New Maps Show How Israel Has Thwarted Hopes for a Palestinian State
The breakneck expansion of settlements in the West Bank has rendered American talk of a two-state solution increasingly irrelevant.
As the final weeks of Barack Obama's presidency approached, Lowenstein's maps played a pivotal role in convincing him to allow the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Though the U.S. abstained from the vote, Secretary of State John Kerry warned that settlement expansion was "increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality," implying the potential demise of a Jewish democratic state of Israel living in peace.
Ten years later, Lowenstein continues to update these maps, lamenting that Kerry's warning seems impossibly hopeful with the accelerated pace of settlement construction.
Recently, the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tendered a plan to build another 1,200 settler housing units, explicitly intended to divide the remaining Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank. The move drew strong criticism from the European Union and more than twenty other governments, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, who urged Israel to retract the tender as it "undermines the prospect of the two-state solution by driving a wedge through the West Bank."
The United States, while not signing the statement, reiterated its opposition to the annexation of the West Bank, asserting that a stable West Bank keeps Israel secure.
The expansion of settlements and outposts has dramatically altered the demographic landscape of the West Bank. Over five hundred thousand Jewish settlers now reside among three million Palestinians, an area designated for a future Palestinian state since the 1947 UN resolution. The Israeli government's support for settlements has intensified since the start of 2023, approving a staggering 104 new settlements and housing units, more than doubling the total from approximately three hundred to six hundred and forty.
Violence against Palestinians has likewise surged, with the U.N. documenting over five thousand settler attacks since 2023, each resulting in Palestinian casualties. These attacks, often with the approval of Israeli security forces, have displaced more than eleven hundred Palestinians and resulted in the deaths of over seventy thousand Palestinians, including a significant number in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
Lowenstein's latest maps, compiled with Liam Hamama, highlight the urgent need for a rollback of existing settlements and outposts, potentially involving the eviction of Israeli Jews who established them. While a more immediate goal may be to persuade Israel to return some land to Palestinians, Israel's current political climate makes such a proposal almost inconceivable in the short term.
Netanyahu, now campaigning on a pledge not to establish a Palestinian state, and far-right figures in his cabinet have suggested otherwise, effectively putting a halt to any real progress toward a viable Palestinian self-rule.
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