EDITORIAL: One-state solution offers best way forward in the Middle East

On Thursday, UNLV hosted a forum featuring advocates for a two-state solution in Middle East. The event was sponsored by the local chapter of J Street, a seven-year-old political organization that seeks to influence the peace process.

A member of the local group told the Las Vegas Sun that the symposium was intended to expose Las Vegans to the two-state proposal, which would entail the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Given the group’s progressive pedigree, however, it’s worth considering whether J Street actually has the best-interests of the region’s only democracy at heart.

For one red flag, J Street embraced the Obama administration’s nuclear giveaway to Iran, which seeks to wipe Israel off the map.

In addition, Paul Miller writes in a 2014 piece in The Hill that “some of the most vehemently anti-Israel money is behind J Street” and that the group backs “elected officials and candidates who support U.S. taxpayers funding Hamas, contravening Israel’s basic right to defend herself.”

In addition, Mr. Miller notes, “On campus, J Street partners with the rabidly anti-Semitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group in the forefront of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

The two-state approach has for decades been the foundation for most plans to address the Middle East conflict. But it has borne precious little fruit. It is certainly fair to ask how such a proposal is truly realistic given the entire region’s current instability and the Palestinian refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

As The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer noted in 2015, many Palestinians don’t seen interested in a deal. On three separate occasions in the past 17 years, he writes, the Palestinian leadership has received “three astonishingly concessionary peace offers. Every one rejected.”

In February, Donald Trump astonished may observers when he broke long-standing U.S. precedent and hinted he could accept a one-state solution. That would involve a single nation with citizenship for the inhabitants of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The idea represents a welcome alternative to the teetering status quo. In a recent Huffington Post piece, Hastings law professor George Bisharat outlined some of the advantages: “no borders would have to be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided, and Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank — at least if desegregated — could remain where they are.”

Supporters of Israel should cast a skeptical eye on the “solutions” proffered by the ultra-leftist J Street. Mr. Trump’s inclination that a one-state solution may offer the best hope for peace in the region is a promising development.