Well, there are a number of reasons why you might choose to boycott country X and not country Y. One is an irrational hatred for country X. Another is the belief that a boycott stands a chance of working in the case of country X, but not country Y. I dare say there are a variety of motives – some good, some questionable, and some confused – among those who advocate boycotting Israel. The important question is whether a boycott is the right thing to do. Which means, as I have argued: does it have a chance of helping bring about peace? If doing something is right, it’s still right even if other people are doing it for reasons that are wrong.

Geras’s point gestures at a larger issue: the way in which Israeli human rights abuses come in for more criticism than those of other, worse countries. I agree that this is the case, and I think there are a number of reasons for it – some distinctly fishy, some not. But this is an argument for more criticism of other countries’ wrongdoing, not less criticism of Israel’s. And it has nothing to do with the question of whether Stephen Hawking should have attended the Israeli Presidential Conference.

If the aim was to hit Israel where it hurts, Stephen Hawking’s withdrawal from the Israeli Presidential Conference couldn’t have been better planned. Hawking had accepted an invitation to the gathering of world leaders and scholars in June, but announced yesterday he was dropping out in solidarity with Palestinian academics who have called for a boycott of Israel. Israel’s self-image as a full member of the community of nations rests to a large extent on its global prominence in science and technology. This move, by the world’s most famous scientist, punches a hole in that cherished idea, reminding Israel of its other identity: that of a semi-pariah state, synonymous with occupation and war.

So why, as a fervent supporter of Palestinian rights, can’t I bring myself to support Hawking’s decision? In a decade-and-a-half of visits to Israel/Palestine, I have seen at first-hand the effects of Israel’s cruel occupation. I have heard West Bank residents describe the despair caused by Israel’s system of closures, roadblocks and curfews, and seen the degrading conditions of refugee camps like Dheisheh and Jenin. I have stood alongside Palestinians protesting the loss of their lands to settlements and the ‘separation fence’. And, writing about the conflict, I have likened Israel to a junkie with a “deadly addiction” to Palestinian land.

Nor is my opposition to Hawking’s move based on the usual argument trotted out against the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Partisans of Israel often charge BDS with inconsistency, claiming it’s hypocritical to single out Israel and not other countries who abuse human rights. But this won’t wash. When it comes to moral acts, the question isn’t whether we are consistent but whether we have a chance of achieving some good. When activists led a boycott of South Africa during the apartheid years, they didn’t wait until their movement could boast a consistent platform on every conceivable issue. And the clear message they sent the South African regime – that its practices were intolerable in the modern world – helped bring about its downfall.

The problem with the BDS campaign is that the message it sends Israel is anything but clear – and, as a result, it risks being counterproductive. In his letter to the conference’s organisers, Hawking wrote about his concerns about “prospects for a peace settlement”, saying that “the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster”. But Israel’s supporters claim that the BDS movement has little to do with the occupation, peace, and government policy, and is instead intended to bring into question the Jewish state’s right to exist.

It’s true that Israel’s supporters throw the word ‘delegitimisation’ around to portray fair-minded criticism of Israel as invidious and sinister. But when it comes to BDS, the fact is that they have a point. The BDS movement doesn’t have a single leadership with stated goals, but most of the biggest groups within it make little secret of their preferred outcome to the conflict. Instead of a two-state solution, they support a single, Palestinian-majority state that would mean the end of Israel’s existence. Don’t take my word for it. Norman Finkelstein, the heroic pro-Palestinian author and activist, recently launched a blistering attack on the BDS movement, telling an interviewer: “[The Israelis] say ‘They’re not talking about rights. They want to destroy Israel.’ And in fact, I think they’re right. . . . There’s a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel.”

Stephen Hawking is a brave and principled man, and there’s no doubt his gesture was intended to send Israel a signal about the need for peace and an end to its oppression of Palestinians. But, in doing so, he has added his considerable weight to a movement whose aims are in many ways the opposite of his message of peace and reconciliation. It’s significant that the website of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, one of the biggest UK supporters of BDS, reproduced Hawking’s letter of withdrawal – but clipped the part which referred to a “peace settlement”.

