Dana Takruri’s AJ+ video, “Why the Two State Solution Never Worked,” presents a powerful and concise thesis: The two-state solution has failed because it was never a sincere goal for the Israeli state, which has instead, through systematic and deliberate actions, created a single, unequal reality of apartheid from the river to the sea. The “peace process” has been a smokescreen, allowing Israel to entrench its occupation and settlement project while paying lip service to a Palestinian state that it was simultaneously making impossible. Here is how the historical and current facts align with and prove her thesis, supported by academic and human rights documentation.
The “Smokescreen” of Negotiations vs. The “Fact on the Ground” of Settlements.
Takruri’s narrative highlights the stark contradiction between talking about peace and actively sabotaging its possibility. The historical data confirms this:
While negotiations like the Oslo Accords (1993) and Camp David (2000) were happening, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank more than doubled, from approximately 110,000 in 1993 to over 250,000 by 2005 (Peace Now, 2021). This was not an organic growth but a state-funded, strategically planned project of colonization.
As leaders shook hands over maps, bulldozers were clearing land for colonies on the very territory meant for a future Palestine. This proves Takruri’s point that the “process” was a distraction, buying time to create irreversible facts. The settlements, considered illegal under international law (United Nations Security Council, 2016), were never just an “obstacle” to peace; they were the physical manifestation of Israel’s rejection of a viable Palestinian state.
The Deliberate Fragmentation of Palestinian Land.
The AJ+ video uses maps to powerfully illustrate how Israeli policy has carved up the West Bank. This directly supports Takruri’s argument that the goal was never two states, but permanent control.
The matrix of Israeli settlements, Jewish-only roads, and hundreds of military checkpoints has broken the West Bank into over 200 disconnected enclaves, with Israel controlling all borders, airspace, and resources (UN OCHA, 2023).
This is not the map of a future state. It is the map of a Bantustan, a series of open-air prisons. Takruri would argue this was by design. A “state” in these disconnected cantons would be entirely non-viable and functionally dependent on Israel, rendering the word “state” meaningless. This is the architecture of apartheid, not co-existence.
The Centrality of Jerusalem and the Refugee Right of Return as Deliberate Deal-Breakers
Takruri’s thesis implies that Israel took maximalist, non-negotiable positions on key issues to ensure the failure of talks.
Israel has officially annexed East Jerusalem and insists the entire city is its “undivided capital,” a move not recognized by the international community (U.S. Department of State, 2023). It has also consistently and categorically rejected any meaningful implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return as outlined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III).
From Takruri’s perspective, these weren’t just hardline positions; they were poison pills. Any Palestinian leader who concedes on Jerusalem (the heart of Palestinian cultural and future political life) and the Right of Return (the core of their historical grievance) would be seen as a traitor. By making these non-negotiable, Israel could blame the Palestinians for walking away from “generous offers” that were, in fact, designed to be rejected.
The Current Reality of One State: Apartheid.
The conclusion of Takruri’s video is that the two-state solution is dead, and we must now confront the reality of a single state.
Today, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, Israel governs all the land and all the people. In this one state, one group of people (Jewish Israelis) has full citizenship, voting rights, and freedom of movement. The other (Palestinians) is fragmented into groups with different, lesser statuses: second-class citizens within Israel, subjects under military occupation in the West Bank, and prisoners under a crippling siege in Gaza (Human Rights Watch, 2021).
This is the crux of Takruri’s argument. The two-state solution was a fiction that masked this underlying reality. The current situation is not a temporary occupation but a permanent system of ethnic supremacy, legally defined as apartheid by major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (2022) and Human Rights Watch (2021). The ongoing military operations in Gaza, which the International Court of Justice (2024) has found plausibly constitute acts of genocide, represent the most brutal and accelerated expression of this logic, aimed at permanently shattering Palestinian society.
Conclusion:
Following Dana Takruri’s thesis, the historical facts do not tell a story of a “failed peace process.” They tell a story of a successful colonization project. The two-state solution never worked because it was never intended to work by the party in power. It was a diplomatic narrative that provided cover for Israel to create a single, undemocratic state where it maintains control over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. The call to “Free Palestine” must therefore evolve to mean achieving equal rights and freedom for all people in this single, contested land, ending the apartheid system that the “two-state solution” was always designed to conceal.
References
Amnesty International. (2022). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: A cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/
Human Rights Watch. (2021). A threshold crossed: Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
International Court of Justice. (2024). Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). Order of 26 January 2024. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf
Peace Now. (2021). Settlement population: The number of settlers has doubled since the Oslo Accords. https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlement-population-data-2021
UN OCHA. (2023). Fragmentation: The West Bank. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/fragmentation
United Nations Security Council. (2016). Resolution 2334 (2016). S/RES/2334. https://undocs.org/S/RES/2334(2016)
U.S. Department of State. (2023). 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza. https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/
