Questions About the Two-State Solution

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, in the latest in their never-ending series of provocative and thoughtful op-eds, make the following statement:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This reads to me like an unfortunate bit of pussy-footing. Events are moving me into the camp of people who believe there isn't an actual solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it seems as if events are moving Agha and Malley in this direction as well. But if they're arguing that the conflict will only end when Israel ceases to define itself as a Jewish state, they should say it outright. It's not an appealing notion -- that there is room in the Middle East for twenty-three Muslim-majority states, but not room enough for one Jewish state , but they should state it if they believe it.