Ian Lustick, a prominent political scientist from the University of Pennsylvania, is a long-time observer of Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. In his new book, he argues that the “paradigm” of the “Two-State Solution (TSS)” to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, predicated on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, is no longer relevant. Instead, he calls for acknowledging the “One-State Reality (OSR)” in Israel/Palestine, namely, that “there is today one and only one state ruling the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and its name is Israel” (p. 2).

The book’s first three chapters focus on the major factors that have obstructed achievement of the TSS. The first among these is the “Iron Wall” strategy that was embraced by the Zionist movement and later by the independent Israeli state. Although this strategy was useful for confronting Arab rejection of and opposition to Zionism and Israel, the author posits that it did not lead to more prudence among Israel’s leaders, particularly in relation to the Palestinians. Thus, it became an obstacle to peace based on the TSS. The second encumbering factor is what the author terms “Holocaustia”: the growing use of the Jewish Holocaust by Israeli leaders to mobilize their society, especially after the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. This fostered a deep sense of victimhood among many Israelis that became an obstacle to a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. The third and last factor hampering the TSS is the power of the Israeli lobby in the United States, which has effectively pressured successive US administrations to refrain from pushing Israel to end its occupation of the Territories.

The book’s fourth chapter presents the dismal implications of these factors both for the TSS “paradigm” and how they helped buttress the OSR. This is followed by a concluding chapter that suggests several practical ways in which the OSR—even if it is not a “solution” to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians—can offer actors within these communities new opportunities to work together to soothe mutual tensions.

The arguments put forth in Paradigm Lost are persuasive, eloquent, and supported by ample evidence. Moreover, its policy recommendations are not only useful in themselves but also encourage readers to think outside the box. That said, there are several points where I differ with the author.

First, the attempt to identify general and long-term “structural barriers in Israel—cultural, psychological, and political” to the TSS (p. 3) is compelling, and the author does an admirable job both in fleshing out these factors and substantiating them. Still, it seems that these factors, in themselves, are insufficient for accounting for the book’s “puzzle.” For example, in 1979 Israel reached a formal peace treaty with Egypt despite Israel’s militaristic tendencies, the central place accorded to the Holocaust in Israeli political discourse, and the role of the Israeli lobby in the United States. Indeed, it was Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who “led the way for generations of politicians to use ‘Holocaustia’ as vocabulary for political analysis” (p. 43), who decided to terminate Israel’s bloody conflict with Egypt, and he was backed by generals-turned-politicians such as Moshe Dayan, Yigael Yadin, Ezer Weizman, and Ariel Sharon, some of whom had laid the foundations of Israel’s offensive military strategy. That Israel did not do the same concerning the Palestinians suggests that additional factors were at work.

A second issue, which is related to the first, is the insufficient attention accorded in the book to the main actors who were instrumental in foiling the TSS. These include not only the Israeli settlers in the Territories and their supporters within Israel but also the state’s security agencies (the IDF and Shin-Bet), whose officials played a pivotal role in “securitizing” and “administrating” the Territories and who often cooperated with the settlers (some of these individuals later regretted their role, but this was “too little, too late”). One can also mention Israel’s burgeoning arms industry and its US counterpart that benefited from the continuation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In fact, Israel became a “laboratory” for testing US weapon systems and for developing Israeli weapon systems with partial (but crucial) US funding (e.g., the “Iron Dome”). From this angle, US–Israeli relations in general and American support for Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians in particular seem less puzzling.

Finally, one can ask whether the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel—the keystone of the TSS—was indeed “paradigmatic” among policy makers and the general public in Israel. As the author notes, in the early 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin, then in his capacity as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, flatly rejected the idea of negotiations with the PLO because they were liable to result in the creation of a Palestinian state (p. 24). Although Rabin changed his view toward the PLO during his second premiership (1992–95), and notwithstanding the support for a Palestinian state among certain Israeli leaders, such as Yossi Beilin, it is not clear that Prime Minister Rabin himself subscribed to this view. It seems that Rabin’s preference was for some sort of Palestinian autonomy run by an authoritarian ruler who would be free of the political, public, and judicial constraints of Israeli democracy. In fact, this was the outcome of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in this period.

If the TSS “paradigm” is no longer relevant to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, what other “paradigm” might replace it? The book does not consider the OSR to be a “solution” to the conflict (p. 149), though, as noted earlier, it does suggest practical ways that Israelis and Palestinians can address various aspects of the OSR. However, it can be argued that given the continued existence of the OSR since 1967 and the failure of all attempts to undo it, an alternative “paradigm”—one might call it the “OSR paradigm”—can be identified.

Underpinning the “OSR paradigm” are Israel’s massive settlement efforts in the Territories, its leaders’ refusal to allow the creation of an independent Palestinian state even at the price of the continuation of the conflict, Palestinian armed resistance to the peace process (especially by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad), and the continued fragmentation of the Palestinian community, especially since Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the decline in Arab interest in the Palestinian issue, the regional uprisings and their consequences, the focus of many in the region on the Sunni–Shi’i divide and not on the Palestinian issue, and continued US (and other external) acquiescence to the OSR, including the generous support extended to ethnoreligious actors in the Israeli right by American evangelists. In sum, some of the factors that helped undermine the TSS “paradigm,” as well as others, may have helped buttress the alternative “OSR paradigm.”

These reservations withstanding, Paradigm Lost is a well-written and thought-provoking book, which will elicit debate and open new avenues for research on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and other “intractable” conflicts and how they can (and cannot) be ameliorated.