Reckoning With Israel’s ‘One-State Reality’

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

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Summary

For decades, most discussions of Israel and Palestine were framed around the eventual creation of a two-state solution. That effort has been dead for years. What has emerged in its place is what the political scientists Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami call the “one-state reality.” Their book on this — edited with Michael Barnett and Nathan Brown — came out before Oct. 7, 2023. Since Oct. 7, that reality has become further entrenched: There’s been a record pace of settlement construction in the West Bank. Israel now occupies more than half the territory of Gaza. And Israel’s push into Lebanon has displaced more than a million people. So what does it mean to reckon with Israel’s one-state reality — to see the facts on the ground rather than the frames of the past? Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, College Park. Marc Lynch is the director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University. Lynch is the author, most recently, of “America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region.” Mentioned: “Israel’s One-State Reality” by Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami The One State Reality by Michael Barnett, Nathan J. Brown, Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami Israel’s Religiously Divided Society, Pew Research Center Summary of a Year of Terror, Expulsion, and Annexation — 2025 in the Settlements, Peace Now Book Recommendations: Justice for Some by Noura Erakat Wars of Ambition by Afshon Ostovar The Second Emancipation by Howard W. French Mayors in the Middle by Diana B. Greenwald Israel by Omer Bartov Tomorrow Is Yesterday by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Mark Mazzetti.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The I've been trying to think about how to begin this episode, which is a very, very tricky one.
0:44.3	And I found myself thinking about a debate I heard a lot in 2023 and 24. Back then, when you had more protests around ceasefires and free Palestine,
0:51.3	you would hear these chants and see these signs from the river to the sea,
0:56.4	from the river to the sea. And it flared into this huge controversy. Free Palestine from the river
1:03.5	to the sea means get rid of all the Jews. They have no interest in having just the West Bank and
1:09.4	Gaza as their homeland, as they purport to?
1:12.4	No, this is a genocidal chant, and you've heard for years.
1:18.0	From the river to the sea means you have the Jordanian River, the Mediterranean Sea,
1:22.6	the land in between is free.
1:24.7	Everyone in between is free.
1:26.5	I am not going to allow you guys to try and use Hamas's
1:30.0	words and say that's my word. From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights,
1:35.4	and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. What was always so strange to me,
1:42.4	so backwards about this focus on college campus protesters
1:46.1	was that there was this reality people weren't really admitting that there is one power
1:52.8	from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That power, that sovereign, which if you travel in that area, and I have, is just visually undeniable, is Israel.
2:06.7	American politics has not grappled really at all with the level of day-to-day domination that Israel exerts over Palestinian lives and the complete absence of any horizon at all for that to end.
2:23.3	And this was true before October 7th. In early 2023, the political scientist Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Mark Lynch, and Shibli Tel-Hami published an edited volume called
2:36.2	The One State Reality. Their argument, which also made in a very controversial foreign affairs
2:41.7	piece, was that, quote, Palestine is not a state in waiting, and Israel is not a democratic
2:47.9	state incidentally occupying Palestinian territory.
	...

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