Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was interviewed on Britain’s Sky News last week, and among the various topics covered was Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank. Netanyahu’s answer when asked if settlements are an obstacle to peace was not surprising and consistent with his long-standing position. He dismissed the premise entirely, said that Israelis and Palestinians are both there and neither is going to push the other out, argued that previous governments could not make peace because the Palestinians will not recognize a Jewish state in any border, and deemed it ridiculous to assert that Jews living anywhere in the West Bank obstructs peace. None of this is new, or perhaps even notable, but it is important nonetheless to consider it against the backdrop of a new round of anticipated Israeli settlement announcements, and the intensifying debate about whether Israel has created a one-state reality and what the appropriate response to that should be.

The Netanyahu government is set to play its familiar settlements shell game over the course of this month, where it proclaims plans to build in a particular sensitive spot, encounters expected pressure from the U.S. and others, and then withdraws its plans and replaces them with even more construction in other spots. In this instance, the government scheduled a meeting to approve construction in E1—considered by many to be the ultimate barrier to a future two-state outcome should Israeli building proceed there—and then pulled the meeting while also informing Washington of intentions to approve 4,000 new units elsewhere. The locations for the new homes have not been released, but given the current government’s track record in the brief six months of its tenure so far—which has included retroactively legalizing illegal outposts, repealing the 2005 West Bank disengagement law, turning a blind eye to the Homesh yeshiva’s relocation to permanent facilities, and approving thousands of units deep in the West Bank well beyond the security barrier—the new construction will undoubtedly be in places that purposely make a two-state outcome exponentially more difficult. 

Odds are high that there will be approvals in East Jerusalem in the last remaining spots open for Palestinian growth and contiguity between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, such as Givat Hamatos and the Lower Aqueduct. Odds are high that there will be approvals in the South Hebron Hills, where it is exceedingly difficult to secure pockets of Israelis amongst the far larger Palestinian population but where a number of coalition members live. Odds are high that there will be approvals along Route 55 in the northern West Bank just west of Nablus, not only because Bezalel Smotrich calls that area home but because it means widening the finger containing Ariel, which is the only substantial Israeli population center in the West Bank that is not right along the Green Line. In other words, odds are high that what the Israeli government announces will be as problematic in sum as E1, and that the locations will be chosen to intentionally put a future separation closer to the realm of fantasy.

Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami penned a much-discussed article in Foreign Affairs earlier this spring on Israel’s one-state reality, declaring it undeniably here and calling for U.S. policy to shift in response through acknowledging that Israel has created a single state that has erased the Green Line and working for equality and citizenship for everyone living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. I have little dispute with their description of the situation as it exists; my disagreement is with their prescription, as aiming for citizenship for all Israelis and Palestinians in a single state will, in my view, result in even more bloodshed and ultimately as much inequality as exists now. But many of the adverse reactions to the article have honed on its central point about how to describe the current reality, and have argued that a one-state reality does not exist, or that if it does, it is on the Palestinians’ heads for rejecting Israel. The problem with that is that even if you grant the premise, it does not wash away that this is also very much on Israel’s head for doing what it can to create that unequal one-state reality. It does not follow and never has that maintaining security control of the West Bank through a military occupation also requires putting half a million Israeli civilians there, with many more on their way. What this Israeli government, in a faster and more comprehensive manner than any before it, is doing is proving the truth of the one-state reality the authors describe, and hastening the day in which their prescription becomes a fait accompli as well.

For Israel’s supporters in the U.S., familiar arguments about Palestinian intransigence, rejection of partition, refusal to accept previous Israeli offers, and the rest of the well-worn litany may be true, but they are missing the point. If your response to what the Israeli government is poised to do in the next few weeks is to insist that settlements aren’t really a problem but are only a trifling distraction, then please enjoy your one-state reality. Enjoy trying to convince anyone that Israel is genuinely interested in finding a fair and negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while it expends a disproportionate amount of money and energy increasing friction with the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem rather than mitigating it. Enjoy the increasing skepticism with which you are met when pushing for the U.S. to help Israel with all sorts of diplomatic goals, from pushing to convene the next ministerial meeting of the Negev Forum to incentivizing the Saudis and others to normalize relations with Israel, while the Israeli government continues to disregard American concerns about its settlement policies in the most blatant ways. Enjoy living in a world in which “Israel continues to extend its hand for peace” is a shibboleth rather than a substantive argument. Because these are some of the consequences of a one-state reality, which is being hastened by Israel’s continuing and growing prioritization of settlements before everything.

Two things can be true at the same time: it is offensive to say that Jews cannot or should not live in the historical and biblical Land of Israel, and the settlements that Israel builds deep inside the historical and biblical Land of Israel are an obstacle to peace. It is not a question of rights, but a question of consequences and outcomes. The only way to counter the reality of one state is to make two states the thrust of U.S. policy and judge outcomes by that metric above all else. Those whose interest is establishing full Israeli sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel don’t hide their embrace of a one-state reality, and they aren’t the ones who are up in arms over the description. But for those who are, objections to the one-state reality description will ring exceedingly hollow if they are paired with the sentiment that settlements aren’t actually a problem, and the reactions to Israel’s forthcoming round of construction approvals will reveal who is serious and who is not.