#1: The two state solution is dead.

#2: Only two states for two peoples will bring peace

Hold these two contradictory thoughts in your head simultaneously. Both are right. But both can’t be right. How so?

Listen to Palestinians* for why #1 is right. Then listen to who is or used to be the Israeli peace camp to hear what must happen to make the #2 right. Then you’ll understand the vast cognitive asymmetry between the two. Corey Gil-Shuster’s The Ask Project, which poses viewers’ unedited questions to ordinary Palestinians and Israelis in unscripted and unedited videos, uncovers this asymmetry. With a Masters in Conflict Studies, this Canadian-Israeli Jewish atheist points to Palestinian collectivist conformity at the heart of this cognitive asymmetry— the collectivist “party line” that governs the Arab world’s tribal politics:

“noted similarities between Israelis and Palestinians when asking them questions, but also noted several key differences between the two peoples. When interviewing Palestinians, “I don’t always know if they are telling the truth because they are very aware of what their society and family may say. So there’s sort of a party line…. I don’t think they drastically disagree with it, they just might have slightly different ideas,” he stated. With Israeli Jews, “I don’t think they are changing their answers to look good. They don’t care what anybody thinks. Nobody ever said anything different when I put down the camera.”

Gil-Shuster’s Ask Project gets us to the heart of which party denies more essential facts neither side can change:

• Neither Israeli Jews nor the Palestinians are going anywhere, despite what Hamas, Fatah, most Palestinians, Ben Gvir and Smotrich say.

• They’re doomed to live together in this tiny strip that’s been a corridor for giant invading empires for more than 3000 years. 

• One party to the conflict belongs to the vast ethnic and linguistic majority that’s dominated the Middle East from Morocco to Persia since the 7th century.

• The other knows its destiny is to live as a tiny minority — a minuscule Middle Eastern Jewish island in a vast Arab and Muslim sea.

• In practical, though not historical terms, both are indigenous to the land they both claim.

Deny any of these points and you’re in QAnon-type reality denial. Argue with reality and you’ll lose the argument (being from NY, I hate to lose arguments).

Here’s a sample of the near unanimity of Palestinian reality denial. First the anecdotal evidence from Ask Project interviews (copy and paste the youtube links below the images to view):

They all think Israelis are a European “foreign element” with foreign passports. The truth: 60–65% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, Sephardic or Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors were expelled, expropriated and pogromed out of the Middle East and Africa. Only 10% hold foreign passports. So Golda Meir is still right about Israel’s secret weapon:

But their refusal to see this is unanimous. Proposition #1 is thus still true.

When given a choice between two states for two peoples and continuing the post-1948 War of Return, this last interviewee, like his predecessors, and his leaders Arafat and Abbas, chooses the latter. He, like his fellow interviewees, proves #1 is right, as their interviewer Gil-Shuster shows:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a survey that 95% of the worldwide Muslim population they would see Israel as bad and a big chunk of Muslims would want from The River To The Sea, Palestine would be free….which we’re trying to tell them that you’re basically saying either kill or displace 7 million Jews. But the thinking is so shallow that they become parrots basically they keep parroting what they’ve heard rather than taking a pause and thinking about what it actually means.”

Group loyalty and conformity cancel reflection about the consequences of such reflexive parroting. It’s what makes proposition #1 is still right.

Now, zoom out from interviews’ anecdotal evidence to media, leaders and survey research: