If the Two-State Solution Cannot Survive, What Comes After Israel and Palestine?

There is a growing argument on social media, particularly among younger people who have become deeply disillusioned with the traditional Israel-Palestine peace process, that the two-state solution is dead and that Israel itself therefore needs to be dismantled. The argument is usually presented in deliberately provocative language: Israel is described as an expansionist ethno-religious state that has repeatedly expanded into territory claimed by Palestinians, making the creation of a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state increasingly impossible. Therefore, the argument goes, the existing political structure has to disappear, and the territory must be redesigned into an entirely different political arrangement.

It is tempting to dismiss this as another radical TikTok argument. That would be a mistake. The language can certainly be inflammatory, and the phrase "Israel must be destroyed" carries an enormous historical and human meaning that cannot simply be waved away. But underneath the slogan is a serious political question that deserves to be confronted honestly: what happens when the political solution that the international community has promoted for decades becomes increasingly difficult to implement?

The two-state solution is not some fringe idea invented by social media activists. It has been the dominant international diplomatic framework for resolving the conflict for decades. The United Nations continues to support the creation of two independent and sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, living alongside each other within secure and recognised borders. As recently as 22 September 2026, the UN Secretary-General reaffirmed that position while simultaneously warning that accelerating Israeli settlement activity is undermining the territorial viability of a future Palestinian state.

This is where the argument becomes uncomfortable for supporters of the existing system because the international community continues to say "two states" while the geography necessary for two viable states is becoming increasingly difficult to construct.

The United Nations reported in June 2026 that Israeli authorities had advanced or approved 4,750 housing units in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the reporting period. The report also said that Israel's Cabinet had approved 34 settlements across Area C, including new settlements and the regularisation of existing outposts. The UN Secretary-General described the continued expansion as a major obstacle to the two-state solution.

The European Union's own assessment of Israeli settlement activity reached a similar conclusion. Its 2025 report, published in July 2026, said Israel had accelerated its settlement project, with 54 new official settlements approved in the West Bank during 2025 and 86 new outposts established. The EU said these developments were deepening territorial transformation and endangering the prospects of a two-state solution.

This creates an extraordinary political contradiction. The international community keeps telling Palestinians that their future lies in an independent state. At the same time, the physical territory in which that state would have to exist is being progressively fragmented by settlements, roads, administrative measures and other forms of territorial control.

Eventually, the question stops being whether people "believe" in the two-state solution. The question becomes whether there will still be a geographical reality in which it can be implemented. That is the intellectual opening through which the abolitionist argument enters.

Its proponents essentially say that if two sovereign states cannot coexist because one side possesses vastly greater military and territorial power and continues expanding its control over disputed or occupied territory, then perhaps the problem is not simply the policies of one government. Perhaps the political architecture itself is incapable of producing equality.

From there, some advocate a single democratic state in which Israelis and Palestinians possess equal political rights. Others advocate a federation or confederation. Others imagine two genuinely separate sovereign entities with clearer borders. And some use much more extreme language about the destruction of Israel itself.

These proposals should not be treated as interchangeable. There is a profound moral and political difference between saying that a state should cease to exist in its current constitutional form and saying that the people living there should be expelled, killed or otherwise physically removed. The first is a question of political organisation. The second is a question of human destruction. That distinction should never be blurred.

States have been dissolved, federated, partitioned and constitutionally redesigned throughout history. The Soviet Union disappeared without its constituent peoples disappearing. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist and became two states. South Africa dismantled apartheid and fundamentally redesigned its political system without abolishing the existence of South Africans. Political structures can change dramatically without requiring the elimination of the populations living within them.

So when somebody says, "Israel needs to be destroyed," the responsible question is not simply whether the statement sounds frightening. The responsible question is: destroyed into what?

If the answer is the expulsion or extermination of Israeli Jews, there is no legitimate political solution there.

If the answer is a constitutional transformation in which Jews and Palestinians possess equal rights within one political entity, that is an entirely different proposition, even though it would be extraordinarily difficult to implement.

If the answer is a genuine partition into two sovereign states, then we have returned to the two-state framework that the international community has spent decades attempting to achieve.

And this is precisely why the present debate cannot be reduced to slogans.

Israelis have legitimate security concerns. The Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 demonstrated that Israeli civilians can face horrific violence from armed groups, and any political settlement that ignores Israeli security will not be durable. European governments reaffirmed this point even in their most recent statements supporting Palestinian statehood and criticising settlement expansion.

Palestinians, meanwhile, have legitimate claims to self-determination, political equality, territorial integrity and freedom from occupation. The United Nations continues to state that settlement expansion is undermining those objectives and threatening the viability of an independent Palestinian state. The difficulty is that these two realities are increasingly being treated as if only one can exist. They cannot, and any serious political settlement must account for both.

The real failure of international diplomacy may therefore be that it has repeatedly treated the two-state solution as a slogan rather than confronting the structural conditions required to make it possible. Saying "two states" is easy. Creating contiguous territory, viable borders, security arrangements, political institutions, economic viability and mutual recognition is considerably harder, and if those conditions continue to disappear, eventually people will start proposing alternatives.

That is exactly what is happening. The rise of the "Israel must be destroyed" argument should therefore not simply be interpreted as evidence of rising extremism as it is also evidence of deepening frustration with a political framework that many people increasingly believe has failed to produce its promised outcome.

That does not make every proposed alternative wise.

It does not make every accusation against Israel accurate. It does not justify attacks on Israeli civilians. It does not justify antisemitism, and it certainly does not justify the physical destruction of an entire population, but neither should those principles be used to avoid the underlying political question. If the international community insists that Israelis and Palestinians deserve security, freedom and self-determination, then it has to confront the reality on the ground rather than endlessly repeating diplomatic formulas.

Because eventually, people will stop asking whether the two-state solution is desirable. They will start asking whether it is physically possible, and if the answer becomes no, the world will have to confront the question it has spent decades avoiding: If two states cannot exist, what political system can give two peoples equal security, equal dignity and equal political rights without requiring either population to disappear?

That is the debate worth having. Not whether one people deserves to exist. Not whether another people deserves to disappear, but whether the political structures created by history are capable of producing a future in which both peoples can exist freely and securely, because if the answer is no, eventually the demand will not simply be for a different peace agreement. It will be for a different political order.