WILL THIS solution bring a just peace? Hardly.

This state will be a battlefield. Each side will try to take over as much land as possible and bring in as many persons as possible. The Jews will fight by all means to prevent the Arabs from becoming the majority and coming to power. In practice, this will be an apartheid state. If the Arabs become the majority and try to assume power, there will be a struggle that may become a civil war. A new edition of 1948.

Even an advocate of the One State solution must admit that the struggle will go on for several generations. Much blood may flow, and the results are far from assured.

The idea is utopian. To realize it, one has to change the people, perhaps the two peoples. One has to create a new human being. That's what the Communists tried to do at the start of the Soviet Union. That's what the founders of the kibbutz tried to do. Unfortunately, the human being has not changed.

Utopianism can bring about terrible consequences. The vision of "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" requires the provision of a new lamb every day.

There are some who cite the model of South Africa. A beautiful and encouraging example. Unfortunately, there is hardly any similarity between the problem there and the problem here.

In South Africa, there were no two nations , each with a tradition, a language and a religion that go back for more than a thousand years. Neither the whites not the blacks wanted a separate state of their own, nor did they ever live in two separate states. The one state had already existed for a long time, and the struggle was over power in this one state.

The bosses of South Africa were racists, who admired the Nazis and were incarcerated during World War II because of that. It was easy to boycott their state in all fields of activity. Israel, on the other hand, is accepted by the world as the State of the Holocaust Survivors, and apart from small groups, nobody will boycott it. It is enough for the Israelis to point out that the first step on the way to Auschwitz was the Nazi slogan "Kauft nicht bei Juden" - Don't buy from Jews.

Furthermore, a world-wide boycott will arouse in the hearts of many Jews all over the world the deepest fears of Anti-Semitism, and will push them into the arms of the extreme Right.

A quite different thing is a focused boycott against specific elements of the occupation. We were the pioneers of this approach, when, more than ten years ago, we started a boycott of the products of the settlements and pulled the European Union along with us.

By the way, experts on South Africa tell me that the effects of the boycott are much overrated. The boycott was not the main factor that brought the apartheid regime down, but the international situation. The United States supported the regime as a bastion in the fight against Communism. Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Americans just dropped South Africa.

The relationship between the US and Israel is immeasurably more profound and complex. It has deep ideological layers - a similar national narrative, the Christian Evangelist theology, and more.

THE TWO STATE solution is the only practical solution in the realm of reality.

It is ridiculous to assert that it has been defeated. The very opposite is true. In the most important sphere, the collective consciousness, it is winning all out.

On the morrow of the 1948 war, when we raised this flag for the first time in Israel, we were a tiny band. We could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Everybody denied that a Palestinian people even existed. In the late 60s I tramped around Washington DC and spoke with officials at the White House, the Department of State, the National Security Council and the US delegation to the UN - nobody there was prepared to entertain this idea.

Now there is a world-wide consensus that this is the only solution. The United States, Russia, Europe, Israeli public opinion, Palestinian public opinion, the Arab League. One has to realize the full meaning of this: the entire Arab world now supports this solution. This is extremely important for the future.

Why did this happen? After all, it is not that we are so gifted as to win over the whole world. No, it is the inner logic of this solution that conquered the globe. True, some of the new adherents of this solution only pay lip service to it. Perhaps they use it to divert attention from their real aims. People like Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert act as if they support this idea, while in reality their intention is to keep the occupation forever. But this shows that even they realize that they cannot go on opposing the Two State solution openly. When the whole world recognizes that this is the only practical solution - it will, in the end, be realized.

THE PARAMETERS are well known, and they, too, now enjoy world-wide agreement:

A Palestinian state will come into being next to Israel.
The border between them will be based on the Green Line, perhaps with an agreed-upon and equal swap of territories.

Jerusalem will be the capital of the two states.

There will be an agreed-upon solution of the refugee problem. In practice, this means that an agreed number will return to Israel, and the rest will be rehabilitated in the State of Palestine or in their present places of domicile, with the payment of generous compensation that will turn them into welcome guests. When there is an agreed plan that tells every refugee family what their choices are, it must be submitted to the refugees wherever they are. They must be partners in the final decision.

There will be an economic partnership, in which the Palestinian government will be able to defend Palestinian interests, unlike the present situation. The very existence of two states will mitigate, at least to some extent, the huge difference of power between the two sides.

In the more distant future - a Middle Eastern union, on the model of the EU, that may also include Turkey and Iran.

The obstacles are well known, and they are big. They cannot be circumvented by patent medicine. They must be faced and overcome. Here, in Israel, we must weaken the fears and anxieties, and point out the benefits and profit that we will gain from the creation of a Palestinian state at our side.

We must bring about a change of consciousness. But we have already come a long way, from the days when the entire public denied the very existence of the Palestinian people, rejected the idea of a Palestinian state, rejected the partition of Jerusalem, rejected any dialogue with the PLO, rejected an agreement with Arafat. In all these areas our stand trickled down and has been accepted in various degrees.

It is clear that this is still far from what is necessary. But that is the direction things are moving - and there are hundreds of opinion polls to show it.

REAL OBSTACLES to the Two State solution can be overcome. They are small compared to the obstacles on the way to One State. I would say: the ratio is 1:1000. It is like a boxer who fails to win against a lightweight opponent, and therefore chooses to confront a heavyweight. Or an athlete who fails in the 100 meter sprint and therefore enters the marathon. Or somebody who despairs of climbing Mont Blanc and therefore decides to climb Mount Everest.

No doubt, the One State idea gives its adherents moral satisfaction. Somebody told me: OK, it is not realistic, but it is moral, and that is the place where I want to be. I say: that is a luxury we cannot afford. When the fate of so many human beings is in the balance, a moral stand that is not realistic is immoral. I repeat: a moral stand that is not realistic is immoral.