event to break the impasse, and in particular, Israel’s strategic use of...Read MoreAluf Benn
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Editor in Chief of Haaretz
Although it is facing immense difficulties and challenges and suffering from wide popular disbelief in its viability, a two-state solution...Read MoreAsa Kasher
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor at Tel Aviv University; lead author of the Israeli Defense Forces Code of Ethics
Even if it seems presently politically impossible, it must go on serving as the moral guide of all parties concerned. ...Asad Ghanem
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Haifa
The option of a solution based on the division of the Palestinian territories into two states was never feasible. But...Read MoreAssaf Orion
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies; International Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Rather than considering this a binary choice (viable or not), one must assess the conditions to both attain and sustain...Read MoreAudrey Kurth Cronin
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology
The key variable is time. Obviously, a two-state solution is not viable while Israel and Hamas are in a bloody...Read MoreBruce Riedel
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings
The United States has the political power to make the two-state solution if it has the political will....Costanza Musu
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada
Tragically, the events of October 7 and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war have made it all the more evident that the...Read MoreDaniel Byman
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University; Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
All the long-term options for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute look unrealistic or undesirable. Although a two-state solution is difficult, it has...Read MoreDaniel Kurtzer
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel
There is no alternative. It may not be achievable now, but the parties will need to face up to this...Read MoreDerek Penslar
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University
The situation now is volatile, and its consequences could lead in any number of directions....Eugene Rogan
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford
The conflict in Gaza has made more Western governments call for Palestinian statehood than ever before, including the United Kingdom...Read MoreEdward Djerejian
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Senior Fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Belfer Center for International Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel
Land for peace is the basic principled position for a viable state of Israel living next to an independent Palestinian...Read MoreF. Gregory Gause III
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 2
Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University
Political trends in Israel and the Palestinian territories seem to be working against the two-state solution, and continuing Israeli settlement...Read MoreGhaith al-Omari
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Haidar Eid
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Professor at Al-Aqsa University
Israel shot the two-state solution in the head long before the ongoing genocide in Gaza by annexing Jerusalem, expanding the...Read MoreHilary Kalisman
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 3
Assistant Professor of History, Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine Studies in the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder
Ibrahim Fraihat
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Associate Professor in International Conflict Resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
What killed the two-state solution is not only the Israeli settlements that prevented the establishment of a viable Palestinian state...Read MoreIbrahim Shikaki
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College
James Jeffrey
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 3
Chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center
First, until the situation in Gaza is pacified, Israelis return to their homes in the north and south and again...Read MoreJean-Pierre Filiu
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po, Paris
There is no alternative to the two-state solution to avoid a spiral of unprecedented violence that could be even more...Read MoreJeffrey Feltman
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution
The October 7 massacre and Israel’s catastrophic response in Gaza have destroyed whatever residual support remained among Israelis and Palestinians...Read MoreJeremy Pressman
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Professor of Political Science and Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut
Even the parties that want a two-state solution disagree on important aspects. It is more like “two-state solutions.” The last...Read MoreJon Alterman
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
The solution will not be two Westphalian states but two states that each enjoy some degree of sovereignty and some...Read MoreJonathan Rynhold
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Professor and head of the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University
The two-state solution is not viable in the short term; however, it remains the only viable solution in the long...Read MoreJoost Hiltermann
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Program Director for Middle East & North Africa at International Crisis Group
I wish it were! It remains the only sensible and just long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Palestinian...Read MoreJoshua Krasna
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
There is no one-state solution: Israel will not disappear, Palestinians will not give up their desire for statehood, and the...Read MoreKenneth Pollack
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
The two-state solution remains the only pathway for Israel to retain both its democratic and Jewish character while offering Palestinians...Read MoreKhaled Elgindy
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute
Both the physical and political realities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory have foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated...Read MoreLeila Seurat
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies
The two-state solution has never been a solution per se but rather a narrative used to neutralize the conflict. This...Read MoreMairav Zonszein
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Senior Israel Analyst at the Crisis Group
The two-state solution as one possible resolution is still viable, inasmuch as the Israeli body politic is capable of realizing...Read MoreMartin Indyk
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; former U.S. Ambassador
The two-state solution is the only way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—all the other so-called solutions are just recipes for...Read MoreMartin Kramer
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 6
Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
It all depends on what is meant by “state,” what is meant by “solution,” and the timeline. It’s not an...Read MoreMarwan Muasher
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
If the two-state solution was almost impossible to achieve before October 7, it is even more so now. A strong majority...Read MoreMatt Duss
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Executive Vice President at the Center for International Policy
Focusing on the two-state solution has become a distraction, a way to avoid looking at the undemocratic and unequal one-state...Read MoreMichael Barnett
