Imagining Together a Shared,
One-State Reality

Featuring Peter Beinart & Yousef Munayyer
in conversation with Lara Friedman

Monday, July 13th
11:00am – 12:30 EDT

RSVP

The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and Jewish Currents magazine invite you to join us for a conversation (via Zoom) examining the proposition that the way forward for Israel-Palestine might well be a shared, one-state reality — why this is the case, what such a shift in thinking would mean to both Jewish and Palestinian Americans, and what such a future might look like for Israelis and Palestinians on the ground.

Background

In a piece published July 8 in the New York Times (as a follow up to a longer piece published on July 7 in Jewish Currents) Peter Beinart wrote:

“Defenders of Jewish–Palestinian separation argue that one equal state is even less realistic than two because it is even more anathema to the population that wields the most power: Israeli Jews. But that misses the point. Today, two states and one equal state are both unrealistic. The right question is not which vision is more fanciful at this moment, but which can generate a movement powerful enough to bring fundamental change.”

The arguments articulated by Peter in these two pieces break new ground in the thinking of Liberal Zionist American Jews, and have already provoked a serious debate. At the same time, well-developed thinking along similar lines has been articulated for years by Palestinian intellectual leaders, including, prominently, Yousef Munayyer, who in February 2017 published a piece in Time Magazine entitled, “Let’s Talk About a One-State Solution Where Israelis and Palestinians Are Equal,” in which he wrote:

“We have spent unending hours and pages debating the path of a line between countless settlements and villages. But the lines we must now explore moving forward are those that must be drawn in a political agreement, or a constitution, that balances the collective aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians with a full realization of each peoples’ human rights.”

More recently, in November/December 2019, Yousef published a piece in Foreign Affairs, entitled, “There Will Be a One-State Solution — But What Kind of State Will It Be?” in which he observed:

“the idea of two states for two peoples in the territory both occupy was always an illusion, and in recent years, reality has set in. The two-state solution is dead. And good riddance: it never offered a realistic path forward. The time has come for all interested parties to instead consider the only alternative with any chance of delivering lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state.”

Panelist Biographies

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributor to The Atlantic, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and a CNN Political Commentator.

Yousef Munayyer is a non-resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC (ACW). He writes on the Arab-Israeli conflict and is a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Some of his published articles can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Journal of Palestine Studies, Middle East Policy, and others. Dr. Munayyer holds a PhD in International Relations and Comparative Politics from the University of Maryland.

Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and a leading authority on Israel-Palestine issues and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. She is published and cited widely in the U.S. and international press, is a Contributing Writer at Jewish Currents, and is a non-resident fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP).