In recent weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated his rejections to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, stating:

I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all territory west of Jordan, and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.

Although Netanyahu has never been in favor of the two-state solution, it has enjoyed significant support for decades from governments around the world, such as USA, United Kingdom, european nations, Australia, Canada and Egypt. However, she now seems to be further away than ever, to the point that some proclaim her “dead”.

But what Is it really the two-state solution and why do so many consider it the only solution to the conflict?

What is the two-state solution?

The two-state solution refers to a plan to create a Palestinian state separate from the State of Israel. The goal is to address Palestinian demands for national self-determination without undermining Israel’s sovereignty.

The first attempt to create separate states It occurred before Israel’s independence in 1948. The previous year, the United Nations approved the Resolution 181 which outlined a partition plan that would divide Mandate Palestine (under British control) into separate Jewish and Arab states.

The borders proposed by the UN never materialized. Shortly after Israel declared its independence, Syria, Jordan and Egypt invaded, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. More than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced of the new State of Israel, fleeing to the West Bank, Gaza and the surrounding Arab States.

In recent decades, there have been many different opinions about the form a Palestinian state should take. Many considered the 1949 “green line” to be the most realistic border for the respective states.. This line was drawn during the armistice agreements between Israel and its neighbors following the 1948 war and is the current border between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. However, after the 1967 Six Day WarIsrael captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza, along with East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Most current debates concern the creation of two states along “the pre-1967 borders”. This would mean that the new Palestinian state would be made up of the West Bank, before the Israeli settlements, and Gaza. How Jerusalem would be divided up, if at all, has been a major point of contention in this plan.

Why is statehood so important?

The type of statehood referred to in the two-state solution, known as state sovereignty In international politics, it is the authority given to the government of a nation within and over its borders.

State sovereignty was formalized through the League of Nations (forerunner of the UN) and gives governments full control to administer laws within their borders, allows them to maintain relations with other states in formal bodies, and protects them from invasion by other states under international law.

This is something that many of us take for granted. The vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants live or are legally under the jurisdiction of a sovereign State.

The State of Israel was formally established in 1948 through the political project of Zionism: the movement to establish a Jewish homeland. The goal was to create a sovereign state – with borders, a government and an army – that would give the Jewish people a political voice and a place free of anti-Semitic violence.

But it was not until other countries established diplomatic ties with Israel, added to its entry into the UN in 1949when he reached a state sovereignty similar to that of other countries. More than 160 members of the UN currently recognize Israel; those that do not include Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Since the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, More than 5 million Palestinians who are not citizens of another nation are stateless. The West Bank and Gaza Strip remain in institutional limbo, as semi-autonomous enclaves under the ultimate control of Israel.

Although 139 members of the UN recognize a State of Palestine, The governing bodies of the West Bank and Gaza (the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, respectively) have no control over their own security or borders.

Therefore, the self-determination of the Palestinians through the creation of a sovereign Stateo has been the cornerstone of Palestinian political action for decades.

The closest both sides came: the Oslo Accords

For a time, in the early 1990s, significant progress was made towards a two-state solution. The negotiations began largely as a result of the Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza. Starting in 1987, they became known as the First Intifada.

In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafatmet in Oslo and signed the first of two agreements called the Oslo Accords. At that time, it was not considered a meeting between equals. Rabin was the head of a sovereign state and Arafat was the leader of an organization that had been designated a terrorist group by the United States.

But the leaders They managed to formalize an agreement, after important concessions by both sides, which laid the foundations for the creation of an independent Palestinian State. Although the agreement did not expressly mention the 1967 borders, it did refer to “an agreement based on the UN Security Council Resolution 242” of 1967, which demanded the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces “from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Arafat, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres later received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1995 the Oslo II Agreement was signed.which detailed the subdivision of the administrative zones of the occupied territories. The West Bank, in particular, was divided into parcels controlled by Israel, the Palestinian Authority or a joint operation: the first step towards handing over land in the occupied territories to the Palestinian Authority.

But just six weeks later, Rabin was shot dead by a Jewish nationalist aggrieved by the concessions made by Israel.

Negotiations between both sides slowed down and political will began to sour. And over the next few decades, the two-state solution has only become more elusive for a variety of reasons, including:

• He rise of conservative governments in Israel and the lack of effective political pressure from the United States.

• The every time diminished political influence of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and the rise of Hamas in Gaza, which caused a political division between the two Palestinian territories.

• The Hamas threats annihilate Israel and its refusal to recognize the Israeli state as legitimate.

• He continued growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, that has turned the territory into an ever-shrinking series of small enclaves connected by military checkpoints

• The declining support for the model both among the Israelis as among the Palestinians.

• Violence continued politics on both sides.

And, of course, there is Netanyahu: no individual has done more to undermine the two-state solution than the current Israeli leader and his party. In 2010, a leaked recording from 2001 in which Netanyahu boasted of having “put an end to de facto to the Oslo Accords.”

What alternatives are there?

There are not many alternatives and all raise important problems.

Some now advocate ato a “one-state solution,” in which Israeli citizenship would be granted to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to create a state democratic and ethnically pluralistic.

Although Arabs already make up about 20% of Israel’s current population, A one-state solution would not be politically viable.. According to Zionist ideology, Israel must always remain a Jewish majority state and granting Palestinians citizenship in the occupied territories would undermine it.

Another type of one-state solution is not viable for a different reason. The most far-right ministers in the Israeli parliament they have defended expand full sovereign control over the West Bank and Gaza and encourage massive Jewish settlements in these areas. Such action would draw the ire of the international community and human rights organizations and would be considered equivalent to ethnic cleansing.

The other option is the status quo. Although the Hamas attack of October 7 and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza have shown us that This is not the optimal solution either.

Andrew ThomasLecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University

This article was originally published in The Conversation. read the original.