December 15, 2023 - 3:15pm
Famed foreign policy realist John Mearsheimer has said that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is no longer viable.
In a new interview with UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, the University of Chicago professor argued that the window for a peaceful co-existence between an Israeli and Palestinian state had closed. Laying blame with the Jewish state, Mearsheimer claimed that the country sought to create a “greater Israel” that would encompass the West Bank and Gaza.
Mearsheimer, who recently wrote in his Substack that Israel’s actions in Gaza were crimes against humanity, said that Israel hasn’t been interested in a two-state solution since Camp David in 2000. But since the attacks on 7 October, relations between the two sides had become “poisoned”.
“I don’t see any viable solution, because in theory, there is only one viable solution, which is to give the Palestinians a state of their own. This crisis or this conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians can only be solved politically. It can’t be solved with military force. The only political solution that works, theoretically, is a two-state solution. But that train has left the station,” he said.
Asked what he proposed instead, Mearsheimer offered a grim response: “I have no solution,” he said. “I think what you’re going to end up with is more of the same, which is a greater Israel that is an apartheid state”.
Full interview out on UnHerd tomorrow.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeBut since the attacks on 7 October, relations between the two sides had become “poisoned”.
That’s so weird. I wonder why. Probably Israel’s fault.
I look at geopolitics through a case by case basis. Other than the celebrating barbarism thing going on with Hamas, my big problem with them is they have over half a century of making bad military and political choices and then whining that everything is “unfair” because of the consequences of those choices. Israel does shady and questionable things all the time but they rarely act in a stupid manner (security screwups lately not withstanding). Treating Israel as the only one with agency in this is just an excuse to avoiding addressing the Palestinian’s self destructive behavior.
Hamas are not noted for their commitment to a two state solution. either. Funny how these foreign policy “realists” take deeply ideological positions when it suits them. When Russia invades Ukraine it was because they were provoked, and they should be given what they demand, with Ukrainian independence disregarded. When Israel invaded Gaza, it is because they are just evil racists, and an independent Palestinian state is essential.
You can take it easier if you consider that Mearsheimer is a shit.
Look, if Mearsheimer is a piece of shit (and he is, no matter how hard UnHerd tries to make him out to be an “diversive” thinker!), he should say what he said, in both cases.
Goodness the comments section on Unherd is very one-sided.
If it’s anti-barbarian, that’s a good thing.
Wow! He gets very defensive! Thank-you for pointing out his inconsistency by bringing up Russia and Ukraine, Freddie. Russia invades and slaughters countless Ukrainians because of a potential threat some years in the future and calls it a *special military operation*. That’s understandable! Hamas (and many Gaza civilians!) invade Israel, slaughter over a thousand Israelis and loot their homes. Israel goes to war and openly declares it. That’s a crime. Such is his *realist* logic.
This guy has no credibility.
Every time the Palestinians have been offered a two state solution they have rejected it.
it’s the Palestinians who want to wipe out Israel and rule from the river to the sea.
No! The Palestinians do not want to remove all Jews from Palestine – only the racist Apartheid genocidal Zionists. Any Jewish person who sees Palestinians as equal human beings would be most welcome to stay in Palestine as undoubtedly they have much to contribute to any civilised society.
Tell us, please, how Palestinians will sort out “Apartheid genocidal Zionists” from “Any Jewish person who sees Palestinians as equal human beings”
Something tells me that’s what they tried on October 7th. The results are not very good, but if next time they have more paragliders, we can count on success, right?
I think that should read ‘famed foreign policy antisemite’.
Come on now, he tends to have the worst possible opinion on almost every foreign policy issue – his awfulness extends well beyond antisemitism! Give credit to the fullness of his warped “realist” morality.
How does a guy who openly assigns blame to one side of a conflict and describes it as an ‘apartheid state’ get credited as a ‘realist’. I’m not sure that word means what they think it means. I think ‘moralist’ is the word they were looking for.
Why does any criticism of the secular Israeli State get called antisemitism??
I have huge admiration for many aspects of Jewish culture and the contribution it has made to Western civilisation.
However, I think that the Israeli State has behaved appallingly towards the Palestinians, increasingly during this century, and is now reaping what it has sown.
I broadly agree with Mearsheimer – relations between the two adversaries are now too poisoned to hope for a peaceful solution any time soon.
He tells the truth, so they hate him, and low IQ fools like you call him names
The irony of accusing someone of name-calling whilst denigrating their IQ suggests yours is considerably lower.
