What kind of Palestinian state would it be?

What might a Palestinian state look l i ke? Would it look like Jordan or Egypt? Or like Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen? Or Lebanon? Or like Gaza?

Those questi o ns are prompting a re-examination of whether a Palestinian state is still the consensus goal it has been for more than two decades.

Last week I reported, on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, about the erosion of the long- standing consensus here in favour of the “two- state solution” to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

The s ubsequent comments by President Donald Trump that he would support whatever the parties agreed — one- state or t wo- s t ate — abandoned America’s 20- year policy of favouring a two- state solution. That solution might have already been abandoned by an accelerating history.

NO ONE IN THE MIDDLE EAST KNOWS WHAT THE BORDERS WILL LOOK LIKE 5 YEARS FROM NOW.

This week Netanyahu is in Australia — the first ever visit of an Israeli prime minister to that long- standing ally — where ahead of his visit the Aussies reiterated their preference for a two- state solution, but also remained open to other options if the parties agreed. Alarmed by this development, two former Labour prime ministers called for Australia to recognize a Palestinian state immediately, hoping to cement the twostate solution as Australian policy.

Positions are shifting, because the sands in this region are shifting. More like a sandstorm than a shift. Doubts about establishing a Palestinian state are arising now precisely because it is hard to envisage what an Arab state on the West Bank would look like.

In 2009, Netanyahu himself accepted a two- state solution, primarily by saying what a Palestinian state on the West Bank could not be.

It would be entirely demilitarized, with no weaponry, and Is r ael would maintain control of its airspace and control of the borders.

Many Palestinians rejected that vision as lacking the sovereignty, and perhaps even viability, of a real state.

Since then the map of the Arab world has been reconfigured. Indeed, over the last five years the borders of the Middle East, drawn up at the conclusion of the First World War and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, have been effectively erased. Four states — Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen — do not effectively govern within the entirety of their territories.

They are still officially recognized as states, but they are no longer recognizable.

Egypt has been through two revolutions since the Arab Spring — the first pro-Islamist and t he second anti- Islamist — and today has lost effective control over the massive Sinai peninsula, given over to bandits and terrorists.

Jordan, long stable and at peace with Israel, has been swamped by Syrian refugees — 20 per cent of its population — and sees chaos across the border in both Syria and Iraq.

An irony of the second Obama administration is that it pushed valiantly for a new Arab state in Palestine while all around existing Arab states were failing or being dismembered. The premise of Palestinian statehood is that it would l ead to peace; t he reality depends entirely upon what kind of state it would be. And the truth is, no one in the Middle East knows what the borders in the region will look like five years from now.

Indeed, as much as Israel might be leery of what a Palestinian state might look like, the Jordanians are terrified. If the West Bank were to become like Gaza, controlled by Hamas, or like Sinai, effectively a stateless territory, or like parts of Syria and Iraq, under the control of ISIL, or like Lebanon, home to Iranian proxies — the Hashemite Kingdom might not survive.

There are many who make the persuasive argument that the alternative to two states — to separation from the Palestinian majority in the West Bank — is an Israel that is no longer Jewish and democratic. That argument’s power is now weakened by the prospect that a putative Palestine state might not be a benign Jordan or a peaceful Egypt, but a cauldron of expansionist violence.

That explains both the diminishing confidence t hat a Palestinian s t ate could work, and t he i ncreasing calls for a regional solution.

Perhaps in the reconfigured Middle East, the West Bank could achieve some confederation with Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt, hitching the new state to older, stable ones.

Or if the disintegration of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen continues, maybe the entire future of the region l i es l ess in existing nation states, and in broad confederations of city- states and local clans. In that environment, the Palestinians might find themselves without a state but with autonomy in an increasingly stateless region.

The creation of a Palestinian state is implausible while existing neighbours are being destroyed, and even the concept of statehood in the region is eroding.

That does make a foreseeable peace agreement less likely. And it requires creative thinking as a new Middle East is being born.