The White House Path to Mideast Peace Travels Through a Single State

For more than a century, the quest to settle the dispute between Jews and Arabs in the Levant has led to one dead end after another. Mutual hostility between Israelis and Palestinians has defied the various approached undertaken by peace process upon peace process to foster a firm settlement. Those proposals, including plans put forth by a succession of White House administrations, have ended up the ash heap of history, a destination that the plan currently governing Israeli-Palestinian relations, the 1993 Oslo Accords, appears to be headed. For decades, most peace settlements have envisioned a land-for-peace deal framework: Israel would trade away captured territory to its Arab neighbors in exchange for peace treaties.  But while that worked most famously with Egypt in 1979, the formula has foundered when it comes to the immediate issue of the Palestinians. Divided Palestinian politics and increasingly disinterested Israeli governments have steadily undermined the popularity of...