How the “Dangerous Gimmick” of the Two-State Solution Ended in Disaster

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The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other’s claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can’t be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.”

“What Killed the Two-State Solution?,” an excerpt from Agha and Malley’s new book, was published in The New Yorker.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick.
0:08.3	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:16.2	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:23.6	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:25.6	I'm David Remnick.
0:27.6	For so long, our hopes for peace in the Middle East lay with a two-state solution.
0:33.4	Israel and a Palestinian state recognizing one another's right to exist with some kind of security guarantees in place.
0:41.2	But nearly two years after the October 7th attack, the two-state solution now seems like mere rhetoric, an illusion.
0:50.3	The brutality of that attack struck grief and horror into nearly every Israeli, and it emboldened
0:55.8	the most hardline elements in the Israeli government.
0:59.5	In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.
1:03.7	Nearly every building there has been either destroyed or damaged, and last week Israel
1:09.2	ordered the evacuation of all of Gaza City.
1:13.2	Where those Palestinians will go and live is unclear.
1:17.5	Israel faces accusations of war crimes and even genocide.
1:21.0	And in the West Bank, Israel seems poised to annex the territory entirely.
1:26.7	And it goes on and on. The killing, the destruction,
1:31.8	the displacement, the hostages, and so much more. Looking back now, we have to wonder, was there ever
1:38.9	a real chance for peace? That's the subject of Tomorrow is Yesterday. To my mind, an essential book, a book
1:47.4	difficult to read, but full of hard truths and no phony optimism. The authors are veterans
1:53.8	of Middle East diplomacy. Hussein Aga was a negotiator for the Palestinians, and he helped
1:59.6	draft a key document called
	...

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