The One-State Solution

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss the merits of various solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I defend the claim that creating a secular, democratic state for all its citizens is the morally optimal solution, a secular state that does not define itself as the exclusive state of an ethnic, religious, or national group. A morally optimal solution satisfies the following three criteria: (i) it respects and does not infringe or violate the properly delineated moral rights of either group, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis; (ii) it satisfies both parties’ morally permissible desires; and (iii) it protects the individual human rights of all the state’s citizens.