One-State Solution Conference at Harvard Is a Distraction From Ending the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict JERUSALEM - "Israel/Palestine and the One-State Solution," a student-run conference held at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government last weekend, achieved its goal before it even began. By bringing undeserved attention to an impractical idea, it drew enough wrath to raise its own profile. The one-state solution is an angering concept, and the gathering was an angering event. For those unfamiliar with the jargon of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the one-state solution proposes to create a single state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that would offer equal rights to all its citizens - Jews, Arabs and others alike. Oh, if life could be that simple. Under the guise of ending the Israeli occupation and answering the Palestinians" grievances in one stroke, the one-state solution would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state. That's very much not what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had in mind when, invoking Auschwitz before delegates of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday, he said, "My friends, 2012 is not 1944. Never again. The response to the Harvard conference was as outraged as the idea behind the conference was unserious. The event was less an academic forum than an activists" party - as might be expected with organizers like Justice for Palestine, the Arab Caucus, the Palestine Caucus, the Progressive Caucus and the Association for Justice in the Middle East. The program included not one speaker with first-hand familiarity with the peace negotiations. Many Jewish organizations, politicians and academics were quick to condemn the initiative for promoting "dangerous thinking" and for being anti-Israel and "anti-Semitic theater." Some were furious that having Harvard host the conference lent credibility to the one-state solution. Harvard allowed students to organize the event but did not officially put it on itself. They're right: the one-state solution isn't just impractical and improbable. It is a recipe for bloodshed. The Jews of Israel founded their country on the belief that living as a minority among other peoples almost caused their annihilation. They would never agree to a proposal that would surely relegate them eventually to being a minority in their own homeland. According to recent calculations (pdf) by Sergio DellaPergola, a professor emeritus of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, if current demographic trends hold, by 2020 the population living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River will count more Arabs than Jews. And the Palestinians, most of whom have been at war with the Jewish state since its birth, couldn't be entrusted with ensuring the safety of Jewish citizens in a Palestinian-majority country. The one-state solution is a nonstarter, in other words, and that's not what reasonable people looking to solve a conflict advocate. Should Harvard have hosted this conference? Should it ever censor or interfere with student initiatives? Writing in the Crimson last week, the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz ended up advocating a "taxi cab" approach. Like drivers who pick up all potential customers, Harvard should be open and neutral as a conference host but "with the full realization" that this will sometimes mean allowing "speech that is deeply offensive and disturbing to some." Taking that logic to its word, on National Review Online, Carol Iannone proposed a conference about the "resettlement of the Palestinians now residing in refugee camps to Arab countries, with full financial compensation." It's easy to imagine other similarly outrageous ideas: a no-state conference, a "Jordan is Palestine" conference, a there's-no-such-thing-as-the-Palestinian-people conference. And that's why I don't believe a university could withstand the pressure of implementing Dershowitz's view over the long term. I'm not sure the Harvard conference should have been held: the one-state solution is an angering concept, and the gathering was an angering event. And all this buzz was a distraction from seriously discussing how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The two-state solution is not exactly a practical idea at the moment. But it's still the only one worth debating. It, at least, is based on the hope of building a new state, not of destroying an existing one. Shmuel Rosner, an editor and columnist based in Tel Aviv, is senior political editor for The Jewish Journal.