  What to do about Palestine? This is a question running through my mind. I was speaking of it earlier on very little sleep with a friend of mine who had gotten none. Those conversations are always a struggle. His interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is personal, whereas mine is not, and it may be for this very reason that I brought up the subject. How does a state avoid destruction at the hands of neighbors hell-bent on this pursuit?
What kind of success will a two-state system effect? Should Palestinians have a right of return? I'm not enough of a pragmatist to answer these questions in any real way. But if I was, I think I might be forced to say something like this: Hey Palestinians, you get your own state and the right to return. We'll pull up the settlements, set the borders to the 1967 lines, and live happily ever after. But, if one single nut-job in the bunch of you tries to blow something up, we will pursue you with a genocidal rage that will last until the face of the Earth has been wiped clean of all memory of your people.
Come on now. Settle down. I'm not serious. I'm only trying to make a point. Any solution is likely to be ephemeral, any peace tenuous. I heard that in the Air Force, a mid-air collision was once called 'two aircraft trying to occupy the same space at the same time'.
This can't happen, obviously, and results in one aircraft crashing into the other with one, or both, facing destruction. Now, suppose that the aircraft are nations of people and the space they are trying to occupy is Israel. Forced with three options--destruction of self, destruction of the other, and mutual destruction--what would you pursue? The answer is fairly obvious, Khrushchev. The only solution to avoid destruction is to avoid collision. Is there a path to avoid collision?
I want to believe that the two-state solution is just such a path. Yet, my previously mentioned sagacious friend seems to think that the two-state solution, in fact, the very two-state demand, is just rhetoric, and not likely to solve the real problem of Palestinian anti-Semitism. (My apologies, Friend, if I have abused your position. ) There is this idea of ancient hate--the inevitability of ethnic conflict. Situations such as Bosnia and Rwanda are just examples of the resurfacing of old wars and conflicts. But I do not buy into this theory.
There is history, but no collective memory. People find new reasons to hate. They find new reasons to wage old wars. Palestinian children hate Israel because their parents hate Israel. By the time they grow up, they will have found their own personal reasons for hating Israel which they will pass onto their children, like some kind of birthright. But suppose all the children believe that the hate is about statehood.
Suppose that is the reason they choose to hate Israel after their pre-pubescent indoctrination. Then, the two-state solution becomes a solution in fact. There is some sort of manipulation here. If you can make someone who hates you, feel that way for a reason that you can fix, then you can fix the reason and assuage the hate. So, as the two-state theory gets bandied about more and more, it's likely to become more and more a viable solution to the problem. Machiavelli stirs. 
