In the last couple of years I have come to realize that the two-state solution is not likely to happen, at least anytime in the next 100 years. I’m not a political scientist, and indeed no expert on the conflict, but I do think that demographic realities dictate that unless the Palestinian people are given a homeland, a democratic Jewish Israel will not last for more than 30 years. Either democracy will be replaced by an apartheid system to keep Israel’s Jewish identity from being voted out by a Palestinian majority, or the majority will clamor for its fundamental civil rights. I really do not understand how Israeli national security policy is not built around this eventuality.

Maintaining the status quo and the current balance of power in the Occupied Territories is not feasible. It is not just that Israel was founded on an unsustainable history of ethnic cleansing, violent dispossession and aggression against the native inhabitants of Palestine. It is not that every year or so, Zionist leaders renew their pledge to violence with another set of incursions, provocations or outright war — and create new generations of enemies. It is that Jewish nationalism is no different than others — based on a set of foundational myths (some true, some not) — and that like other nationalisms, it sometimes succeeds, but also fails to attain the needs and the desires of the communities that believe in it. But what has Zionism done for the Jews lately? Nothing, and it is this commitment to an ethnic nationalism that drives their hysterical fears of annihilation, fear which drive Israeli leaders to unleash even more violence.

 The belief that Jews must have their own ethnic state is not one that will help Jews live interesting human lives in this place called Israel/Palestine. The world has dramatically changed from the world of 19th century nationalism, the environment which fostered Zionism. Implicit in that world was that countries are defined by ethnic identity. The world simply no longer believes that. Indeed, the notion is starting to look as outmoded as ideas from the Middle Ages. States that are defined by religion are either purely ceremonial like the Vatican, or among the most backwards and anti-democratic like Saudi Arabia.

 Israel’s original sin is the decision made by its early leaders to carry out a campaign of “mandatory transfer” of the Palestinians, who were forcibly expelled from their homes, many were massacred, and entire villages razed, creating a refugee population of 700,000, Moreover, it’s now known that the expulsions began before the 1948 war. Israeli leaders need to come to terms with this original sin or they will never be free. Israel will always be a nation that oppresses another nation, a country subjugated internally by its own form of racism. Nowhere is that racism more apparent than in the claims that the Palestinians don’t even exist as a people. They are only Arabs who could just as easily live in Egypt or Jordan–that is the lexicographical equivalent of genocide.

 Israel has maintained, in the words of an early Zionist, an “iron wall” towards its neighbors for sixty years. The psychology of most people just will not allow that to continue forever. People want to just live, love, trade, and enjoy life. The Arab states originally were against Israel’s establishment, and they had every legitimate reason to feel so. But all Arab states accept the reality of Israel today. Even parties like Hamas, so demonized in the Western press, are willing to talk and reach a modus vivendi. They withhold recognition as a legitimate bargaining position. The U.S. went many years without recognizing the Soviet Union. Then it recognized it and constructive exchanges became frequent.

 The principles the founding fathers of Israel had, are no longer relevant today because they were based on religious concepts, which leads to debasement in the long run. But building a state based on the rule of secular law, fairness and equality will at least give you a chance to establish a stronger nation in the long run. Thus, Israel has one choice left on the table, a political/power sharing agreement with the Palestinians. It is high time all Zionist leaders gave up their bronze age superstitions and learned to live peacefully with the Palestinians in a modern democratic state.

The state of Israel/Palestine could guarantee the rights of all its citizens and have a strong secular and democratic constitution that would be the envy and partner of the entire Middle East. The current round of violence has shown how the Palestinians’dreams have been stifled by war and how Israel’s democracy is turning into apartheid. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost a century old which is comparatively short to South Africa’s and North Ireland’s centuries long fight for equality. Yet, today, both South Africa and Ireland are among the most prosperous and peaceful countries in the world.

 A bi-national state has been gaining credence among intellectuals and the general populations in Israel/Palestine (especially Palestinians) because the two-state solution looks increasingly impossible to implement. Dividing Jerusalem, dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank, establishing a Palestinian state bisected by Israel are all insurmountable obstacles to a two-state solution that immediately disappear in a one-state solution.

 In a bi-national state solution reconciliation can truly begin and Jew and gentile, Israeli, Muslim and Christian Palestinian, Arab, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi can all coexist. Jews don’t have to be evacuated from Hebron and other holy cities in the West Bank, Palestinians can live in Tel Aviv, Yaffa, or Safad. Once again, the Holy Land will retain its sacred status.

The writer is professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at The University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio.