After the Jewish state: the arguments from security and identity

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to opinion essay by columnist Brett Stephens, “The Siren Song of ‘One State’,” August 3, 2020:

What is so horrible about the prospect of living in a secular country that is home to more than one people, but belongs exclusively to neither of them? Would Jewish life in New York be happier, or safer, if Brooklyn were officially Jewish?

There are two main arguments for the continued existence of a Jewish state: the argument from security, and the argument from identity. The argument from identity is based on the same romantic nationalism that has, to say the least, proven catastrophic in Europe. The argument from security tacitly supposes the ideal of the Jewish state either controlling its foreign citizens or eliminating them.

There may be little choice. A two-state solution now might just be another version of what we have. For the Palestinian territories on the West Bank to be governed by an autonomous Palestinian state entity, under the regional dominance of an aggressive, hyper-militarized Israel functioning as a kind of armed camp, would mean that the Palestinian people living there will continue to be subject to the potential if not actual military domination of Israel. And with Israel now literally planning to annex the West Bank, there simply will be no alternative.

Will the Palestinian people agree to relinquish their own national claims in territory dominated by a hostile foreign power? Or will Israeli Jews be less safe sharing land, social life, and government than fighting to not have to?