Bibi Netanyahu’s comments this week on Palestinian statehood can be reconciled, as many of his supporters have pointed out, if what he meant was that he is for peaceful co-existence with a Palestinian state in principle but does not see it as a near-term possibility. I think Walter Russell Mead is right to say that the Israeli government would forfeit a lot of American support if it ever truly did renounce the goal:

The two-state solution has a long and hallowed history in American foreign policy. Harry Truman, the American President who recognized Israel’s independence, was a strong proponent of the two-state solution in the 1940s. The willingness of the Jews of British Palestine to accept the UN-sponsored partition plan, contrasted with the refusal of the Arabs of the country, helped give Israel the moral high ground in American politics for many years. . . .
Americans are, I think, prepared to show some understanding both for the difficulties of Israel’s position and the problems caused by the deep structural issues within the Palestinian movement, but it would be extremely difficult to build a long term U.S.-Israeli relationship on the basis of the rejection of Palestinian national rights.
This does not, Israelis need to understand, primarily come out of some pandering need to pacify Arabs by covering the American-Israeli relationship with a “peace process” fig leaf. Nor does it primarily proceed from sentimental philanthropy divorced from any understanding of the problems of the real world. It proceeds from the complex of ideas and beliefs about the world that have led so many Americans for so long to support Israel in the face of almost universal global condemnation. It will not go away, and over time its influence is likely to grow rather than to recede.