A single state in Israel/Palestine?

Could a proposed two-state solution to the festering standoff between Israel and the Palestinians be needlessly prolonging the crisis? That's what Ali Abunimah argues in One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, which is reviewed by Remi Kanazi in An Alternative Approach to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Here's Kanazi:

Abunimah's comprehensive criticism of the two-state solution is an insightful, well-founded argument that is essential for any reader looking for an alternative approach to resolve the conflict. Abunimah proposes that: "Creating a single state for Israeli Jews and Palestinians could in theory resolve the most intractable issues — the fate of Israeli settlements built since 1967, the rights of Palestinian refugees, and the status of Jerusalem." The alternative: perpetual conflict, [absence] of security for Jews or Palestinians, coupled with regional turmoil and the continuation of a biased American foreign policy that stands to benefit no one except a select few in Israel, America, and a handful of quislings in the Palestinian Authority.

Over time most Israelis and Palestinians have come to the realization that no matter the settlement, the Jews and Palestinians of Israel will remain living together and the Palestinians of the occupied territories will stay on their land. Abunimah presents a solution that meets the geographical needs of both peoples. He argues, "The main attraction of a single-state democracy is that it allows all the people to live in and enjoy the entire country while preserving their distinctive communities and addressing their particular needs. It offers the potential to de-territorialize the conflict and neutralize demography and ethnicity as a source of political power and legitimacy."

I myself have long thought that a single state within this small ancient territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea would be the best solution in the best of all possible worlds. Given my own family's experience in Cyprus, I intuitively shrink from the prospect of partition leaving people on the wrong side of an arbitrary boundary or, worse, separating them from their homes. Any effort to create a Palestinian state will inevitably call for the drawing of such a boundary.

Nevertheless, I do wonder how feasible a single state would be, given the history of the last nearly 60 years. What are the prospects of Israel giving up its self-identity as a Jewish state? Or of setting up a constitutional democracy in the midst of, not merely quarrelling ethnicities, but of contrasting political cultures with differing conceptions of the nature of political authority? In Lebanon the National Pact held for only 32 years. How long would a similar power-sharing arrangement endure in Israel/Palestine, especially considering that the Palestinian birthrate is higher than that of Israeli Jews?

Still, it does appear that the two-state solution has run into a dead end. In my more revisionist moments I find myself wondering whether it might not have been better, back in 1917, to leave the Ottoman Empire in charge of the middle east. The division of this territory into separate states has been little short of calamitous over the past 9 decades, effectively sowing, or at least exacerbating, intractable discord in the region.