Former US president Jimmy Carter said Sunday Palestinian leaders were "seriously considering" a one-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following a visit to the Middle East.
"A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," Carter wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.
"By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy," he explained. "In this non-violent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."
Carter noted that in doing so, Palestinian leaders were taking into consideration current demographic trends.
He said non-Jews were already a slight majority of total citizens in this area, "and within a few years Arabs will constitute a clear majority."
Carter added that a two-state solution for the conflict was "clearly preferable" and had been embraced at the grass root level but that a one-state solution was "a more likely alternative to the present debacle."
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