Ending the Israel and Palestine Conflict: A Two-State Solution

It has been seven years since the last major conflict between Israel and Palestine. The 2014 Gaza war lasted 50 days, and in its wake left the highest civilian death toll since the Six-Day war in 1967, with Palestinian civilians accounting for a majority of fatalities in the West Bank.

For the past week, the world has watched as violence has escalated between Israel and Palestine. The recent conflict was triggered by a land dispute and the eviction of six Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Since the 1950s Palestinian families have been living in Sheikh Jarrah. However, Jewish settlers consider the East Jerusalem neighborhood their ancestral land, pointing to a 1970 Israeli law which allows Jews to reclaim land owned before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The Israeli law allows reclamation of land ownership but denies Palestinians the right to reclaim properties they vacated in the same war.

The land dispute in East Jerusalem over Sheikh Jarrah, which is predominately Palestinian, was expected to see a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court on if settlers’ claim to the land was valid, the row over the evictions — which are illegal under international law because East Jerusalem is occupied territory — was delayed on Monday. A new hearing date in 30 days for the Sheikh…