The thing is, unlike Caty, i’ve read JMs book, he’s not an antisemite, 99% of the time people use the term antisemite, they just reveal their foolishness or lack of knowledge
The more you miss use the word the more you devalue it, keep going
A while back I remember reading something by John Derbyshire, I think it was, anyway he said something like, “if you give a jewish person or a Jewish group, a sincere complaint, its only a matter of time before someone will accuse you of antisemitism” so the Derb stays well clear of any discussion of the tribe. JM isn’t an antisemite. He just wrote a book about Israeli influence on US politics, nothing wrong with that. No subject should be taboo
Foolishness or lack of knowledge does not, however, equate to IQ.
In terms of “miss use” (sic) of words, might i suggest you choose yours more carefully?
The Israelis and Palestinians are both Semitic races.
This gentleman maybe a famed professor but I doubt how much he knows about the conflict between Arab palestinians and Jewish palestinians. The conflict is about 120 years old in the current form. The land was practically uninhabited in 1868, to judge from what Mark Twain wrote after visiting the Holy Land.Jerusalem had a population of only14000 people (!!). An Ottoman census done in 1896 registered in the town 51000 citizens of which 28000 were Jewish, 6500 Muslims and 6500 Christians (roughly). A British census of 1944 shows a population of 157000 souls of which 97000 Jewish, the rest almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians. Deafening propaganda tends to ignore these numbers describing the Jews as strangers to the land.
Important discoveries, today neglected or on purpose forgotten ,should remind us the huge contribution the Jewish palestinians have made to the entire world. How many people know that in 1906 a Jewish agronomist who goes by the name of Aharon Aharonson discovered in the northern Galilee a wheat strain (Triticum dicoccoides) which gave origin to intensive agriculture and made a huge step to solve the plight of famine which afflicted humanity for many, many centuries.
Those who are demostrating these days shouting “from the river to the sea” are eating bread thanks to this discovery. If the Arab palestinians would have been wise enough to accept living in peace alongside Israel, we would see today a flourishing region free from tragedies. It wasn’t to be, instead we have innumerable funerals.
Surely it was never a feasible solution while every Arab state, terrorist organisation and the majority of those who identify as Palestinians declare the necessity of ending Israel’s existence.
Yesterday’s man. New thinking needed.
The Arabs (no such thing a Palestinians in those days) were offered a two-state solution in 1948 and rejected it. Ever since, they have only toyed with the idea as a negotiating tactic.
It’s true that Netanyahu foolishly abetted Hamas as a means to diminish the authority of the Palestinian Authority in order to make a two-state solution unviable but then Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution either.
It’s regrettable, perhaps, but that’s the reality. Just as with Russia, Iran, China, there’s no easy way forward: there will be economic harm and people will die. We’ve just got to pick a side. Will it be better for Britain if Hamas wins or Israel wins?
My question is this. Was there ever any point since 1947 where a Palestinian state could have been created that was not also fundamentally opposed to Israel’s very existence? Was there ever any point where a Palestinian state of any size could be relied upon to peacefully coexist with an Israel of any size without openly or tacitly supporting antisemitism and possibly violent terrorism? If the answer to the above questions is yes, when exactly was this and under what conditions? I see no evidence that either of these conditions could be met at any point and I do not believe it is realistic to expect a nation to cede territory to an enemy without any guarantee that the territory will not be used to launch further attacks. What realistic options did Israel have?
Both Hamas and much of the Right in Israel strongly oppose the two-state solution. Netanyahu covertly supported Hamas to undermine the 2 State solution. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The use of historical narrative helps both maintain their legitimacy.
Mearsheimer may well be correct in his conclusion albeit he can be criticised for how he apportions blame. Hamas wishes to kill it and liquidate the state of Israel.
There are Israeli’s who feel 67 was an ‘accursed victory’ and sowed the seeds of all that followed. What the counter-factual would have been endlessly speculative, but once Palestinian Govt was destroyed in that rapid conquest it’s civil society has perhaps never fully recovered. Thus the seeds sown for perennial conflict.
Not far from the terrible events someone allegedly once said ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’. It’s interpretation been debated over two millennia but the exponent knew how challenging it was for those who promote friendship among humanity to be heard at such times.
At least Israel is a vibrant democracy which is evidenced by the push back against Bibi.
Yes v much agree and why one always leans more towards Israel as a beacon of light in a sea of Authoritarians. But that light can be dimmed by how some of it behaves.
