The prevailing worldwide view of how to resolve politically the conflict of two nationalisms in Israel/Palestine is the so-called two-state solution - the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, within the boundaries of the onetime British Mandate of Palestine.

Actually, this position is not at all new. One might argue that it was the prevailing worldwide position throughout the 20th century.

The Balfour Declaration of the British government in 1917 called for the establishment of a "Jewish national home" within Palestine, which implied the idea of two states. When the United Nations passed its resolution in 1947, it called explicitly for the establishment of two states, with a special status for Jerusalem.

The partition was supported at the time by both the United States and the Soviet Union. The Oslo accords of 1993 called for two states. And today, Condoleezza Rice insists that a final agreement on two states is an urgent matter that she hopes to see advanced at a conference to be convened in Annapolis, Maryland.

What was the historic reaction of the Zionist movement (and the state of Israel) on the one hand and of successive representatives of the Arab Palestinians on the other to the idea of two states?

In practice, neither side ever liked the idea. Among the Zionists/Israelis, there were originally three different positions, none of them favorable to partition. There were the so-called Revisionists who called outright for an exclusively Jewish state.

There was at the other end of the spectrum a small group of intellectuals who called for the establishment of a unitary Arab-Jewish binational state, a position that died out after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

And then there were the mainstream Zionists who became the mainstream political leaders in Israel. They accepted the idea of partition as a necessary reality, while seeking to foster a creeping expansion of the frontiers of the Jewish state, hoping one day to occupy most or all of the country. This was essentially the position of such major figures as David Ben-Gurion and later of Ariel Sharon.

The only Zionist/Israeli groups that ever called for two states as a permanent and definitive solution were movements such as Peace Now, which emerged after 1967, which proposed to exchange "land for peace." These groups were never able to win a clear majority in Israeli elections, and today their position is more than ever a minority one.

On the Arab/Palestinian side, the resistance to the idea of two states has always been great. At first there were no advocates whatsoever of the idea. This is why, when the United Nations decided on partition in 1947, there were no takers on the Arab/Palestinian side.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964 as an organization specifically opposed to the idea. The PLO did slowly change its position in the 1980s and, as part of the Oslo accords of 1993, formally accepted the idea of two states.

For many Israelis, nonetheless, this change was seen as tactical and not genuine - a sort of mirror image of the Ben Gurion-Sharon pragmatic acceptance of partition as the realism of the present, while always hoping to move from there to a later one-state solution.

Today, however, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is a loud and strong proponent of a two-state solution. And the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, are ready to endorse this position.

On the other hand, today, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel seems at best a very lukewarm proponent of actually creating a Palestinian state.

So what are the prospects of arriving at an accord?

Not very strong, as is acknowledged in the statement of eight heavyweight American public figures who have just published in The New York Review of Books what might be termed a last call for a two-state solution.

They entitle this statement, somewhat ominously, "Failure Risks Devastating Consequences." The first name is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and is a key advisor to Barack Obama. Three other signers are also Democratic notables: Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group; Thomas Pickering, Bill Clinton's Under-Secretary of State; and Theodore Sorenson, special counsel to John F. Kennedy.

The Republican side is equally eminent: Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to both Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush; Carla Hills, the U.S. trade representative for George H. W. Bush; former Senator Nancy Kassenbaum-Baker; and Paul Volcker, former chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.