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University
Michael Koplow
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum
It is more difficult than ever to see how a two-state outcome emerges in the wake of Hamas’s October 7...Read MoreMichael Robbins
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Project Director at Arab Barometer, Princeton University
In the near term, it is virtually impossible to see the two-state solution being viable. Reacting to the horrors of...Read MoreMouin Rabbani
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Co-Editor of Jadaliyya
An Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries is a matter of political will, not scientific calculation of a presumed point...Read MoreNadia Hijab
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Co-Founder and Honorary President of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
The present Israeli government has made it clear that it wants a “pure” Jewish state and is killing as many...Read MoreNatan Sachs
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 6
Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
In the 1990s, a two-state solution was regarded as inevitable; now the reigning dogma is that it would require the...Read MoreNathan Brown
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University
Over two decades ago, the conviction of most people living in the deeply entrenched one-state reality dragged me into recognizing...Read MoreNathan Thrall
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 1
Author of “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama”
If I am to take this question literally, it is asking whether I think the two-state solution was once feasible...Read MoreNeri Zilber
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 3
Adviser at Israel Policy Forum; Adjunct Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
As is evident from my answers—that I believe the two-state solution is still viable and yet am fairly unsure of...Read MoreNeta Oren
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 6
Affiliate Faculty at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, the viability of the two-state solution appears diminished because of a...Read MoreNimrod Goren
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
President of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies; Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute
A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will best serve the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian national movements as...Read MoreOren Kessler
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 4
Author of “Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict”
Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. So, too, the two-state solution—a...Read MoreOrit Perlov
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies
Orni Petruschka
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Co-Founder of Blue White Future
There is a real opportunity opening up to begin the process leading to the only feasible solution. ...Pnina Sharvit Baruch
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 3
Senior Researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies
The two-state solution is not viable in the short run because of the total lack of trust between the sides....Read MoreRami Khoury
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the Middle East Investment Initiative
The current options are genocide or ethnic cleansing, continuation of Israeli military occupation, or two sovereign states living side by...Read MoreRex Brynen
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor at McGill University
A two-state solution is viable in a geographic sense, whether that involves land swaps, settlement evacuation, or even a diminished...Read MoreRobert Danin
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Principal at Georgetown Global Strategies; Former Senior State Department and National Security Council Middle East Specialist
The two-state solution has been on the table since at least 1947, if not prior, as the least bad option...Read MoreRobert Satloff
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Executive Director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Viability is solely and completely a function of leadership. With the right leadership, it is certainly possible....Samer Abdelnour
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh
Israel was established as a settler colonial supremacist state and has, since its founding, operated along these lines. Its entire...Read MoreSanam Vakil
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House
Sarah Leah Whitson
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8
Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now
The nonviability of the so-called two-state solution as envisioned by the Oslo process is the deliberate and intended outcome of...Read MoreSeth G. Jones
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 7
Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
A two-state solution should be a long-term goal to deal with the Palestinian situation. But it is unlikely in the...Read MoreShalom Lipner
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 4
Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council
“No longer viable” has a ring of finality that is difficult to endorse under prevailing circumstances, when multiple variables are...Read MoreShaul Bartal
NEUTRAL, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University
The Gaza Strip was, in practice, a de facto Palestinian state. Israel allowed a lot of money to be brought...Read MoreShibley Telhami
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland
What exists now in Israel and the Palestinian territories is a deeply unjust one-state reality. The war in Israel and...Read MoreShlomo Ben Ami
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Former Israeli Foreign Minister
The two-state solution was conceived as a formula of redemption for both the Palestinian and the Zionist projects before they...Read MoreShmuel Sandler
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Professor Emeritus at Bar-Ilan University
Given the demands of the Palestinian Authority for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of...Read MoreSimon Spungin
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 5
Former editor of Haaretz.com
“No longer” implies that it never will be relevant again. If the question asked whether the two-state solution is “currently...Read MoreSteven Cook
STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
Uriel Abulof
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 1
Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University’s School of Political Science, Government, and International Affairs; Visiting Professor at Cornell University
The two-state solution is a matter of will, not capacity, and is thus viable if Israelis and Palestinians muster the...Read MoreYossi Beilin
STRONGLY DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10
Former Israeli Minister of Justice
Israel needs a Palestinian state mainly because it needs an eastern border before it finds itself under the direct or...Read MoreZaha Hassan
AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9
Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
When asked this question in 2021, I agreed that the two-state solution is no longer viable mainly because I believed...Read MoreZeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 6
President of the International Peace Institute
There is a very narrow path toward its realization and a precise sequencing is needed, but it is still possible....
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