The Triangular Equation for Israel's Democracy, Jewish Character, and Territory

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Israel can only have two sides of the triangle: be democratic and Jewish in character, but not have all the territory, or have all the territory and give up either its democratic character or its Jewish character.
With the territory comes its inhabitants, who can either be accorded democratic rights or denied those rights.
There are those who accept the premise of two states, but then downplay the importance of settlements.

Patriacide. Nationcide. Whatever you want to call it, that is what Israel is doing with its settlement policy: it is killing itself. If ever greater numbers of Jewish settlers are installed on land regarded by Palestinians as the basis for a state of their own, the possibility of a two-state solution grows ever more remote. Yet the single state alternative, involving annexation of the West Bank, would result in a country where Arabs vastly outnumber Jews and then you won’t have a one-state or a two-state solution: you’ll have a no-state solution. For those who love Israel and wish to preserve a democratic Jewish homeland, as much as for those who hate it, the settlements must stop. That’s what many left-wing Israelis and their friends say. But defenders of the settlements see things very differently. The two-state solution has long been a dead letter in their view: why stop building settlements in the name of a peace plan that is frankly unattainable? Whatever the eventual solution – it could even be a...

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