But how important is all this? If moves like Hawking’s help Israel understand that its policies will not be tolerated by the rest of the world, does it matter if they were orchestrated by a medley of groups harbouring a fantastical goal that has no chance of being realised? The most important thing, surely, is to bring pressure on Israel to change course, and end the forty-six-year-old occupation.

But here’s the thing: whatever the intentions of figures like Hawking, what Israel hears from BDS is the voices questioning its right to exist. This plays into the narrative of its hard-right leaders, who tell their people: “The world will never accept us, and we must rely on our own strength to survive. That is why we must never compromise or show vulnerability.” It’s for this reason that Noam Chomsky – hardly a Zionist stooge – has said that a general boycott of Israel is “a gift to Israeli hardliners and their American supporters”.

Instead of boycotting Israel, we should boycott firms and institutions that operate in the Occupied Territories. That means shunning brands like Ahava, which manufactures its products in the West Bank settlement of Mitze Shalem. For academics, it means refusing to have dealings with Ariel University, located in one of Israel’s biggest settlements across the Green Line. And it means backing EU plans to clearly label settlement products – and then pressuring supermarkets to remove these goods from their shelves.

In this way, we can send Israel a clear and bold message. We can say: “We support your right to live in peace and security. But we reject the occupation of a single inch of Palestinian soil, the demolition of single Palestinian home, the spilling of a single drop of innocent blood.”

This isn’t about pulling our punches, or sending Israel a softer message. It’s about refusing to give its leaders a reason not to hear us.

If you found yourself skipping reports from Israel-Palestine this week to read about something less wearying (and who could blame you?), here’s a roundup: the fatal stabbing of an Israeli in the West Bank, a wave of settler reprisal attacks, the assassination of a militant in Gaza. The usual, in other words. For a part of the world that generates so much news, it often seems that Israel-Palestine offers little that is, well, new.

But buried beneath reports of the latest violence, something happened this week that’s worth your attention – because it offers the glimmer of a possibility of a different future for the Middle East. After talks in Washington on Monday, leaders from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco made an offer which Israel’s last prime minister Ehud Olmert said marked a ‘historic opportunity’.

What they told Israel on behalf of the 22-country Arab League, in effect, was this: if you are prepared to end the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and allow the Palestinians to build their own state, the Arab world will recognise your existence and establish normal relations with you. Israel will be able to swap ambassadors and trade with all its neighbours, becoming just another country in the Middle East. And we will consider the century-long Arab-Israeli conflict over. Done. Finished.

A similar proposal was turned down in 2002, because the Arab League had demanded Israel withdraw from all the territories it captured in 1967. This time, to show they were serious, the Arabs sweetened the deal, stating that a peace settlement could include modifications to the 1967 lines. This is significant, because it means Israel could keep hold of many of its West Bank settlements – considered illegal by the International Court of Justice – leaving the majority of Israeli settlers in their homes. The Palestinians would be compensated with land from the Israeli side of the border.

Blocked ears

Make no mistake about the magnitude of this offer. Israeli and Arab soldiers first met on the battlefield in 1948. Since then the Berlin Wall has been built and pulled down, and the Cold War has melted away. Protestants and Catholics have found a way to live alongside each other in Northern Ireland, as have a medley of ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia. Europe has gone from being a continent racked by bloodshed and chaos to one that squabbles peacefully over bank loans and farm subsidies. But in Israel-Palestine, the wounds never seem to heal; each year simply adds another scar tissue layer of resentment.

How has Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the Arab League’s overture? So far, he has refused to answer – even after all 52 members of Israel’s opposition called on him to do so. Netanyahu’s stance since he was elected prime minister in 2008 mirrors the Arabs’ stonewalling in the early decades of the conflict when, as one Israeli politician quipped, they never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace. The Arabs moderated their hostility towards Israel, quite simply, because over time they realised they could never defeat it on the battlefield, and that a Jewish state in the Middle East was a reality they must learn to live with.

I have no time for accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle that label one side as angels and the other as devils. But this much is clear: today, the key to ending the conflict is a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. There is a plan on the table that sets out how to realise this, and it is backed by the UN, the US, the EU and Israeli-Palestinian civil society.

Consensus

And now that the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority have endorsed it, there is just one group that rejects the global consensus on how to solve the issue: Israel’s government.

Partisans of Israel respond with a common argument: the Arabs don’t mean it when they talk about peace. They say that if the two sides signed a peace deal, the Palestinian people wouldn’t accept it. (Never mind that a majority still tell pollsters they would). They say any agreement would be scuppered by Hamas. (Never mind that it is the ongoing lack of agreement that fuels Hamas support). They say that giving up the West Bank would leave Israel vulnerable to attack. (Never mind that Martin van Creveld, the patriotic Israeli military expert, points out that the West Bank has almost no strategic value to his country). Some, particularly among below-the-line internet commenters, claim that the obstacle to peace is Islam. (Never mind that two Muslim countries – Egypt and Jordan – have signed durable peace treaties with Israel.)

There is a simple way for Israel to test if the Arabs are serious: sign up to their peace initiative and pledge to work tirelessly to make it a reality. The alternative is for Israelis and Palestinians to continue to accept the drip-drip of violence that is driving them and the world insane like Chinese water torture. At present Benjamin Netanyahu believes he can ignore peace and seek peace-and-quiet instead. But in attempting to do so, he will end up with neither.

From The Independent

Flying home from Israel this weekend, President Barack Obama was chased by a tailwind of praise for his performance while visiting the country. As an exercise in personal diplomacy, the trip was a huge success. For three days Israelis basked in the megawattage of the president’s charm. In his speech to Israeli students, he masterfully wove together Jewish history, the words of Martin Luther King, and his own early life. And when he called on Israel to recognise that Palestinians “have a right to be a free people in their own land”, the audience responded with raucous applause.

Commentators in the US and Israel have been competing to outdo each other’s plaudits. “ Seminal”, “historic” and “profound” were just a few of the epithets thrown around. One columnist at Haaretz newspaper said that, thanks to Obama’s visit, he would be giving up cynicism about the peace process for Passover.

The thinking behind Obama’s visit was that, in order to coax Israel towards peace talks, first it must be confident of wholehearted American support. According to this view, putting pressure on Israel will merely cause it to turn inwards. Only once it feels thoroughly coddled by the American superpower will it be prepared to take risks for peace.

You can understand this logic. Jewish history has written the fear of annihilation into Israel’s DNA, and no number of F-16s or secret nuclear warheads can change that. Traumatised by their past, many Israelis see Palestinians as a reincarnation of their historic tormenters, waiting to pounce at the slightest sign of vulnerability. To compromise or show weakness is to risk destruction.

But the simple fact is this: the greatest threat to Israel’s future comes not from Qassam rockets or Iran’s nuclear programme, but from its own policies. Israel can pursue land or peace, but not both. As Obama said in his speech: “Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realisation of an independent and viable Palestine.”

If Israel continues to hold on to the Occupied Territories, there will soon be a Jewish minority ruling over a disenfranchised Arab majority. At some point, the growth of illegal West Bank settlements will mean this situation cannot be reversed, and Israel will be forced to choose between being Jewish or democratic. When that day arrives, it will have succeeded where Hamas and Hizbollah have failed, and put an end to the Zionist dream once and for all.

For all his fine words on Israeli-Palestinian peace, Obama was surprisingly limp on this issue, calling the settlements ‘ counter-productive’ and declining to reiterate his demand for a building freeze before peace talks resume. This is like telling a drug addict that taking heroin is ‘counter-productive’. It is all very well for Obama to reassure Israelis he is on their side. But until he uses his leverage to force Israel to change its behaviour, he is merely enabling its deadly addiction to Palestinian land.

And make no mistake, Obama has plenty of leverage at his disposal – if he chooses to use it. True, the president may not be about to send in the 101 Airborne to liberate the Occupied Territories. But Israel, already isolated in the interational community, would have no choice but to change course without US financial, diplomatic and military underwriting. If Obama were serious about ending the occupation, he would follow ‘ Operation Desert Schmooze’ by reconsidering the various forms of backing America gives its ally: monetary aid, carte blanche support at the United Nations, and close coordination on trade, intelligence and military operations.

This would hardly be unprecedented. The modern peace process was kickstarted in 1991 when George H. W. Bush invited the Palestinians to a peace conference at Madrid – and ordered Israel to show up. Yitzakh Shamir, a right-wing Likud prime minister with rejectionism in his bones, did everything he could to drag his heels. But when Bush threatened to withhold US loan guarantees, Shamir quickly fell into line and packed his bags to attend the first ever Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Two years later, the Oslo Accords were signed.

Most Israelis still want peace: when Obama spoke soaringly of a Palestinian state, the audience rose to its feet and cheered. But it will take more than photo-ops and sweet talk to move Israel’s hard-nosed leaders. To do that, Obama needs to tell them that American patience is not limitless. He must say that, unless Israel takes real steps towards ending the occupation and creating a Palestinian state, it can no longer count on unconditional American support. “It’s important to be honest, especially with your friends,” said the president. But honesty is not enough. Real friends don’t just stand there smiling while the cameras flash and those they love slowly destroy themselves.

From The Independent

Soon after the founding of Israel in 1948, a lady newly arrived from Poland was standing outside a cinema in Haifa. When she saw a young soldier walking up to the ticket booth, she froze. ‘Haim?’ she said. After the two had stared at each other in disbelief for a few moments, Rivka Waxmann flung herself at the son she had never expected to see again. The two had been separated in Europe eight years earlier, and each assumed the other had died in the Holocaust.

Stories like this bring to life the reasons why Israel, which celebrates the 65 anniversary of its founding today, needed to come into existence. The great Amos Oz has called Israelis a people of “half-hysterical refugees” who are “haunted by dreadful nightmares”. When Israelis quip that Moses wandered in the desert for forty years to find the only spot in the Middle East without oil, the joke is both rueful and proud. Look at what we have achieved, it says, considering what we found here, and where we came from.

At 65, as you look back on battles lost and won, you can be forgiven for dwelling on your achievements with pride. The survivors of Russian pogroms, Nazi genocide and Arab expulsions went on to build a state that defeated its enemies time after time. Today Israel’s GDP per head is close to that of the UK, and it has more scientists and engineers as a proportion of its population than any other country. Its army is one of the best in the world; in Jerusalem’s Old City, tourists buy T-shirts with an image of an F-16 and the slogan: “Don’t worry, America. Israel is behind you.”

But as with people who experience early trauma, the instincts Israel developed in order to survive have often proved its undoing. Having had to fight for its life in its early days, it spawned a military which sees violence as the solution to every problem and has spread its tentacles into every corner of the state. Having arrived as landless immigrants scrabbling for every inch of earth, after 1967 Israelis built settlements they didn’t need on territories belonging to other peoples. And like a victim of abuse who has learnt never to trust anyone, Israel has too often been incapable of reaching out a hand in peace to its neighbours.

W. H. Auden wrote of “What all schoolchildren learn,” that “Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return”. Today it is the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation who long for a state in their ancient homeland, their identity forged in oppression. While Israel’s neighbours once spurned peace, today the 22 countries of the Arab Leage have offered it full normalisation if it ends the occupation, allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, says he wants to negotiate an end to the conflict and has spoken bravely of the compromises his people must make to bring this about. But Israel’s leaders are making peace harder to achieve by ploughing money into West Bank settlements, further enraging Palestinians and undermining moderate leaders.

Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as is shown by the scandal of Israeli doctors pressuring Ethiopian women into taking long-term contraceptive drugs.

For all its spectacular achievements, the Israel of 2013 is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal: to make for the Jews a country like any other. Instead Israel has become a state that flouts international law, scorns global condemnation and is increasingly mired in isolation. Israel was supposed to be a safe haven, but now watches its young emigrate to escape conflict and seek normalcy in the US and, in an irony of history, Europe.

At 65, it is hard for people to change their ways. But if Israel is to realise the dream of its founders and become a Jewish democratic state living in harmony with its neighbours, it has no choice but to unlearn the habits of a lifetime. Amid the noise of celebrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem today, an ominous question hangs in the air. It is that of Levi Eshkol, Israel’s third prime minister, who stood before his war-hungry generals in 1967 and asked: “Must we live forever by the sword?”

As if to mark Israeli Apartheid Week, which has been taking place at UK universities, Israel’s ministry of transport announced yesterday that Palestinians travelling to work in Israel would be required to board separate buses to those used by Jewish settlers. Search #apartheid on Twitter, and see how the announcement has turned into another PR gift from the Israeli government to pro-Palestinian campaigners.

Is Israel an apartheid state? Historical analogies should always be used with care, so the question bears some scrutiny. It’s worth noting that the apartheid charge isn’t a recent invention of pro-Palestinian activists. In fact it was first used in an Israeli cabinet meeting when the occupation of the West Bank was just a few weeks old. As the Israeli historian Tom Segev records, during a July 1967 discussion on the fate of the territories one minister said: ‘We can’t maintain this occupation and start settling Israelis on the land – people will accuse us of apartheid’.

That, of course, is precisely what happened. When Israelis began setting up communities on the newly conquered land, two separate legal and bureaucratic regimes sprang up. Jewish settlers enjoyed all the benefits of Israeli citizenship, while Palestinians came to be subject to separate laws, put on trial in separate courts, and governed by a separate bureaucracy overseen by a department of the Israeli military.

This dual standard grew more acute as the situation wore on and it became clear that the occupation wasn’t going to be temporary. When Palestinian rage erupted into the protests of the First Intifada, Israel ramped up measures to segregate settlers from their Palestinian neighbours. In time, the occupation turned into a multifaceted system designed to control nearly every aspect of Palestinians’ lives. Segregated bus lines are just the tip of an iceberg that includes segregated roads, unequal checkpoint regimes, and separate justice systems.

In an attempt to sugarcoat these policies, Israel’s apologists argue they aren’t comparable to South African apartheid because they’re rooted in security concerns rather than racial supremacism. This misses the point. Some Israelis are outright racists and some aren’t – the same could of course be said of Palestinians. But, as all colonial regimes learn, any attempt to maintain separate legal regimes for two peoples in one territory requires increasingly discriminatory ‘security’ measures to keep ‘order’.

But before we conclude that the charge of Israeli apartheid is an open and shut case, a crucial qualification is in order. Palestinians inside Israel’s legal, pre-1967 borders live under a very different regime from their brethren in the West Bank. Though they face all kinds of discrimination, they can vote, hold political office and move freely – none of which could be said of South African blacks under apartheid. In mixed cities like Haifa, Arabs and Jews rub shoulders in cafes, on public transport and in workplaces – again, a far cry from pre-1990 South Africa.

This doesn’t justify the very real discrimination faced by Palestinian Israelis. But it shows we should tread carefully when applying incendiary labels to complex political and social realities.

Those who try to make the ‘apartheid’ epithet stick to both pre-1967 Israel and the much harsher regime in the West Bank have a none-too-subtle political agenda. By eliding these different ground-level realities, they attempt to portray Israel’s very existence as illegitimate – insisting justice can only prevail as a result of an equal rights struggle similar to the one waged by Mandela and the ANC. Their desired outcome isn’t just an end to the occupation, but the creation of a single Israeli-Palestinian state in which Jews and Palestinians live harmoniously on the basis of one person, one vote.

This may be a pleasant exercise in wish fulfillment, but such a state would have about as much chance of surviving in this part of the world as a snowman in June. By trying to stretch ‘apartheid’ well beyond its original meaning, in the service of a goal supported by almost nobody outside a leftist fringe, we do a disservice to the specific struggles of Israeli and West Bank Palestinians.

“The question,” as Alice says to Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, “is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” Unless we are careful with language, we play into the hands of Israel’s  apologists, who can shrug off such charges as the ill-informed propaganda of people bent on its destruction. And in doing so, we let the perpetrators of a real apartheid regime in the West Bank off the hook.

On a visit to the place where at least 379 unarmed Indian demonstrators were killed by machine-gun fire, the prime minister called it a “deeply shameful event in British history”.

But in response to calls for a formal apology, he said: “We are dealing with something here that happened a good 40 years before I was born, and which Winston Churchill described as ‘ monstrous’ at the time. So I don’t think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things you can apologise for.”

Public figures of all kinds are increasingly fond of apologising for historical mistakes. In the 90s, both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair apologised for slavery. Blair has also apologised for the Irish potato famine. The Queen has apologised to the Maori of New Zealand for the theft of their land. The pope has apologised for the crusades. And the daughter of Sir John Betjeman has apologised to Slough for the opening couplet of her father’s poem about the town.

Such apologies are popular because they’re cheap: the events in question are so distant, or the circumstances in which they took place so different, that the issue of blame no longer arises. But in cases where the effects of the crime are still being felt, historical apologies come with a demand for atonement. This means, at the very least, a firm renunciation of past behaviour – or hard cash.

Into this second category fall Germany’s payments to Holocaust victims ( $70 billion since 1952, and counting), the $20,000 issued by the US government to each of the Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II, and the billions paid out by Swiss banks for hoarding the funds of Jews during the same period (even though the “stolen”  money turned out not to exist).

It’s no coincidence that all these cases originated in World War II. By signing a check for the survivors, we underwrite the fond notion that we have emerged from that catastrophe into a new age of democracy and international harmony. The German word for Holocaust reparations expresses this poignant hope: Wiedergutmachungsgeld, “money to make well again”.

The problem with apologising for Amritsar is that it would open a can of worms about Britain’s relationship to its past and the nature of colonialism. At the time of the massacre, Winston Churchill condemned it while calling it “an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation” in British imperial history. But those who take a less rosy view of colonialism point out that such incidents are an inescapable feature of any system that imposes foreign rule on an unwilling people.

An apology for the killings would require a recognition that they were not some kind of freakish anomaly in the story of the British Empire but an expression of its underlying principle: the threat of punishment, humiliation and even death for those who would not cooperate.

Perhaps when Britain has stopped believing in the myth of its faded imperial glory and come to terms with its reduced role in the world, a future prime minister will be able to offer that apology. And when India is no longer racked with conflict over the legacy of empire, it in turn will be able to accept the apology with grace. But of course, if that day ever arrives, it won’t matter anymore anyway.

I’m not sure there’s an awful lot to say about George Galloway’s astonishingly stupid decision to storm out of a debate at Oxford University when he discovered his opponent was an Israeli.

Not an Israeli government official, mind you. Not a spokesperson for the regime or a paid functionary of the occupation. Just a young man, called Eylon Aslan-Levy, with an Israeli passport and uncongenial views.

When challenged about his behaviour on Twitter, Galloway replied: ‘No recognition of Israel. No normalisation. Christ Church never informed us the debate would be with an Israeli. Simple.’

Galloway’s words echo the mantra of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Whether or not you agree with the aims or tactics of that campaign (and pro-Palestinian activists like Norman Finkelstein have criticised it heavily) it’s worth noting that BDS calls for boycotting ‘products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions’.

By personally extending the boycott to include anyone of Israeli nationality, Galloway has taken it to an extreme that is as baffling as it is nasty.

The irony is that when Galloway is criticised for travelling to Iraq in 1994 to salute Saddam’s Hussein’s ‘courage’, ‘strength’ and ‘indefatigability’, he claims, falsely, that he was addressing the Iraqi nation – and says his critics should be able to see the difference between the people and the regime.

It’s odd that Galloway is so keen on this distinction when praising a blood-stained dictator, but seems unable to make it in the case of a young student at a university debate.

But it long ago became clear that Galloway is prepared to discredit everything he claims to stand for in order to advance his one true cause: himself.

This one is from The Independent

Surprising as it may sound, William Hague is turning out to be the most vocally pro-Palestinian British foreign secretary of recent times. Speaking in Washington this week before a dinner for Hillary Clinton, Hague warned that as a result of Israeli West Bank settlement growth the two-state solution was “in danger of slipping away”.

There’s nothing new about such claims. In ‘ The End of the Peace Process’, the great Palestinian author Edward Said said his people’s dreams of statehood were being buried under a ton of Israeli settlement tarmac – in 1998. But as such prophecies become more common, there’s a danger they will become self-fulfilling, causing more and more people to give up on peace altogether.

So we need to say it loud and clear: the two-state solution isn’t dead. In fact, a deal to end the Israel-Palestine struggle is within reach – if only the two sides can will themselves to grasp it.

To be sure, this goes against the conventional wisdom. After all, the barely concealed purpose of Israel’s settlement programme is to cut the West Bank to ribbons, covering it with a mesh of homes and infrastructure no future government could dare erase.