Professor Mearsheimer has long been critical of Israel and that’s his opinion. I agree that right now there is no two state solution possible, but that’s as of today. Had the Gazan’s invested the money in something productive other than tunnels and weapons, there could have been the start of a Palestinian state there.
Does he have a solution? He could say, “From the River to the Sea…” and let Arabs sort out what to do with the Israelis, which would probably look like October 7th on a larger scale.
I hope Israel successfully destroys Hamas. Then Gaza needs to be rebuilt with a new education system not run by UNRWA. I do not believe Israel or its people want to run Gaza, nor do they want to live with the daily rocket barrage.
Complaints and arguments between groups are inevitable and usually rational. War however, is not inevitable, and is irrational.
It required no great skill to shell the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and to blow up the generator so as to cut off the respirators to the more than 50 disabled people for whom those nuns were caring in Gaza City. But Israeli snipers have also killed a mother and daughter inside the adjacent Holy Family Church, noted centre of Hamas activity that it is. These are world class crack shots. So they did not accidentally gun down three, three, hostages who were bare-chested, holding a white flag, and shouting “Help!” in Hebrew.
While they wait to be sacked from Abu Dhabi, those who are telling the Covid-19 bereaved to get back in their box, are at least backing up the people who are saying the same to the Israeli hostages’ families. Sell your shares in whoever is still insuring shipping in the Red Sea. But no one is so big that their actions can be allowed to block the Suez Canal, and today’s article by David Cameron and Annalena Baerbock makes it clear that patience is approaching exhaustion.
It is inconceivable that that article has not been approved by the United States. Yet as with advocacy of Cameron’s recent adoption of the American visa ban on the leaders of the West Bank settler violence that has led to the cancellation of Christmas in Bethlehem, any Labour MP who had written such a piece would have lost the whip, while any other Labour Party member who had done so would have been expelled.
Labour is now the greater evil, worse than the Tories, and specifically worse even than the Prime Minister of the austerity programme and of the war in Libya, who remains, for now, one of the West’s last inveterate warmongers on Ukraine, but who still manages to be better than Labour on this. We should no more want Labour to win the next General Election than most of its MPs wanted it to win the last two, or than any of its staff wanted it to win the last four.
But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Almost all the comments have suddenly disappeared this morning. Stop this madness !
The constitutional position of Likud is that there should be one state from the River to the Sea. That, with constitutional liberty and equality guaranteed by universal suffrage and an independent judiciary, is the only thing that we would accept on any other patch of the planet, and it is the Israeli settler programme that has in any case made anything else impossible.
What are you talking about? The only thing we would accept anywhere on earth is “constitutional liberty and equality guaranteed by universal suffrage and an independent judiciary”?
That doesn’t exist in China, Russia, Belarus, pretty much the entire Muslim world, and most all of sub-Saharan Africa, yet we “tolerate” it just fine.
Why are we right and everyone else wrong? Because we say so?
Logic and just a casual look around will inform you.
What? The only thing we would accept anywhere on earth is “constitutional liberty and equality guaranteed by universal suffrage and an independent judiciary”?
That doesn’t exist in China, Russia, Belarus, pretty much the entire Islamic world, and most all of sub-Saharan Africa, yet we “tolerate” it just fine.
That doesn’t make any sense. We tolerate lack of liberty, equality, and democracy all over the world. China, Russia, Egypt, the whole Middle East, most of Africa, etc., etc.
We do not actively promote it as a settlement, so to speak. We dislike it, we criticise it, and sometimes more. The settlements have made partition physically impossible, and anywhere else, we would therefore insist on a single state with constitutionally guaranteed rights protected by representative democracy and by judicial independence.
We don’t insist on that anywhere. China has more than 1 million people in literal concentration camps and you don’t hear boo from our Gov’t. Saudi Arabia denies pretty much all rights to non-Muslims and denies many rights to Muslim women too and almost no one ever mentions it.
Democracy is not a universal imperative. Democracy made things MUCH, MUCH worse in Egypt, as it has in Turkey. Both are far more modern, welcoming countries when the military is in charge.
But generally in most even vaguely civilised societies overt and LEGALISED racism, systematic separation à la Apartheid and genocidal ethic cleansing is not considered kosher.
Anyway, anyone who thinks the leading hegemonic Western state is a democracy is a total idiot. It is an out and out autocracy where big money decides every aspect of life. Said state has one of the largest proportion of it’s population incarcerated, has the staggering number of 100,000 deaths of despair every year and systematically spies on it’s own citizens.
Mr G wake up to the real world rather than wallow in your fantastical dreamworld of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, and ‘equality’.