The results of the Israeli election were confusing at best, with a majority of the country shifting significantly right-ward but a plurality unifying around Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima Party. The best thing we can hope for over the next couple years is stasis, with some kind of unity coalition centered around Kadima and Likud that treads water until the government inevitably collapses and the next set of elections come around. The worst case scenario is a stable right-wing coalition made up of an emboldened Likud, the racist Yisrael Beiteinu, and the various representatives of Israeli ultra-orthodox parties.

The problem is, we’re running out of time. Stephen Walt (yes, that Stephen Walt) wrote a provocative post asking what happens if the two-state solutions ceases to be feasible. I’ll say right from the start that I find Walt’s thesis in the Israel Lobby to be severely problematic on a lot of levels — a sentiment I’ve expressed before. But his point that the two-state solution is moving further and further out of reach every day is I think solid — the only question how far off the point of no return is. Eventually, Israeli settlements will become so entrenched that they will be impossible to dislodge. Yet even an Israeli government that maintains the status quo today will certainly not remove the settlements — if anything, it will likely maintain the policy of slowly expanding them. Without evacuating the settlements, a Palestinian state can’t be created, and the two-state dream dies. And as outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak stated, if the two-state solution dies, Israel is “finished” as a Jewish state.

Some Palestinian maximalists already get this. One Palestinian adviser put it thus to Jeffrey Goldberg a few years back:

The most farsighted among the Palestinians now understand that settlements are good for their cause. Michael Tarazi, a Palestinian-American and Harvard-trained legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, told me, “Settlements are the vanguard of binationalism”-a single state that would soon have an Arab majority. “I don’t care if they build more,” Tarazi said. “The longer they stay out there, the more Israel will appear to the world to be essentially an apartheid state.”

He went on, “The settlements mean that the egg is hopelessly scrambled. Basically, it is already one state. There are no signs saying ‘Welcome to Occupied Territory.’ It’s one country, the same electricity grid, the same aquifers. Except that the three million Christians and Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank don’t have the same rights as the five million Jews in Israel, and the Arabs in Israel are second-class citizens compared with the Jews. Now the cause is justice and equality.”

I’m watching this occurring — watching Israel spiral seemingly inexorably towards its own self-immolation — and I want to shake those “pro-Israel” people who are out there clearing the brush towards suicide. You’re killing the Jewish state. I understand why Israeli voters would take a right-ward turn — that’s the common response to being under constant siege and attack (though inexplicably, nobody seems to realize that Palestinians will react the exact same way under the circumstances). What I don’t understand — or at least, can’t forgive — is the actions of the “pro-Israel” community outside of Israel which expends much of their energy trying to prevent the United States from heading off Israel’s self-destructive policies. What do they think the end game is? What do they think will happen once the settlers get so far entrenched its impossible to remove them?

The minute the Palestinian community decides to shift its strategy away from securing a Palestinian state, and towards demanding full voting rights, equality, and political participation in the state they currently live in (Israel), Israel is finished as a Jewish state. It cannot justifiably deny millions of people under its jurisdiction voting rights and political equality indefinitely. We’re getting to the point where the combined Arab/Palestinian population of Israel and the territories will have a stable majority over the Jewish population, and eventually the Palestinians will realize they can get everything they want simply by calling for democratic elections. What grounds will any of us have to object, if we can’t offer them a state immediately?

Walt says that unless something changes, there are three potential outcomes. First, outright ethnic cleansing: Somebody pushes somebody else out entirely — in Israel’s case, simply expelling the Palestinian population by force. Second, actual, factual apartheid: a sub-class of Israeli society with no rights, restricted from the same roads, communities, and institutions as the majority. Third, binationalism, i.e., the end of the Jewish state.

All three are unacceptable. The first would be a violent war crime, and impossible for any human being of good conscience to support. I also imagine it would likely provoke war with all of Israel’s neighbors. The second would be hideously immoral, and would make it impossible for America or the Jewish community to support Israel in any way whatsoever. I could not identify with a state that would so brazenly abandon democracy and liberal ideals. The third would be exceedingly dangerous — the history of multi-ethnic states with a history of conflict is not good, and even under the best case scenario a binational state would cease to be a haven for the Jewish people fleeing oppression. I wish there were more alternatives, but someone has to give me a plausible route to them: without a two-state solution, what else but this happens?

We’re running out of time, and we’re looking at two years of doing nothing but treading water. That’s not good enough. The path Israel is going down will kill the state, and yet a significant portion of my community is acting as enablers. It’s maddening. It’s infuriating. It needs to stop.