The “day after” the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza may still be weeks or months away. But it will come. “When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next,” said US president Joe Biden recently. “And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution.”
Against a backdrop of repeated cycles of violence and a military occupation lasting more than half a century, diplomats and analysts agree that lasting peace must follow the bloodiest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians for decades.
The two-state solution to the bitter conflict that has beset the region for almost a century – dividing the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean to carve out two independent, sovereign Israeli and Palestinian states existing side by side – has repeatedly been endorsed by world leaders.
But it has proved impossible for Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement. And, since talks brokered by John Kerry, then the US secretary of state, collapsed in
