Perhaps as important is the need for a thorough reassessment of the appropriate conceptual framework to resolve the conflict. In this context, the road to a negotiated settlement of the conflict has be- come impossible to envision without dramatic changes to each side’s internal socio-political dynamics, the gross imbalance of power between them, and the approach of the international community. Absent any intention of integrating these stateless Palestinians into its citizenry, Israel is formalizing a “two-tier system of disparate political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights based on ethnicity and nationality,” which a group of leading United Nations (U.N.) human rights experts recently characterized as “a 21st century apartheid,” and what others have simply termed a “one-state reality.”

This latter process, in particular, has come at the direct expense of establishing an independent State of Palestine and leaves millions of Palestinians stranded under Israeli sovereignty without political rights or a horizon for achieving them in the future.

Confederation of independent systems