With tensions high in the Middle East, and unclear solutions to these problems, I will provide my opinion on the two-state solution and how, honestly, it will never happen. This topic has a very long history, starting as early as the 1920s.

Though accurately describing the political climate of the country is difficult at the moment, I will try to explain briefly. There is currently an election being held for a new Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister is Benjamin Netanyahu and he has been since 2009. The election is quite a big deal because it’s having Netanyahu face off against a government that consists of his greatest competition yet, this is the closest election for the current minister that there has ever been. 

His opponent is Benny Gantz a former military chief and the leader of the Blue and White party, which is generally a centrist group, unlike Netanyahu who is considered to be quite conservative. There seems to be still a chance for Gantz to lose, but many polls are showing that he is pulling ahead. 

So why is Gantz pulling ahead and what is going wrong for Netanyahu? 

In abbreviation, he is just leading the country to the far right and isn’t making enough change for the average person. In falling ratings, he began to panic and made a big mistake. He said he would entirely annex the West Bank of Palestine, which he thought would bring in his right supporters closer, but unfortunately for him it caused most of the Muslim population to support Gantz. It is all a stalemate at this point but it does seem that Gantz and his will take the lead.

What will be the fate of Palestine as a country and what should it be? I believe the two-state solution for these countries in its current state is just not practical and would take an enormous effort to carry out. 

The reason is quite simple. In the past, Palestine has attacked Israel many times and every time the Israelis have won. Through this process they have accumulated a large amount of land, mainly from the West Bank, and have started moving into Palestinian land. 

The people who are doing this are rightly named settlers and in some areas of the West Bank, the normal residents have been kicked out of their homes because of violence to the settlers. Why is it important to know about the settlers? Critically, the two-state solution is based on the premise that Israel and Palestine govern themselves separately. 

With both Israeli police and thousands of Israeli citizens in the West Bank, it just cannot be accomplished.

Now, what should now happen to Palestine? 

It is complicated, to say the least there are many different things you could do, but looking at the fact that complete sovereignty is not an option, what about a semi-sovereign solution? In that scenario, they can govern parts of their country but Israel will still lead the way. 

Sadly, this has been tried in the past and mostly failed because people on both sides disagreed with the decision. On Israel’s many far-right citizens believed that giving any power to Palestine was going to be the end of Israel and people believed that the Prime Minister was a nazi for this. He was later killed because of it. 

Palestine’s side of the spectrum had a large militant force through Hamas who believed no Jews should be in the holy land and had started a very large amount of suicide bombings against that two-state solution progress.

One of the final options would be to annex the West Bank and leave the Gaza Strip to its own devices. This would end most conflicts in the area because it would please conservative Israelis while also pleasing some Palestinians because they can either live under Israel or if they are too patriotic to live under Israeli command, they could move to Gaza. 

However, Gaza is currently completely economically blockaded by Israel in their effort to “starve out” the terrorist population in the area and there is no indication that will change soon. Of course, no solution can satisfy everyone, but this will let any current Palestinian now become a resident of Israel, which is just a better country in every way. I believe this needs to be done or there will just be more and more violence in the area between both parties and something needs to be done.