But travel through the West Bank, and the startling fact is how far that vision is from being realised. Most settlements you see are remote towns of a few dozen families, clinging stubbornly to the land like cactus plants. The majority of settlers live in large urban blocks hugging the ‘ 1967 line’, which serve as suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for those wanting cheap homes.

A peace deal could see these areas absorbed into Israel, with the Palestinians compensated with land from across the border. A ‘ land swap’ of 5 per cent of the West Bank could allow three quarters of settlers to stay in their homes – leaving a relatively small number to decide whether to return to Israel or become law-abiding residents of Palestine.

Media clichés portray the Israel-Palestine conflict as some kind of fiendish puzzle. But in fact the two sides came agonisingly close to a deal at their last serious talks, which took place in 2008 between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. By the time they were cut short by Olmert’s political difficulties, the two leaders had agreed on how to divide up all but some 250km2 of the West Bank. To put this in perspective, that is less than 1 per cent of the land Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting over since near the beginning of the last century.

That’s not to underestimate the obstacles standing in the way of a deal. Any government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to show any enthusiasm for talks that could lead to Israel ending the occupation. Meanwhile the Palestinians are chronically divided: between the West Bank and Gaza, Fatah and Hamas, pragmatism and militancy. Opinion polls suggest both publics still support a deal, but increasingly doubt their leaders’ ability to deliver one.

Pessimism may be the order of the day, but a longer view shows how far Israelis and Palestinians have come towards compromise. Where once both sides hoped to close their eyes, click their heels and wake up in a world where the other had vanished, now a two-state outcome is recognised as the only one that could solve the conflict. When Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett recently proposed Israel abandon the search for peace and settle for peace-and-quiet instead, he was labelled an extremist – but such ideas were mainstream not long ago (Yitzakh Rabin, now remembered as a martyred peacemaker, entertained a similar plan). And the Palestinians, who just a few years ago were waging a bloody Intifada, increasingly recognise the futility of armed struggle – with Fatah disarmed and top figures in Hamas reportedly open to a two-state settlement.

What’s more, today there’s a rock-solid international consensus on how to solve the issue: two states with a border along the ‘1967 line’ (with agreed swaps), a shared capital in Jerusalem, and a deal to compensate Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Much of the detail has been filled in by previous talks, like those between Olmert and Abbas. The Palestinian Authority recognises Israel’s right to live in peace and security, and its president has been praised as a ‘ partner for peace’ by his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres. Moreover, the 22 countries of the Arab League – once Israel’s sworn enemies – have offered it full recognition in return for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Even the hardline Netanyahu was obliged, in 2011, to declare his support for the idea of Palestinian statehood. He may have done it through gritted teeth – but the fact he was required to do so at all shows how unacceptable his stance had become to the international community and, crucially, the Obama administration.

So why, with the Israeli right increasingly on the defensive, is the global left abandoning its support for a two-state solution and reverting to the Dorothy-in-Kansas school of conflict resolution? Many pro-Palestinian authors, and activists in groups such as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement , have stopped campaigning for Palestinian statehood. Instead, they advocate solving the conflict by creating one democratic, secular country for everyone, based on the principle of one person, one vote.

Appealing as this may sound, the ‘ one-state solution’ is like telling a couple in the midst of a messy breakup that, since they can’t agree on how to divide up the CD collection, the answer to their problems is to get married instead. Binational states rarely succeed in practice: just ask the Czechs and the Slovaks, who parted company after 75 years of coexistence; or the Flemish and Walloons, whose differences are causing rich, peaceable Belgium to split at the seams. The one-state solution is a stirring idea – but, even if anyone had a clue how to get there, it would last about as long in this part of the world as a snowman in June.

The two-state solution won’t right every wrong committed in the course of the conflict. It will create two flawed societies, not a utopia. It will be an imperfect, workable compromise between both peoples’ hopes and needs. That may disappoint leftist ‘radicals’ for whom compromise is a dirty word. But as the Israeli author Amos Oz has written, ‘the opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.’

Like an ancient aunt sitting on a pile of money, the two-state solution is surrounded by would-be mourners, eagerly polishing their obituaries. In these circumstances, the most radical – and necessary – stance we can take is one of hope.